Lost Ark Unofficial North American and European English Launch Confirmation?

I know a lotta you guys have been heavily anticipating Lost Ark for a long while now, when I first saw the game announced alongside Lineage: Eternal I was ecstatic.
I spent plenty of time playing through other isometric games like Diablo 3, Path of Exile, Devilian and Tree of Savior and I’ve enjoyed each and every moment spent within them.
So when I learned that there would be two brand new beautiful isometric MMOs to play I couldn’t contain my excitement. However, like all South Korean MMOs announced, they take years to launch within the country itself, let alone North America or Europe.
Fast forward to today, the middle of December 2019 – Lineage: Eternal has rebranded under “Project TL” and after years of silence, has a confirmed 2020 release for South Korea.
Lost Ark on the other hand has already released into additional countries outside of South Korea.. none of which include North America or Europe.
At least, not until recently.

Now I will preface this information by stating that regardless of the information you should still temper your excitement just a little bit..

So for those of you unaware, Smilegate is the South Korean developer behind Lost Ark. Smilegate had several job openings available on their job board as of November 2019. The job openings in specific were regarding 3 specific positions.
The first, and probably most interesting posting to me was the position for someone that had experience in Unreal Engine 3 and 4, whilst having experience in a multi-platform game engine. Specifically, a “console client developer.”
Does this mean that Smilegate are planning on porting Lost Ark over to consoles in the near future as well?
Because I’m gonna be real here, I’ve always been of the impression that action games – and action MMOs as well would do incredibly well on consoles with controller support.
The second position was for an “overseas business product manager.” “But Stix, that could mean literally anywhere in the world” you might be thinking. True, but the job posting in specific states that they must be able to read, write and speak fluent English.
Now ask yourself for a moment, what would Smilegate need someone to speak fluent English to oversee business in the overseas market for?
Then finally, the third position is pertaining to an overseas service planner that again – is required to be fluent in English, but also strangely Chinese as well.

So.. can we then take this as an unofficial confirmation that Smilegate themselves are looking for someone to oversee the release of Lost Ark and subsequent activities, including potential console ports of the game in English-speaking countries?
I feel like that is a definitive yes.
People have found various hints over the last year or two that would lead us to believe a Western release of the game has been in development for a little while now, but it seems as though they’re finally picking up speed on the project.
The positions officially closed last month, which I believe means that they already have the staff they were searching for and if that’s the case – could already be in the process of setting the pieces into their respective places.

While there is no guaranteed or even expected release date currently, the fact that they’re hiring people in anticipation of needing them in the immediate future is promising.
So, after years of waiting, I guess it’s finally safe to say that Lost Ark will be coming to the West in English very soon. They’re cutting it a little close though with the recent announcement of Path of Exile 2, Diablo 4, COREPUNK, and Project TL.
But people have been highly anticipating this for so long that I don’t think they’ll care.

I played through about 10 to 15 hours of the South Korean version of Lost Ark and have invested a little time into the Russian version thus far and I enjoyed what I played.
I know there are some people that really enjoy the game, claiming it’s the best thing out of South Korea since Black Desert Online, while there are others that are highly disappointed with it instead saying that there is nothing to do in it.
While leveling through the game, to me, it felt as though the game was a pretty traditional MMO in terms of what there was to do: I went around from zone to zone, taking quests, killing monsters, and exploring.
There’s supposedly plenty of side-activities to do but I don’t know how they factor into endgame. Maybe I’ll jump back into the Russian version of the game and explore a little further. Would you guys be interested in that before the English release?
Since we have no guaranteed release date, it could launch January 2020 or December 2021 – all we know is that it’s likely coming. Sooner, I hope, rather than later.

For those of you that have played Lost Ark, join in on the conversation in the comment section and let everyone know what you thought of the game.
What you thought about gameplay, combat, graphics, the leveling experience, customization, freedom. I’m genuinely curious of people’s experiences in the game and this feels like a fantastic medium with which to gauge that.