Lost Ark International Release Confirmed?

No this isn’t clickbait, but before we get into specifics, you’re going to want to take the time to hear me out.

As you’re all aware, Lost Ark has been available to play both in South Korea and Russia for a while now.
However, we’ve been strung along under the pretense that we’ll get a release one day. That they’re “working on it” and that they “want to work on the South Korean version first.”
That’s all well and good, I get it. I respect wanting to make sure the game is successful and enjoyed in its country of origin.
However, it’s been brought to my attention that the international release of the game is actually almost here, despite repeated setbacks and constant misdirection from Smilegate.

So Smilegate is the South Korean developer behind Lost Ark. They’re not in charge of distribution outside of South Korea though. After their initial release in Korea they opted to take the game into Russia.
Why they’d opt to release in Russia before Europe or North America baffles me but nevertheless, it was revealed that Mail.ru would be publishing the game within Russia.
However, if you’ve been keeping up with the news then you’d know that Mail.ru recently re-branded their international publisher, My.com under the new MY.GAMES name.
MY.GAMES publishes various MMOs via their store internationally such as Warface, Revelation Online, Conqueror’s Blade, Skyforge and Allods Online.

Now this is the part in specific that I’m sure you’re all waiting to hear: Mail.ru posted a blog post on their website, which when translated, reads as follows:
“Last year, our company announced MY.GAMES: a platform and international brand created to develop and publish even more great games that we love just like you.
Already at the end of 2019, some games became available in the MY.GAMES Store, and now it’s time for the LOST ARK project to join this platform.
Integration of games with the new platform will take place this spring in several stages.”
Yes, you both read that and heard that correctly: That was Mail.ru’s direct confirmation that Lost Ark would be joining the international publisher’s store alongside a plethora of other internationally available games.
Worth noting is that Russia mentioned that Lost Ark will be hitting the international store during Spring 2020. Spring in Russia begins on March 1st and ends May 31st.
This means that the game will become available via the store during that time.
However, at the same time it’s interesting that while they mention the game will be joining the international store, it mentions nothing about an English translation of the game.
Is this alluding to the fact that while it will no doubt join the store in the immediate future, it won’t be published via MY.GAMES in English yet, even though every other game published via the service is available localized into English? Or are they just a little slow in terms of updates?

Scrolling down to the bottom of the announcement, they state that they’re going to try and make the transfer to MY.GAMES a comfortable and safe experience for users.
This sounds like they’re transferring over the Russian servers of the game to MY.GAMES and the MY.GAMES store. After integrating Lost Ark with the MY.GAMES store, Lost Ark will become part of a “global platform that unites players from different countries.”
So again I reiterate, the game is coming to MY.GAMES, an international publisher, and will henceforth be available internationally to all players, but at least presently, I don’t see anything in the way of confirmation of an English translation.
So while we’ll all be able to log into the MY.GAMES launcher and download the game.. it’s definitely possible we won’t be able to understand any of it until they translate the game.
Which they might already have planned, they’re just not confirming anything right now, even though we’re so close to an international release.

Both South Korea and Russia have rolled out a lot of updates for the game in the time they’ve been online, and I look forward to seeing the game finally release in a form we can all play.
I’ve been using ExitLag to connect to both the South Korean and Russian version of the game thus far, and even after MY.GAMES publish the game I’ll probably continue to do so, purely because I know for a fact their servers suck.
I mean, hell, I’m genuinely disappointed that this is the publisher we get. Microsoft publishing PSO2, Bandai Namco publishing Blue Protocol, but MY.GAMES publishing Lost Ark?
Yikes. I’ll play it, and I’m sure you’ll all play it as well but I guarantee it won’t remain free of pay-to-win for long.