Lost Ark is shameless, uninspired and predatory. Let me elaborate.

DISCLAIMER:
I played Lost Ark in an effort to broaden my horizon in the MMO world, and was not looking for a "forever game". I played it in an effort to better understand the genre and its facettes. As such I would describe my experience to be that of a casual player.

1. The good:

Visually, this game is stunning! Uncannily attractive characters aside (and not being a part of the actual "good for me), the environments, animations and spell effects in this game shine like a bright star.
The combat is quite good but nothing I have not experienced before, it plays very Diablo with longer cast bars ( I tried playing a Bard and a Sorcerer, both magic reliant ranged classes, the former being a support and the latter a DPS character).
The game makes some good decisions for beginner friendly quality of live, such as different skill templates to freely swap between and skills that can be improved upon and changed at any time.

And that is where the good ends.

2. The bad.

I played this game KNOWING that the consensus is "the game really starts at Level 50", which to my understanding is max.
Regardless, every step of the way there, which I really wanted to go, was like walking on hot coals.

The "plot" boils down to "you're a chosen one, demons bad, go win". You get one sidekick character who rather than being actually interesting simply commands you to do everything a good guy would do. Side quests are a shallow vehicle to get you EXP. (More on this later) . Go to an NPC, get a "click X things" or "kill X things" quest, run to the area, kill some things, run to a NEW area where you now hand in the quest to a DIFFERENT NPC. This is done to minimize backtracking but just makes gameplay even more linear than it already is because..

...the game has very restrictive zones. You enter a zone like "Insertfantasynamehere Plateau/Forest/Plains". And go from point A to point B, all the while collecting menial items and killing some enemies. Repeat until (at least) level 30.

This is THE ONLY WAY TO LEVEL!

... because enemy kills do not grant you (substantial) EXP. If you need around 40k XP to level up, the enemies in the level appropriate zone give you 20XP. The quest to kill 5 of them gives you 8k XP.

Apart from this AWFUL gameplay experience, I will now list off other things that stuck out to me as being terrible game design, some intentional as we will get into soon.

Immersion breaking outfits, areas, emotes etc. Basically anything that affects your character does not abide the game universe's rules.
Overwhelming amount of little systems like hidden treasures (literal Korok Seeds from Zelda BOTW), card collections, titles, pets, mounts, an adventurer book, a second level bar, friendship affinity with NPCs, the list goes on
Gender locked classes. It's 2022. Why.
You start at level 10. Why? Nobody knows.
You like the shiny? Good cause CLICK THIS. AND NOW THAT. AND NOW THIS. Yeah that's what we call a tutorial GOOD JOB HAVE AN ACHIEVEMENT.
Dying being a non-issue. New players get a "newbie" buff, that makes already dull and non-threatening combat encounters a joke.
Having to click through every quest dialogue. Every time. There is no skip button.

I'll stop here before I lose my mind.

3. THE DIRTY

Every aspect of this game that I have thus far listed as bad is monetized, to my newbie understanding. I say this specifically because the amount of systems and currencies cleverly veil the amount of pay to win this game PROBABLY is. Thus the terrible design is the embodiment of "create a problem and then sell the solution". Pets, titles, cards, all of these things give you stats. There's also a subscription system which "is really great value if you want to spend money" i heard.

After I beat what I assume to be the "main story" at level 30, I was given a "Stronghold". Which is not player housing.
It's a time gated city builder. That you can buy "instant completes" for projects for I bet.
I sat in a tutorial for this system for, and I kid you not, 15 minutes, and was still not done. At which point I closed the game.



FINAL THOUGHTS
I quit 17 hours in. Leveling to level 30 itself took me less time than the full 17 hours, more like 7, but I had to make a new character on EUC servers after having initially started on EUW servers after I found out those servers are barely played on.
Maybe this game gets good in endgame. I'll never know. Cause the way there is torture for anybody that has an expectation for anything but "ooh shiny!" being gameplay. And I don't mean "you dropped a cool item"-shiny. I mean "glittery textbox - go click it". This game plays and feels like a professionally made mobile MMO that they forgot to add the autoquesting to. This game feels like an abusive relationship with a very pretty lady that sits on TikTok for the entire time you visit her.