Lost Ark to Launch in Oceania on Release After All

by Naithin · Published October 31, 2021 · Updated January 11, 2022

Update 2/11/2021:

The official news sources are now updated, confirming the contents of the community stream. The news article holds all the detail, but in brief:

New Countries Added
Estonia, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Paraguay, Panama, Peru, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Venezuela, Belize, Guyana, Suriname, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Bahamas, Barbados, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Australia, and New Zealand.
Still excluded: Belgium and Netherlands
Due to local laws and regulations regarding random in-game items.

As I expected (read: hoped), Closed Beta will be open to all newly added regions in addition to the previous inclusions.

There will not be local servers for either South America or Oceania for this beta, but South America will have local servers by launch. Right now, the stated position is for Oceania to not have their own local server set — but that is still in discussion so may change by or shortly after launch.

Let’s hope the Oceania situation gets updated not too long after launch.

Pretty excited!

Original Article Below:

Hot off the presses! Amazon and SmileGate are expanding Lost Ark’s western release to include Oceania (New Zealand, Australia, etc) as part of an additional 34 countries in total, no longer being left in the cold. Latin America, Estonia and Oceania seem to be the three main regions added. As I write this, there is still no official update on either the Lost Ark news page or the Lost Ark twitter (although there may well be by the time you see this) — but refer to this clip from the official community Lost Ark stream.

Also?

Without the use of any kind of VPN shenanigans, the Lost Ark page on Steam is now available to me, showing the founders packs in NZD.

It’s unclear whether we will be permitted to participate in the Closed Beta or not. By the official announcement still ‘No’, but that announcement is several days older than this news which just came through yesterday.

With Steam unlocked in our regions now, I’d be willing to bet there is a passing fair chance the beta will let us in too.

The test will run on Steam, starting November 4 at 9AM PT (4PM UTC), and closing November 11 at 11:59AM PT (6:59PM UTC) with servers in North America and Europe.
Play Lost Ark – Closed Beta Details

Even if I’m wrong though, and the beta still bars entry to the new countries permitted to join in on the fun for launch, I’m still very happy. I honestly didn’t expect this turn around to occur before the game even launched and had mentally filed Lost Ark away into the pile of games to be written off.

With a release date end of March 2022, I’m wondering whether I can be done with Elden Ring in time or not which releases end of February 2022. It’ll be close, I think, but probably manageable… Probably. :)