So in this post, I wanted to mostly round off all the information we currently have on a potential Western release for Lost Ark.
Now let’s go all the way back and start at the very beginning. The very first mention of this was of course last year in September. There was an interview with the CEO of the small gate. He said that he wanted to bring new games(Lost Ark), to more “developed countries” like the US, Canada, and Europe. The main reason behind this was because the Chinese gained approval moratorium, which made the Chinese games market inaccessible.
Now that ban has been lifted, it’s just one of the reasons that he wanted to branch outside of China.
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Is Lost Ark Coming to The West?
Now admittedly, there has been no official word on a Western release, so SmileGate hasn’t gone ahead and said; Lost Ark is coming to the West. There are a few hints, and one of the more recent movements unintentionally indicates the direction the game may well be going.
Now small gate themselves, they recently announced that they’re partnering with mail ru, which is a Russian Internet company to publish Lost Ark in Russia. Now mail.ru are actually offering beta signups on their website. They also provide a guaranteed entry with the founder’s package that users can purchase. Now the reason this is interesting is that mail ru also said that this service will not be region-locked.
Meaning that Western players could, buy a founder’s pack and play the Russian closed beta. Yes, of course, if you don’t understand Russian, that is gonna be a problem.
I played Lost Ark entirely in Korean. I don’t understand a single bit of Korean, but the game is so intuitive and so easy to playthrough. But you can quite easily play through at least the kind of early part of the game. At least until you get to in-game where you actually need to start knowing what your gear does. You can play through the first part with basically no knowledge of the language whatsoever.
So if there is something you wanted to do that would technically speaking be possible. There is still no date for when the closed beta is gonna be live. Except for the fact that it will be at some point this year. Now those are the facts that are necessarily the information that’s been presented as it’s happening.
Mail.ru and My.com Possible Publisher
So that stuff there is definitely happening, following are rumors, general community thoughts. There is a slight concern because a lot of people have criticized mail ru for having a pay2win model. When it comes to these online games, they published, for example, Skyforge and Revelation Online. A lot of players are worried that potentially the Western subsidiary of mail.ru(my.com), could be the one to publish it in the West. They are prone to have some rather questionable pay2win practices. I’m not particularly worried since the Korean version had microtransactions, but I never purchased anything and could play the game just fine.
However, there are still some people out there that who hope SmileGate will self-published through their western division. SmileGate West in which case perhaps it might be a little bit better. I will say my time playing through the Korean open beta so far I didn’t encounter that many microtransaction elements.
Especially early game, I didn’t any kind of need to do whatsoever, whether it’s one of those things they kind of add from more end game or whether it’s one of those things that you just don’t need.
I personally didn’t encounter any issues with that. I was able to kind of play to be completely fine without ever having that forced in my face.
But also don’t forget that at this stage we still have no confirmation of how this is happening just yet. So this is all pure community speculation and kind of you know worries and whatnot, however.
Potential Lost Ark Release Date
There is one thing worth mentioning, and a lot of players have noticed that generally speaking, when a game from the eastern market releases in Russia, it has typically released in Western markets somewhere around six to twelve months after.
So if there is going to be a closed beta in Russia this year at some point. There’s a good chance we might see Lost Ark in the West in 2020. Now yes, that is still potentially a year away. But quite honestly it’s such a good game, I will quite happily wait for Lost Ark.
Summary
That’s where we’re at right now, so is a kind of super-quick summary; The CEO expressed interest in releasing the game in western markets. The update on that is that a Russian company is pushing out a closed beta. Which is technically speaking open for any territory. There is a chance that the Russian release may well follow with the Western release soon after.
So fingers crossed the time being, but that’s all we’ve got for now. Those of you guys that wanted to sort of like know whether it’s possible then that’s where we stand. I will, of course, keep you guys by update if we ever hear anything more throughout the year, for the time being that’s it.