Lost Ark is getting a huge quality of life update, but there's a nasty catch

Lost Ark, the enormous MMORPG from Amazon Games, has had a tough time. Players increasingly feel like keeping up is like having a second job if you're not willing to get your credit card out, but time-limited content, RNG-based gear upgrades, and separate accounts for each server all contribute to an aura of malcontent around the game. It currently sits at a 'mixed' rating on Steam, with just 67% of English-language reviews rating it positively. However, developer Smilegate is trying to win fans back with a roadmap of new content for the rest of the year.

The final months of 2025 revolve around the Kazeros raid. This endgame activity will start with a prologue questline this month, before it crescendos into Act 4, the Fortress of Destruction in November. This is an eight-player, two-gate raid intended for high-level players. If you don't have items that are level 1,700 or above (or 1,720 for hard mode), don't bother.

After clearing Kazeros, however, you'll find his true form through the second gate, which will require even rarer items and skilful strategy in order to overcome him. This raid, known as Denouement: The Last Day, will mark the biggest major event of the year for Lost Ark, as December will be spent mopping up other issues.

Smilegate is planning the next batch of quality of life updates for December in addition to the usual holiday cosmetics, although it doesn't say exactly what those will entail.

With progression events to help new players (or alt accounts) to get up to speed, another Mokoko bootcamp, and a new batch of daily activity updates, there'll be plenty to do for the rest of the year. However, there's a catch.

Before any of the Kazeros raids kick off, Smilegate will merge the NA East and NA West regions. Occurring one week before the major October update, this will result in significant downtime for the game, as well as potential enforced name changes for players. If two players have the same username on the separate regions, they will be entered into a tiebreaker to see who gets to keep their name.

The player with the highest combat level on their roster will keep their name and, if it's still tied, it will go to the player who first created the name. If you're on the losing side, tough luck. Better think up a new name and apply some Tipp-Ex to your birth certificate.

Later this year or early next year, Smilegate will also release additional names from inactive accounts.

Check out the full Lost Ark roadmap for 2025. You can read it here.

If all this talk of raids has got you hankering even more magic, check out our list of fantasy games for something similar, but different. It's never a bad time to upgrade to one of the best gaming monitors, either.

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