Project TL: NCSoft Confirm 2020 Release

Exciting news, right? So I did a video on Project TL back in July, where I talked about the lack of information released from NCSoft in terms of the game’s future. It’s been a long time.
Project TL was originally known as Lineage: Eternal or Lineage 3 – and was expected to be direct competition to Lost Ark.
You all remember that, right? Back when both games were initially announced, and fans of the genre were on one side or the other, claiming there can only be one truly good isometric action MMORPG.
That all seems like a distant memory now, with Lineage: Eternal rebranding as Project TL and then NCSoft going pretty much completely silent for.. well, since it was announced.
The reason for the rebranding was due to a disappointing reception – people were just not happy or excited about what NCSoft had presented especially when compared to Lost Ark. So they opted to completely overhaul the game.
I’m sure you’re all aware that this takes time – so it’s understandable that the game has been delayed for as long as it has, but not keeping your fans updated with progress is still kind of a crappy move.
I know that there was whispers of the game’s development in South Korea but that was it. Until now, that is.

See, NCSoft is obliged to supply their quarterly financials – that way investors can see what’s going on with their money.
During their most recent financial report for the 3rd quarter, several things were revealed. On the one hand, mobile game revenue had declined by 5% in the last few months, while PC game revenue was actually up 3%.
But more importantly, they made mention of Project TL. According to NCSoft, Project TL is still very much in active development – and they finally have a release date for their Closed Beta scheduled: 2020.
Or, the first half of 2020 at the very least. And yes, that’s referring to South Korea, not the rest of the world. “But it’s still going to be years off from a Western release” you might be thinking.
Well let me add a little hope to that pit of despair you’re no doubt now plagued with: Project TL is NCSoft’s only PC MMORPG in development. It’s the only PC MMORPG announced from NCSoft in years.
Since NCSoft no doubt still have active PC game devs, and no other PC title has been revealed in years, it’s clear which game they’re hard at work on.
While that doesn’t necessarily equate to a quality title, it’s reassuring knowing not only that they’re going to be releasing the game into Closed Beta next year, but also that they’ve been working on the game this whole time.

I’ve always been excited for Project TL. When everyone was hyped about Lost Ark being the next big MMO, I was here thinking “But Lineage: Eternal looks pretty good, too!”
I gathered that I was in the minority at the time, and that was fine – we’re all entitled to our own opinions after all, but I’ve been watching the game evolve with eager anticipation since way back when.
They’ve reworked quite a significant portion of the game over that time – with small little releases of gameplay from people that live in South Korea here and there, and this has me hopeful.
For the most part.. I’m liking where the game’s currently at. It looks well optimized and although it doesn’t look as good as it did in its original trailer, the game still seems to be coming together well.
I’m still marginally upset that they scrapped their original ideas for the game because I thought it was a much more interesting route to take.

Lineage Eternal was originally sold with the notion that you could tackle any obstacle in a variety of ways, providing players with the ability to not only amass, but also field several characters concurrently – which goes against the normal single character control we traditionally have in MMOs.
Project TL instead opted to scratch that idea and go the generic, tried-and-tested route, just like Lost Ark and other isometric ARPGs. Which is fine, I’ll just always be curious of what it could’ve been if they’d stuck with it.
Project TL will, regardless, feature a large, completely open world for players to explore with tons of unique zones to traverse and varied events to participate in. It has action combat, obviously, otherwise it wouldn’t be an isometric action RPG.
Combat is similar to Diablo, Path of Exile and Lost Ark itself. Exactly how the combat will turn out is anyone’s guess at this point as we’re still not given a complete picture of how the game looks or how the game plays right this moment.
This is of course due to the fact that although they’ve confirmed a first-half 2020 release for the game, they’ve released no gameplay for us to get excited over.
So until then, we’ll have to take their word that the game is going to have as good combat as they claim.

Do be aware that the game is going to be an open-world PvP MMO, meaning that while you can participate in instanced Arena-PvP, you’ll also be able to fight other players in the open world as well.
Whether that is via means such as toggling a PvP mode on or off, or is faction based is up for discussion, much like several other features discussed.

Regardless, NCSoft have confirmed the game will be here next year.
What form the game will ultimately take remains to be seen but you should be excited that even if we don’t receive the English version until 2021, 2022 or even later, like Lost Ark, we’ll have an English fan-translation that will allow us to play the game outside of South Korea.. so long as we use a VPN.
Which, I use ExitLag for because honestly it’s just better than other VPN’s I’ve tried.