Forum necromancer here to resurrect an old topic again.

So I got lucky and was able to play in the Closed Technical Alpha for this this past weekend. Gotta say I originally had no interest in this since I figured it was going to be another one of those Korean games that's all flash and no substance (and quite frankly that's all I really saw from watching streams of it back when it originally launched) kind of how Blade and Soul was (don't get me wrong B&S was good but it didn't have staying power for me). I'm happy to say I've reversed my opinion on it after getting my hands on it. Can't entirely say much since I believe I'm still under NDA (not sure but I'm not taking chances here) but I was extremely impressed by Lost Ark (almost so to say this is what Diablo 3 should of been). Combat is visceral and fun (chaining abilities together is fun as hell, takes a bit of getting used to do to how they're mapped on the keyboard), story is rather interesting (I love how every class has it's own Prologue story and that leads into the over-arching plot of the game, though not all of those are extremely well done or good (standouts for me were the Martial Artist and Warrior, Mage was okay but nowhere near as good as the other two), the game is beyond gorgeous (I don't normally gush about his stuff but god damn is it pretty), I like all the systems they have in place for various things (getting around the world, the rapport system, the little secrets you can find, etc), I love how you don't have to log out to the character selection screen to change characters (you can do it from the in-game menu) and I like the MMO aspect of the game even if it's not an overly important to actually enjoying or doing anything (seeing other players in the world makes it feel more alive while you're playing and it's nice when someone drops in to help kill a powerful monster).

About my only gripe is the loading process into the game. From boot-up to character select was anywhere between 5-10 minutes which royally sucks (part of that is due to the anti-cheat that boots up prior to game launch). Now it could be just my computer taking it's sweet ass time but I highly doubt that. In-game load times are amazing, you spend very little time in loading screens and it's refreshing as hell when compared to other games like it.

Quite frankly I'm really looking forward to this now after playing it (hell I'm considering purchasing the Platinum Founders pack for all the goodies and guaranteed access to the closed beta) and is probably the only real thing I'm hyped about this year besides Endwalker. I'm worried that this will come out at or around the same time as the D2 remaster and put me in a bind but all things considered I think Lost Ark will win that battle (as much as I love D2 I've never been hyped about an ARPG like this before (well at least not since D3 shattered all my hype with poor design decisions)). If you get a chance to get into the beta when it comes around take it because the game is fun as hell. Now to sit here and not think about my gnawing need to play my Soul Fist (Martial Artist advance class).

64v64, the bots make sense. Especially when the game begins to decline naturally I'm sure there is a soft cap requirement of real players.

Battle pass systems have been getting pretty good lately without fucking over the players that don't want to pay. Oddly enough. Black Ops Cold War and Modern Warfare had great battle pass systems. Mostly cosmetics but there were 2 weapons every season. Both free players and battle pass players could get them in reasonable time. Battle pass purchase gave you 1.5x XP gain over normal players. And both weapons were obtainable in the first 30 ranks. Plus they have 2xp battle pass weekend for all players frequently. The difference between buying it and not buying it was the many cosmetics you get. Like free players get a reward every 5 ranks while BP buyers get something every rank. I never thought I'd say this but COD actually has one of the better systems out there after all that BS loot crate craze they created.

Destiny 2's battle pass system is decent as well, but can be p2w'ish as you get mats for upgrades that doesn't really apply to a PVP game. but the concept is the same.

If they have weapons, which I hope they don't. I'd like to see the classic assignment system come back for that. I'd hope they take COD's system and make it fair for everyone to obtain. Otherwise I'd rather just see camos, vehicle skins, and XP tokens.

I hated that weather gossip widget thing, I disabled that thing immediately.

I hope Windows 11 will be a free upgrade like Windows 10 was. They might force an upgrade fee onto everyone because profits but if they're smart they wont because of their app store. Windows 10 has been an amazing OS for the last handful of years. Unfortunately Windows 10 support will now end in 2025. wtf.

https://www.cnet.com/news/windows-10-support-is-ending-in-2025/

I remember when Windows 10 came out, Microsoft wanted everyone to upgrade to it and it would be the last version of Windows and from that point on it would be updated indefinitely. Back to the app store thing... Google's Android OS gets huge OS upgrades with new versions and doesn't charge phone or chromebook users a fee for upgrade, same with Apple and their OS, but phones end up being replaced every couple years while PCs can chug along for 5-8 years+ potentially. But Windows 10 has an app store, much like android and apple. The OS for the other devices get free upgrades because those companies want people to keep using their app store because they get a huge cut of all app store and in app purchases. I personally don't use the Windows app store, but I'm sure alot of people do. When a big OS upgrade comes out, all new apps have to support the new OS to be listed in that version of the app store and eventually those apps will stop supporting the old OS long before official support has ended for that version. So if Microsoft wants to keep racking in cash from app store sales, they should make it seamless and give everyone an upgrade to the new OS. But Microsoft might just say to hell with that and go for the big cash out up front by forcing everyone to buy the upgrade. But if they do that then they'll be shooting themselves in the foot because alot of people won't upgrade their OS, they'll end up having security issues out the ass again like when nobody wanted to upgrade from Windows 7 or 8, and they'll loose app store revenue. Also, I'm sure Windows 11 will have some sort of "anonymous and targeted user data harvesting" to sell for ad revenue that Microsoft will be able to make an ass ton of money off of because the US has no privacy laws outside of medical records and all our data is an entire economy of money to be made for big data.

A couple more links I found interesting:

Why Windows 11 will likely be a free upgrade:

https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/why-windows-11-will-likely-be-a-free-upgrade/

And on a side note, Nvidia still supported Windows 7 & 8 which surprised me since I thought they stopped supporting them a few years ago. Turns out they will stop supporting those OS on August 31 2021. This news seems to coincide with the news about Windows 11 coming out and I'm sure Nvidia and other GPU manufacturers have already been having access to the new Windows 11 to ensure their video drivers work flawless on it.

https://www.pcworld.com/article/3621704/nvidia-ending-support-for-windows-7-8-and-older-kepler-gpus.html

I feel indifferent & have questions like...

1. Is Windows 11 going to be free like Windows 10?
2. Should I be disappointed I backed Aya Neo months earlier?
3. Is this why there's talk about Gabe Newell making Steam Machines Pals?
4. Why does Windows 11 sound like a late April Fool's prank?
5. If Windows 11 is real will it also have that stupid weather gossip button that was added to Windows 10?

Here are some links...

Windows 11 - Wikipedia

Microsoft Windows Event - Watch the June 24 LIVE stream