There have been several improvements since release to both the general quality of life as well as speeding up the grind to move up the endgame tiers. What improvements is the team prioritizing as year two begins? Are there any particular areas you’re hoping to address soon, or new ways for players to catch up?

It is true that as the game enters its second year of live service, new users of the game can feel some pressure to “catch up,” given a large amount of existing high-level content. We are continuously discussing this with Smilegate, and will soon have an announcement on an update that will allow new and returning users to catch up a bit faster aside from the existing tools like Power Pass and Hyper Express, which will continue to be implemented. We’re excited to share this news, so stay tuned!

Further to this, Lost ark Gold has a real focus on its endgame content. How are you encouraging new players to pick up Lost Ark in its second year? Are there plans for more features like the Punika Power Pass and Hyper Express events to help newcomers catch up to speed quickly, or ways to encourage long-time players to help those newer players through earlier content the way some games like Final Fantasy XIV do?

As mentioned earlier, we will continue to build upon and expand tools like Power Pass and Hyper Express to ease the burden of new players coming to the game and wanting to progress quickly. And, as mentioned before, we will soon have news to share on a new event that will allow new and returning players to catch up faster.

We are always looking for new ways, along with Smilegate, to help the onboarding process for new players, be that through items that accelerate progress or through special events where players can have access to important materials key to advancing their characters.

The Witcher crossover was a really fun collaboration – how does the team feel it went, and are you looking to do more such projects in the future? Any ‘dream crossovers’ you’d love to see (even if they’re not in the pipeline)?

We feel The Witcher crossover was a successful event and we’re glad that we were able to bring it to players. Given that [The Witcher] is so popular in the West, it felt like a great collaboration for our audience especially since it was a combination of two well-loved RPG franchises. Amazon and Smilegate are always talking together about future content and things we can bring to audiences in both Korea and the West, and crossover events are something that we will evaluate for the future.

Lost Ark - Yennefer from The Witcher 3 in the Smilegate RPG
lost ark gold has suffered quite a few issues in recent months – bugs and exploits that led to server downtime, stability issues that were causing disconnects in raids, and of course the issue with inactive player accounts being mistakenly banned, which was later reverted. What has the team learned from these to help smooth out and minimize such issues in the future?

As with any live service game, there are some hiccups and things to be ironed out. Our first year with Lost Ark saw some growing pains, but one big positive to take away from those challenges is how well Smilegate and Amazon worked together to remedy them for the community. Many severe issues were fixed in a couple of days, and the community was compensated for the issues.