Founder’s Pack owners can play the Lost Ark closed beta starting November 4
Amazon Games and Smilegate RPG have made the call to push backLost Ark,an MMO action-RPG, into “early 2022.” Prior to this delay, which comes on the heels of a technical alpha test, the game was aiming for a fall 2021 launch in North America and Europe.
In light of this revised timeline,Lost Arkwill be running aclosed betafrom November 4–9, 2021, with Founder’s Pack owners gaining access. As a reminder, the least expensivepaid optionis the $15 Bronze tier, but this will be a free-to-play title, so maybe wait.
With another long-time-coming Amazon-published MMO,New World,currently planninga September 28 release, fans ofLost Arkare understandablyriled upover the delay.
While I get players’ frustrations, suspicions, and frankly well-deserved reservations about Amazon Games in general, any way you slice it, it’s about to be a very busy time for new game releases. AndLost Ark‘s post-Endwalker“early 2021” window will be stacked, too.
Here’s how Smilegate’sexplained the delay:
“While delving into all of the great feedback and data generated by our Alpha and reviewingrecent changes to the Korean versionthat we want to include in our release, we discovered a lot more work that will be needed to launchLost Arkat the high quality bar our players deserve. 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.”
And a note on transparency:
“While we have been relatively quiet so far, we do want to improve the quality and frequency of our communications. We are committed to staying more open with our players about what our team is working on. Moving forward we will provide monthly updates to discuss the work our team is doing behind the scenes.”
In response to a Steam user question about potentially getting “new sub-classes like Lancemaster or Reaper” from the Korean version of the game, aLost Arkdeveloper,Roxx, opened up a bit, noting, “The game’s continued development includes things like squashing outstanding bugs, strengthening server infrastructure, and making sure translations and VO are in good shape. […] At this time it is not necessarily new game content, but things like balance tweaks, reworks, updates, etc.”
“As the developers ofLost Ark, Smilegate delivers us builds, and our QA team tests for bugs and blockers,” said Roxx. “We work together to find and address these issues.”
“Our build is not a 1:1 copy and paste of the game that is already out, as it includes different classes, changes, localization to different languages (English, German, French, and Spanish instead of one additional language), and with all of this comes different bugs to solve for,” the developer continued. “Unfortunately we do need more time to work with Smilegate to ensure that the game launches at quality.”
CJ asked if any of us remembered this game, and in my imaginary conversation with him, I responded “Oh yeah, definitely” while picturing Vin Diesel’s stoic CGI mug in a land of dinos.Lost Arkis not to be confused withArk II, although six years ago, Dtoid did run the headline “Holy summoned triceratops, Lost Ark looks fantastic.” I haven’ttotallylost it.
Brushing up, I do think there’s something compelling here, and I could see myself rolling aGunslingeror aBard— especially in a time whenDiablohas honestly justlost its luster.
I get the sense that fans are upset by the delay, at least in part, because the alpha build was already in a good-feeling state, and they think it’s more than ready to go.
