When will Lost Ark 2 come out? That's what Lost Ark 2 release date speculation is all about. Smilegate's ARPG MMO first released in 2019 in Korea, with the hit game making its international debut in February 2022. One year on from its worldwide release, we can use the first year to dream up the first of its potential sequel.
As an MMORPG, Lost Ark is primarily focused on (PvE) and light exploration though questing, collectible hunting, and crafting. PvP elements are there as well. New players start the grind to level 50 with the storyline before gaining access to tiered endgame dungeons and raids. But what's after that?
Want more Lost Ark content? Feel free to check out our other games on Lost Ark such as Lost Ark Quests lists and our Rovlen location guide. We also have a guide on harmony shards farming if you're interested in that.
Lost Ark 2 latest news
Lost Ark gained a lot of traction as a hit MMORPG game the moment it launched in the west, with its appeal in Korea seemingly tracking well with fans potentially looking for something between Diablo IV and Path of Exile 2.
This year, you can expect more content. And although Lost Ark doesn't seem to be slowing down any time soon, there's still room to think about the possibility of a sequel.
With the continuous release of features and events for Lost Ark, we don't see any talks of a sequel game anytime soon. Especially with the game being new to the global gaming landscape. As Lost Ark recently celebrated its first-year anniversary last month, players can expect Tripod Studio and Smilegate focusing on the current Lost Ark game for a number of years yet.
Five things we want to see in Lost Ark 2
While we wait for any Lost Ark 2 release date new, we can first ponder over some features we'd like to see in Lost Ark's potential sequel. And that's what we've done - prepare a list of five things we want to see in Lost Ark 2, covering additional features and updates to issues the game currently has.
More class options
Lost Ark has a variety of base classes. Over time, these advance to higher classes.
Some of the newer classes range from the Arcanist, a subclass of the Mage class, and the Artist. On the horizon, there's the upcoming Aeromancer, which uses a parasol to deliver weather-based attacks like rainfall and thunder.
With the Western release quickly catching up to the Korean in terms of post-launch classes, there's time to start imaging which will carry over to the sequel, and how they'll incentivize the playerbase moving over.
SEA servers
With the strong population of gamers in Southeast Asia, Lost Ark should have region-specific servers.
Most SEA players have to resort to connecting to virtual private networks just to play on semi-viable. And dealing with the latency that comes with the workaround often negatively plays against the design of the reaction-based combat.
It's not an issue that's exclusive to Lost Ark, either. Publishers need to do a better job of investing in its players.
Dealing with the bot issues
Lost Ark has dealt with bot issues since its worldwide release last year. According to a statement released in May 2022, the developers did address the issues, and Smilegate was planning to take additional action to combat the problem.
“Addressing bots can be especially challenging in free-to-play games because it’s so easy to create an account and enter the game,” the statement said, “but we’re working on multiple fronts to fight them,” said Amazon and Smilegate at the time.
In attempting to fix the problem, Lost Ark caused more. Lapsed players took to the game's Steam page in late 2022 to complain that they’d been banned for no reason other than inactivity.
While we understand how difficult it can be to combat botting, something more drastic needs to be done if Lost Ark 2 has any hope of regaining the trust of those who quit because of the original problem.
Bots cause severe damage to the game's economy, which can wipe out many of the reasons people play these games in the first place. The delicate balance of progression is interrupted, leaving little left for its population to get excited for.
Handling the real money trading problem
RMT (Real Money Transactions) have a similar effect on the game's economy to bots. They're largely handled by bots and whales - actual players that spend real money to speed up progression. Unaddressed, the issue can cause two major problems:
- The inflation of in-game currency.
- Scams.
This issue has become a huge problem. The majority of the player base will suffer from the effects of in-game Gold inflation. And if bots and whales continue to partake, players trying to enjoy the game's design will suffer the consequences.
Shorter queues
The final feature that needs to be fixed for Lost Ark 2 is the queue time. The game has suffered massive server congestion since day one. And with the majority of the problems now understood to be caused by bots, fixing one issue should automatically fix the next.
Smilegate has stated that it has no intentions of increasing server capacity. The reason for this is largely the same as other games - popularity spikes quickly settle, which can quickly make costly server expansion efforts pointless.
Smilegate and Amazon Games has acknowledged the problem, but stated that a fix for congested servers is unlikely.
If you want more Lost Ark content like this, you can check out our Lost Ark classes guide.