Lost Ark, a game I swear I’ve been writing about at Kotaku almost as long as Star Citizen, is still getting a Western release. Sadly, it just won’t be this year.
The South Korean MMOARPG made waves years ago as one of the early proponents of Unreal Engine 4, and as the years have passed its continued to gain a foothold in its home country. An English release was eventually scheduled for later this year, but the developers have announced overnight that Lost Ark won’t be available to Western audiences until “early 2022”:
“While delving into all of the great feedback and data generated by our Alpha and reviewing recent changes to the Korean version that we want to include in our release, we discovered a lot more work that will be needed to launch Lost Ark at the high quality bar our players deserve,” Smilegate wrote.
“As players have been waiting for so long, we want to take the time to do it right while also ensuring we look after the wellness of our hardworking Amazon Games and Smilegate RPG teams. With that in mind, we’ve made the tough decision to push the launch of Lost Ark to early 2022.”
It’s been a long road getting to this point — so long that Lost Ark still doesn’t have official Western forums (they’re due to launch in October). I remember first writing about Lost Ark back in 2016, although the game wouldn’t get a full release until 2018. That’ll mean it’s been more than three years has passed between its South Korean release and the English localisation.
Smilegate will hold another closed beta from November 4 to November 9, along with what they say is more support for beta testers and content creators. Whether that means we’ll start hearing a lot more about Lost Ark from that point, or just seeing more streams, I’m not sure.
Either way, it’ll be good to finally see more of Lost Ark in action. Even though Path of Exile and Diablo 3 have come a long way, and both have sequels, Lost Ark has always had a special charm of its own. Plus, can you really say you wouldn’t want a Diablo-style MMO where your character has a railgun?
Even all the standard sorceress effects look great. Sigh. Until 2022 it is, Lost Ark.
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