Lost Ark isn’t a typical mmo. Just because some call it that, I wouldn’t put it in the same category as WoW, FFXIV, SWTOR, New World, ESO, etc. LA imo is more in the category of D3 and Path of Exile. Especially since it is very similar style to those and uses the same camera angles and click to move etc. Yes LA has things like dungeons and raids but their “dungeons” are basically the same D2’s caves, Tower, etc. It is just a hack and slash of 324897432 mobs coming at you which you can kill in 2 secs.
So yeah, it doesn’t surprise me more play that especially since a lot in Korea do as well.
Lastly. Who cares? Why are people so hung up on if WoW is #1 or not? My lord move on if you are so anxious for other games to have more players than an 18yr old mmo?
I so wish we could get this data. Honestly without Blizz sharing anything other than the absolutely worthless MAUs, we can only sit around and spitball with anecdotal evidence. Which gets us nowhere.
Data analysis is half of my job and I really wish I could get my hands on the data for things like MMO populations proper, especially since I do strongly believe WoW is at the lowest it’s been since maybe early Vanilla, before its population boom.
Oh I cannot disagree with you there at all. MAU is such a worthless metric. Especially with how Blizzard does it. I count as 4 blizzard MAU if I play 4 of their games!! scratches head wut?
I almost hate how it’s clear investors don’t recognize them using those numbers in an effort for things to not look as bad in various games as they might actually be. And even still they’ve had a steady decline in MAUs, so…whatever that means. Less people logging into multiple games or less people logging in at all, who knows! The metric means nothing!
Oh man, wouldn’t Fortnite or LoL or Dora win?
As far as MMOs, I feel like FF14 has the biggest in game store with the most to spend on, but I haven’t looked too deep elsewhere other than GW2. And their store is chunky, too.
I didn’t only say wanting to get my hands on WoW, you just stopped reading there.
Lost Ark looked solid, but outside of all the trappings, it’s so Pay-2-Win that it’s stupid… the moment you get to end game, you’re in for the most tedious, frustrating system known to man unless you bust out your credit card.
I get it, they’re F2P and need to make money somehow… but I’d rather pay for a box price and a sub than have parasitic systems trying to inconvenience me until I pay them what they want.
Lost Ark is just another P2W Korean MMO that had the good sense to look like something else for as long as it could.
As soon as Blizzard makes me swipe a credit card for anything more than a 5% chance of getting an upgrade from appropriate level content, this comparison will be legit.
Yes, I hate WoW has P2W elements… but they are not comparable.