It’s been approximately a year since Lost Ark launched worldwide, plus the Korean-developed game has proven itself among the best new MMOs on PC despite a number of teething issues including server troubles and waves of bot accounts. As the second year starts, PCGamesN foretells Soomin Park, franchise leader at publisher Amazon Games, as to what the team has learned, its future plans, and closing the gap between Lost ark Gold regional versions.

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PCGamesN: After one full year of the worldwide release, how do they feel concerning the differences involving the Korean and worldwide versions over the fresh? Have there been any notable changes you are forced to make or locations you felt the worldwide release saw make use of things you learned for the Korean release?

Soomin Park: After the newbie of release inside West, we're feeling great in regard to the differences involving the Korean and Western versions of the game. Our policy is usually to stay as close as you can to the source material for Lost Ark unless the world thinks there’s an improvement to adjusting something for your Western audience.

However, I can claim that we are intending to greatly reduce the gap between your Western build as well as the Korean build in your second year of live service to the next of our 1st year. The speed of reducing that gap will likely be faster compared to what players expect, and new classes will probably be released at a faster pace in contrast to new continents and Legion Raids. We will soon produce an official announcement that sheds more light on this positive news!

There are actually a number of improvements since release to both general quality lifestyle as well as increasing the grind to go up the endgame tiers. What improvements are they prioritizing as year two begins? Are there any particular areas you’re aiming to address soon, or new methods for players to capture up?

It applies that because the game enters its second year of live service, new users on the game think some pressure to “get caught up,” considering a large amount of existing high-level content. We are continuously discussing this with Smilegate, and can soon provide an announcement with an update that will new and returning users to capture up somewhat faster in addition to the existing tools like Power Pass and Hyper Express, which can continue to be implemented. We’re excited to talk about this news, so a lot more!

Further to the present, Lost Ark incorporates a real concentration on its endgame content. How are you encouraging new players to post Lost Ark in the second year? Are there plans for much more features just like the Punika Power Pass and Hyper Express events to help you newcomers get up to date to speed quickly, or solutions to encourage long-time players that can help those beginners through earlier content the way in which some games like Final Fantasy XIV do?

As mentioned earlier, we are going to continue to build upon and expand tools like Power Pass and Hyper Express to alleviate the burden of brand new players coming towards the game and even progress quickly. And, as previously mentioned, we are going to soon have news to express on a new event which will allow new and returning players to capture up faster.

We will almost always be looking for achievable ways, together with Smilegate, to aid the onboarding process for first-time players, be that through items that accelerate progress or through special occasions where players might have access to important materials answer to advance their characters.

The Witcher crossover would have been a really fun collaboration – how does the group feel it went, and so are you trying to do more such projects down the road? Any ‘dream crossovers’ you’d want to see (whether or not they’re not inside the pipeline)?

We feel The Witcher crossover would have been a successful event and we’re glad that people were able to take it to players. Given that [The Witcher] can be so popular from the West, it felt being a great collaboration for your audience especially, since it became a combination of two well-loved RPG franchises. Amazon and Smilegate are invariably talking together about future content and things we could bring to audiences in Korea and also the West, and crossover events are something that we're going to evaluate in the future.

lost ark boosting has suffered many issues lately – bugs and exploits that generated server downtime, stability conditions were causing disconnects in raids, and naturally, the issue with inactive player accounts being mistakenly banned, which had been later reverted. What has the c's learned from these that can help smooth out and minimize such issues in the foreseeable future?

As with any live service game, there are several hiccups and circumstances to be ironed out. Our 1st year with Lost Ark saw some growing pains, but one big positive to consider away from those challenges is the place well Smilegate and Amazon worked together to remedy them with the community. Many severe issues were fixed within a couple of days, and also the community was compensated for the issues.