LOST ARK Western Release – Keep Your Expectations in Check

Regardless, I still do not consider that as official confirmation (nor even a timeline).  For whatever reason though, I’ve been hearing stuff like “it’s confirmed the game is coming to NA/EU in the next launch phase” with the source being linked to this exact same Chosun Biz article.  Same with others mentioning “it is official that it is coming in 2019”.  Again, the only thing Smilegate’s CEO telegraphed back then was a change of priorities (which was originally China after Korea) due to the game approval moratorium in China (which has remained an ongoing situation).While they could do a 2019 launch in the west with an aggressive push, the reality is Smilegate is currently struggling right now with getting the login queues under control for their Korean service (which is their highest priority).  As I expected, the addition of the 9th server has not had any real effect on the queues and that server also filled to the initial character creation limit.  They’ve also implemented a cap on the number of players being allowed to even queue (you simply get a “server is too busy” error message asking to try again).  The honeymoon phase with Korean players is nearly over where they are not pleased with the long queues.

In the meantime, account resellers have stabilized their own sources and come up with a system which will allow more folks from China (and elsewhere) to get re-verifiable accounts.  To put this into context, Smilegate could add 20 more servers, and still find all of them filling up with their authentication server infrastructure melting under the hammering.  Besides the first post-OBT launch re-verification wave, there has been only selective ones sent out along with bans (mostly of Chinese streamers who were streaming with the Chinese language patch).  These are all pretty much inconsequential though to the larger influx of foreigners from outside of Korea, taxing the service beyond what it was originally designed to handle.  Smilegate initially seemed to have a handle on it but heading into this 2nd week, they seem to be on the verge of losing control of the situation.

Also, those of us who are/were logging in to play really should not be complaining about login queues, disconnects, server sided lag, and other inconvenient issues; we’re not even supposed to be accessing the game and are adding to the load which was not part of their plans (this is one of the reasons for pre-registration since it gives them a general idea of their initial infrastructure needs).  This is why I’m not bothering to try playing again.

Furthermore, a lot more in-game issues, bugs, and exploits have surfaced which they are going to have to deal with.  Simply put, this Korean OBT could easily stretch into early 2019.  And until Smilegate can resolve these higher priority issues, that puts off any major decision they will need to make before they are able to officially announce a western release (and it likely won’t come with a tentative date either).