The amount of misinformation in the Lost Ark community is astonishingly wild.
When the game was released in the west, we had a slew of content creators with previous experience in other game versions. We were told so many helpful and valuable things that would guide us from release, all the way to tier 3. The big moment I specifically remember was when Smilegate announced that we would be, in fact, getting tier 3 content after all, and so many guides and videos came out shortly after. I saved and bookmarked everything I could find that was useful, shared it with my group and anyone that would listen, and absorbed so much information. I wanted to be as prepared and ready as possible.
Once the game was launched, the problems with information began to surface.
From Youtube videos to Discords to even my own playgroup at the time. It became increasingly difficult to figure out a lot of things. Partially because of how hard it was to actually find reliable sources. There were players from the KR version of the game offering help in places like Reddit and Twitter, but it would often get buried under the meme posts and complaints about things that weren’t really an issue at the time. Even to this day, there are posts claiming how other versions get certain things that do not exist, or events that never happened.
Here’s a short list of just some of the myths that have happened over the past few months:
The “x class” performance myths
This can be found all over the place, and is even more profound at higher tiers. If you had no idea how the game worked, you’d guess that the only playable classes were supports, Deathblades, Berserkers, and Sorceresses. The amount of flak that classes like Strikers, Wardancers, and Soulfists get is astonishing. While there are loose stereotypes with some classes, there really isn’t full on, unabashed, “This class sucks” bias. It’s probably the scarring from past MMOs and how some classes were quite literally unplayable throughout the years. I’ve seen everything from “Reflux is unplayable compared to Igniter”, to “If you’re playing Soulfist, you’re griefing” to “Deadeye. More like Deadweight”.
Of course, there are many problems with this. Lost Ark is not the type of game where you’re hindering yourself in any significant way by playing one build over another. It just doesn’t work like that here. I know other MMOs may have influenced how many people view games and metas and the like, but if anyone is telling you that a class or build is unplayable or similar, they don’t know what they’re talking about. While some classes may be late bloomers, or may not see their full potential until raid sets, given the current content we have now, class performance doesn’t even matter, and when it does matter in Legion Raids past Valtan, you’ll have that power realized, and it should be then when you decide if a class is worth it to you or not. Even then, that is separate from if a class is “actually” good or not, to which the answer is yes, they are. There is a conflict that arises with class investment and the time it takes to get to that point in gearing, but that circles back to these myths and overall talk about NA’s class perception. It sucks to see classes straight up rejected out of parties for no reason, or seeing players switch classes because of some perceived performance that isn’t even true. I know that “Play what you enjoy” can come hollow to those who want to do what they think is best, but what’s best in Lost Ark literally doesn’t matter when performance is almost solely based on your skill and how well boss patterns treat you.
The 50% guardian health buff myth
One of my favorite myths was when word got around that Guardians in Tier 1, and Tier 2 received a flat 50% health buff across the board. This isn’t true. Apparently, the origin of this was in Saintone’s stream, where he literally put out an arbitrary number when discussions of this were happening, and people just ran with it. It turns out that someone debunked this back in early March. Granted, the sample size is small, but this is one of those rare cases where things should apply across the board. I think the confusion was that Guardians were weaker in the beta. Combined with the previously mentioned running of the word, it created a rumor that didn’t have legs, to begin with. Even when multiple people asked for a source, it wasn’t provided. It got so bad that people used that to justify player skill and competence.
Whatever the heck this is:
A playgroup member asked how many pheons it took to buy Relic gear. I went searching and found…that mess. Having four different answers within a two-week period is not okay. In a game where everyone is clamoring for as much information as possible, it’s hard to believe that the answer to this wasn’t readily available. It’s not the fault of any of the posters here, but more of how poorly information is communicated and relayed amongst the community. Even with good sites like Maxroll contributing, it’s still challenging to find correct answers to many things. It’s possible that we should do a better job at compiling information like this and making it easy to access and assess. Still, the NA Lost Ark community doesn’t seem to be as dedicated to things like this as other MMO communities.
I want to be very clear on one thing; None of this is the doing of Amazon/Smilegate. I don’t believe that they are responsible for any of this, nor are they obligated to help with every single case of misinformation out there. All of the previously mentioned are products of the community itself.
It’s rather unfortunate that misinformation gets spread so frequently, but I think it’s essential to take a step towards making sure it’s stymied as much as possible.
