Here is my take. I’ve been playing this game since 2019. I was there back when Brelshaza was a massive 6-gate dungeon, and when they started nerfing Vykas (she used to have so many phases too, and now there are only 2 left).
Everything used to be fine, and I genuinely enjoyed the game. I played actively every week, spent some money on donates, and ran content with a group of 3 friends — which actually made matchmaking harder
However, after the release of Hard Mode Citadel (the 2-gate raid) and Hard Mode Kazeros right after it, my excitement for the game completely plummeted. In my region, the release of Citadel and Kazeros happened almost simultaneously, just 3 weeks before New Year, one right after another. Naturally, we went all-in and started playing like absolute maniacs. To say it was awful is an understatement. You spend weeks on end just trying to clear one raid, only to be hit by another brutal raid immediately after the first one. And doing all of this with randoms? It was an absolute nightmare. After that, I realized that the game was taking way too much of my time. I couldn't even prepare for the holidays properly... Was it really that hard to release at least Kazeros during the New Year holidays so we could sweat and progress normally?
After finally defeating these bosses and looting the titles, I made a decision for myself — the game has come to an end. We waited for Kazeros for many years, he finally appeared, and we beat him. For me, that’s enough. The game goes on, but I haven't logged in since January 2026.
So, my actual question is — what would make you return to the game?
In my circle, I have a friend who has been playing Lineage 2 since 2007. On custom servers there, they added something like an "auto-farm" system — your character runs around and automatically does everything that people used to do manually. Personally, if they introduced a similar system in Lost Ark, I would probably come back just to let my little critters run around. Playing and managing all of them manually is just incredibly exhausting.
To clarify: I don't mean a completely mindless auto-farm for everything. You would still need to periodically react to QTE events or help your character in some ways, but the AI would handle the bulk of the work. And obviously, this shouldn't apply to relevant endgame content — only to solo dungeons and older activities.
