A real subject of controversy for many weeks now, character migrations have been a recurring request from Western players since the deployment of Lost Ark in Europe and America. However, Amazon Games has so far never issued an opinion directly favorable to the deployment of such a service. What about two months after the release of the game?
History of migrations in Lost Ark
Since January 12, migrations are available on Lost Ark’s Korean servers. A long-awaited feature that allows anyone who has enough free character slots on a given server to transfer one or more characters to it.
After the debacle created by the overpopulation of all the European kingdoms of the game, in particular those of Central Europe, many players questioned and demanded this functionality from Amazon Games. Naturally, it was also claimed to be free, but many were even willing to pay to be able to play the character they had started to evolve without having to wait in endless queues.
Unfortunately, this service never arrived. Amazon Games justified its unavailability with “the complexity of game systems and their interactions“. An argument largely contradicted by some long-time players who have already played on servers in other regions, as well as the official announcement of the rollout of this feature last January on Korean servers. “lie” even according to some, but was it really the publisher’s bad faith?
More recently, DaVibs, a Lost Ark player, asked on the game’s English forums if a mass migration service was planned. Concretely, this would allow isolated players to migrate all the characters on a given server to another of their choice. A feature that seems close to his heart since he indicates that all his friends have stopped the game and that he finds himself alone. He would therefore like to be able to migrate to another kingdom where there are other of his friends in order to be able to play with them, join their guild, etc…
But is such a feature possible in the relatively near future?
What future for migrations in Lost Ark?
If we are to believe the words from Roxx, Community Manager of Amazon Games, in response to DaVibes’ question, it’s pretty clear: transfers of multiple characters at the same time are not envisaged for the moment. On the other hand, she soberly indicated that migrations were “in the process of experimentation“, so despite everything, it is a service that the publisher is already working on! But why is it taking so long when the functionality is already available in Korea?
The very first element that helps answer this question is rather obvious to anyone who follows the game closely: Amazon Games is only the publisher of the game, not its developer. It is therefore up to Smilegate RPG to develop this service for the Western realms. However, contrary to the MMORPGs to which we are accustomed where Europe and especially America are a priority, the West is not the priority of Smilegate RPG. This simple factor is likely to delay the deployment of such a feature since it is not “vital” for the game unlike the multiple content on which Korean developers are currently working.
The second and main element is the big difference between the mode of operation of objects in Lost Ark and those in the MMORPGs that we know, World of Warcraft in particular to name but one. In WoW, there are only two types of accessible content:
- Character related content: You get an item or achievement on a character and only that character has access to it
- Account-related content: You get an item or achievement on a character and all characters on the same account, regardless of server or faction, have access to it
This type of operation greatly facilitates changes of realm and even faction since when you transfer content linked to a given character, then only its interaction with the migrated character is affected. As for the content linked to the account, this is also rather simple since, whatever happens, all the characters on your account have access to this content, regardless of the server or the faction of the character who originally obtained it. However, even in these situations there are some fairly minor problems:
- Some quests can be deleted (legendary quests from Dragon’s Wrath, Tarecgosa’s Rest or of Shadowmourning for example)
- Some account-related achievements may no longer indicate the character who obtained said achievement the first time since the game no longer finds the original character on the server on which it detected obtaining it
But in Lost Ark, things are very different since a third category of content exists: content linked to the server. When you get one of them, the currencies that are the Shards of life for example, all your characters present on the server of the character who obtained them also have access to them. So what does it mean if this character migrates to another server? Do characters on the home server have access to all of this content? Do those on the origin server lose access? Even worse: what happens to the expedition level which is also linked to each server?
It is these extremely complex interactions that Amazon Games must master and anticipate before it can hope to consider the deployment of character migrations. Progression in Lost Ark is closely linked to the server where your main character is located, altering this operation would seriously jeopardize the stability of the game and it is for this reason that Amazon Games cannot, as a publisher, take the decision to develop such a service: this is not the role of a publisher.
For the record, World of Warcraft players, for example, experience a very similar problem with the factions offered by the game. WoW being in essence a bi-faction game, it is very complex for Blizzard Entertainment to “break” this system on which is based on the whole game in order to provide a system allowing players to play with members of the opposing faction. It will happen anyway very soon… After 17 years of existence of the most famous MMORPG in history! The problem is very similar with the progression by server offered by Lost Ark!
There is therefore no doubt that Amazon Games and Smilegate RPG will eventually find a solution and offer migrations to Western players. We just have to consider that not everything is as simple as pressing two or three buttons and writing a little press release announcing the arrival of this new service. It might take some time, but we should have access to it sooner or later!
twitch
The privileges enjoyed by streamers by virtue of their status as representatives of the community are a subject of heated debate. In a recent post on the Lost Ark forums, a player considers that these should be banned and sanctioned. Amazon has clarified its position on this.