The developers of the upcoming MMO Lost Ark have revealed that it’s not dropping this year in America as originally planned — instead it’ll be launching sometime next year. That’s another game delay to add to 2020/2021’s list of names. But it appears the project is not totally without progress, as developers Smilegate RPG have announced that a closed beta test will launch sometime this year instead.
Lost Ark is a free-to-play action MMORPG that was launched in Korea in 2018. It’s been in the works to come over to the West for some time, but it looks like we’ll have to wait just a bit longer. The game was picked up by Amazon Games recently, and the company revealed that at this year’s E3 event. At the time, they gave the game a late 2021 release bracket, but it seems the game is going to miss that.
Unlike most other recent game delays, this one was apparently caused by the challenges of quality assurance rather than the pandemic. Smilegate said in a news release: “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… With that in mind, we’ve made the tough decision to push the launch of Lost Ark to early 2022.”
But, as mentioned, gamers will still have a chance to try the game out before the release next year. Smilegate is holding a Lost Ark Closed Beta from November 4 through November 9. The devs have encouraged users to follow their socials and say they are committed to being more communicative with their Western player base going forward: “With these upcoming activities, you should expect more activity and communication from us in the coming months.”
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