Lost Ark’s headstart begins today at noon – here’s the new trailer and patch notes

(We’ve updated the end of this article with the latest on the download issues.)

It’s launch day for Lost Ark, sort of, as headstart is set to begin at noon EST today, just a few hours from this article going live. As we’ve previously noted, the headstart is for founder pack purchasers, and founder packs end Friday with the full launch, but everyone, even planned F2P players, has been able to predownload the game since yesterday, and you probably already did, even as gamers point out the potential problems with Steam’s predownload.

Patch notes since the final closed beta have been posted already; players can expect a few changes, including the level 60 cap, the level 250 roster cap, the Sorceress sub-class, three new continents, more islands, and so forth. Yes, the game will launch here with 15 classes.

If you’re still on the fence about playing, you should devote 18 minutes or so to the director’s trailer that Amazon and Smilegate dropped yesterday evening; it moves from setting and lore to classes and content to PvP and sailing. The section on the more unique island mechanics is probably the most convincing thing I’ve seen yet and probably should’ve been placed earlier in the video than the halfway mark.

“I won’t say that Lost Ark is the greatest game ever. It would be unfair to compare us to a masterpiece MMORPG that you or even I went crazy about, such as World of Warcraft or Diablo – the bible of hack-and-slash,” a translated director Keum Kang Sun says. “We know that compared to all these legendary works, we’re a mokoko [Lost Ark slang for newbie]. But that means we’re bringing our own unique charm.”