Lineage Eternal / Project TL Closed Beta 2018 Confirmed!

So I have some gaudy news that might help loosen up the sphincters of anyone disappointed with the current look of MMORPGs on the horizon.

Project TL, which I’ve actually just learned stands for “The Lineage”, was announced late 2017. No real information was known about the game at the time other than that it was an MMORPG set within the Lineage franchise.
What we know now though, is that Project TL will actually be a complete remake of Lineage Eternal – you know – that MMORPG that was supposed to compete with Lost Ark? Yeah, that Lineage Eternal.
Supposedly, the game will act as a direct sequel to the original Lineage game.

Now, NCSoft have taken the time to make some changes to the game since its original iteration – to better suit the current market.
One of Lineage Eternal’s unique selling points was that it allowed you to amass and field multiple characters as opposed to an individual character, like most games.
This meant that you could build a healer, tank, DPS, and deploy which ever the circumstance required.

Project TL will change that however, instead, offering the basic, traditional single-character system that Lineage Eternal was lacking. It will also be created using the Unreal Engine 4 – so you can imagine how it’s going to look.

NCSoft revealed that Project TL is actually running very well in terms of development and further went on to reveal their intent to conduct closed beta testing for Project TL during the second half of 2018.
Granted, this is likely to apply only to Korean players, but it nevertheless gives us all something to look forward to.

NCSoft also went on to point out that Project TL is definitely slated for a 2019 release, however, due to the complexities of the development process of PC MMO games, an exact date is not within their ability to give.
However, for those interested, they did note that their mobile iteration of Project TL titled TL Mobile will likely come out before Project TL does.

So we now know that Project TL will enter closed beta this year with an official release in 2019.
Regarding how long it’ll take to get localized into English remains to be seen, but it depends on the scale of the game.

Now, are you guys excited? I’ve been personally looking forward to Lineage Eternal since it was announced, and knowing they’ve reworked some of the systems people were upset with is comforting to hear.
However my concern for the game is that NCSoft are the developers. They single-handedly destroyed Aion, Blade and Soul and WildStar by making first two pay to win, catering to whales and the third, WildStar, by just.. neglect.

With how beautiful the game is and how popular the Lineage franchise still is (especially with Lineage 2: Revolution launching to critical success), Project TL is bound to launch to a huge start.
Much larger than Bless or MapleStory 2 even – two games that are highly anticipated.
I’m just hoping that NCSoft don’t ruin another game.