Our author Irie has rediscovered in the MMORPG Lost Ark that being a noob can be really fun. One just has to embrace it.
Many of you will know it: When starting a new multiplayer game that has been on the market for a while, you first look for a handful of beginner guides. There are many different reasons for this.
Long-running MMORPGs always have a large number of features and things to consider. Newcomers often risk missing important information or wasting their currency. To avoid this frustration, beginners prefer to quickly check a guide beforehand.
Or one simply wants to quickly reach the endgame, because that’s often where the real fun begins and all the other players are already there. I have also gotten into the habit of checking old content from games that I am new to.
For me, it’s a matter of consideration for the poor souls who end up in a group with me, the noob. Especially with old content that people have run through a thousand times, I want to avoid being carried by the rest of the group. A bit of pride plays a part in that as well.
However, the result is inevitably that one spoils certain surprises and the feeling of discovery, our author Alexander Leitsch wrote about this.
That’s why the MMORPG Lost Ark felt like a breath of fresh air for me and reminded me how much fun it can actually be to be a total noob.
The special position of Lost Ark makes it possible
What is different about Lost Ark? Lost Ark has successfully prevented me from searching for guides. Because it has only been released in Korea and Russia, there is no official English translation available.
Guides in English are rare and often not as detailed as I would like. Now, I could look at Russian sites. However, by the time you find the right letters on a non-Russian keyboard and type a word into Google, you might as well want to rip your spine out… I’ve heard.
But I had already decided early on not to search for guides. That was because Lost Ark encouraged me to embark on a journey of discovery myself. It specifically promotes the positive feeling of exploration.
One reason for this is that every type of exploration is rewarded in some way. MMORPGs with beautiful maps are abundant, but they often don’t incentivize you to spend much time looking around on those maps.
The “Atlas of Seekers” feature in Lost Ark is a collection for all kinds of collectibles:
- For visiting viewpoints on the maps
- For collecting certain lore items from monsters
- For killing rare monsters scattered everywhere
- For collecting hidden story fragments
- For cooking certain recipes
The most important thing about it is that these small tasks reward you with items that are actually useful. Especially useful are potions that permanently grant additional points to the main stats or bonus points for your skill tree. It’s a clever little system.
Freedom of choice in group play
Additionally, Lost Ark allows you to choose whether you want to play alone or in a group all the way to the maximum level. When there were dungeons I needed to enter for the story, I preferred to enter them alone first.
This option gave me enough time to thoroughly explore the dungeon and crawl into every nook to search for collectibles or hidden items.
Afterwards, however, I went directly into Heroic Mode with a random group to farm armor. Although I was still the noob, the others didn’t have to wait for me to finish all the cutscenes. We had quick and efficient farming runs together and chatted whenever someone in the group spoke English.
Almost like in the old days when there was “no internet”
I know it’s my own fault. I put myself in a situation where new MMORPGs stopped feeling like an adventure. Therefore, it was all the more refreshing when multiple factors came together in Lost Ark that made it particularly easy for me to enjoy my own noobiness.
I even started keeping a log in which I noted the locations of certain items or places where something special was, but that I couldn’t yet use. At times, it felt like back in the day with the old PS1 games that had neither guides nor solution books.
What I have experienced in Lost Ark in the past few months is not a feeling exclusive to Lost Ark. Nearly every solid multiplayer game can give you this feeling. One just has to embrace it and try to discover an MMORPG oneself.
