Lost Ark’s Closed Beta Has Been Leaked

A clip was taken directly from DatModz’ stream detailing the release date for Lost Ark’s first Closed Beta test. For those of you that don’t understand how this applies to Lost Ark or why we should even care, DatModz was one of three streamers that Amazon gave permission to stream the Alpha test for Lost Ark. Three.
Every other streamer, every other gamer was under an NDA that prevented discussion of the game in any form. And while I’m not sure why DatModz went and leaked this information, it’s pretty huge.

Now Lost Ark is available to pre-purchase right now via Steam. There are Founder’s Packs ranging from $25 through $100 and each of them has their own worth.
While the game is going to be 100% free-to-play, the Founder’s Packs in question do provide players access to not only a 3-day head start, but also confirmed Closed Beta access. Which, according to DatModz will be next month in July.

During the Alpha test the game received “overwhelmingly positive” reviews from players. This makes sense. Mrs Stix and I have streamed hundreds of hours of Lost Ark over on Twitch over the last year, and thoroughly enjoyed a lot of what we got to experience.
From the absolutely stunning graphics, to the fast fluid action combat, to the character creation, to the… well the story was in Russian and translated into very basic English, but I’m sure once we’re capable of getting into the translated story, it’ll be pretty solid.
It honestly seemed pretty JRPG-y to me. Kinda what you’d see out of an Anime, which works as the MMO community and Anime community share a lot of similar tastes.

Now pertaining specifically to DatModz’ leak, apparently towards the end of his Lost Ark stream, after he’d finished up, he went on to state that he had discussed the topic with “some Amazon guys” and that they had confirmed their intentions of having the Closed Beta ready by “late next month.”
“Late next month,” of course, meaning towards the end of July. However, other than providing him with a somewhat specific, but still slightly vague release window, they noted they didn’t want to commit to an exact release date in the chance that they can’t live up to that promise.
DatModz went on to reiterate this in future streams – unrelated to Lost Ark, and while he could be making the entire thing up for whatever reason, I feel as though a person of his size potentially making something like that up would be disasterous for his streaming career.
And very unprofessional. So I feel as though it’s safe to take him at his word and assume Amazon are planning a late-July, early-August release window for Lost Ark’s closed beta at the very latest.
I didn’t play during the Alpha test phase myself, even though we could have. Mrs Stix created a character and wanted to check the English voice overs and localization out.
She seemed relatively satisfied with those, but more importantly, upon discussing the test phase with other participants, they confirmed that there weren’t too many bugs present within the game.
This is promising news as bugs – issues are what cause delays to happen. The more bugs that are found, the longer the delay. And since the majority of issues players encountered were addressed with relative speed, it’s a safe bet to assume it’s definitely within the realm of possibility to meet that deadline.

Now players have been wondering how long the Closed Beta will last, and while nothing is set in stone as of June 18th 2021, the Beta test is expected to last longer than the Alpha test phase did, with the Alpha test running shy of a week.
Players are speculating anywhere from a week to a month – with some players of the opinion that the Closed Beta will likely run all the way until the official launch of the game rolls out.
While I don’t want to speculate personally, I would wager a guess we’ll at least get several weeks out of it. And if you’re eagerly anticipating playing the MMO as much as I’m sure you are, purchasing Beta access might be well within your best interests.
Purchasing Beta access, allowing you to play a month or two in advance of the official launch for a mere $25 seems like a pretty good deal to me, honestly. But I’m aware not everyone can afford that.
In which case, there will be Closed Beta keys around the internet for you to win and hopefully secure ahead of its launch later this year, much like they did with the Alpha Test.

I know Lost Ark has been in the news recently for a variety of reasons. We don’t have anything new concerning the IP restrictions in place that is directly affecting a large percentage of the world.
I have a dedicated video addressing the restrictions in question, along with what Amazon and Smilegate are doing to attempt to open the game to a larger audience.
However taking a look at the all-time peak that the Alpha had alone, almost 16,000 players, and given that this was a small-scale Alpha test, it is very evident that anticipation for the game is reaching hype that is probably only matched by Final Fantasy XIV’s Endwalker expansion in November.
If there were almost 16,000 players during an NDA Alpha test, can you imagine how many players are going to be logging in to play when the Beta opens up next month? Multiply that number by.. well, I don’t think you can accurately gauge the hype for this game right now.
This hype has been building for a number of years now.

As of right now, Lost Ark has yet to confirm their exact release date. In my last video I covered how they had changed the date to “October 21st, 2021” for a very short period, before changing it to “December 31st, 2021.”
It’s uncertain whether that was a “whoopsie!” moment that potentially cost someone their job, or they intentionally wanted to leak the release date to players.
Nevertheless, the MMO is coming in the next several months. And before it arrives, I do want to note that while this is a very fun MMO, I do not think it is “the savior of the MMO genre.”
I’ve seen a few reviews on Steam saying “this is what we’ve all been waiting for. This is the MMO to breathe new life into the genre, to save it.” and having played it for hundreds of hours, I just want players to keep their expectations in check.
The game is gorgeous. The combat is a lot of fun. There’s a strong narrative present. But at the end of the day, this is a very particular type of MMO.
It’s a top-down isometric MMO that uses your mouse to move your character, as your WASD keys are bound to abilities. You can’t get a camera angle behind you or over your shoulder.
There are players claiming pay to win is prevalent in the South Korean version, and, heck, Amazon haven’t even shown us the Cash Shop yet.

So while I definitely don’t want to inhibit any potential success Lost Ark might have, I do want players to go into this with the knowledge that it isn’t a “genre-changing” experience. Good game? Yes. And that’s all we really need from it. To be a good game.
I had fun with it and I’ll have fun with it again when it launches later this year, but don’t expect it to compete with WoW or Final Fantasy XIV, nor do I expect it to redefine the genre.