Yesterday’s Battle Crush announcement from NCsoft reminded me that we still don’t have any fresh news on the state of Throne and Liberty’s western push, which was at one point supposed to happen a year ago under Amazon’s watch but has been delayed times beyond counting. It hasn’t factored at PAX East, either.
The last bit of formal news we had actually came through NCsoft’s Q4 2024 investor report, which rolled out back in February with obfuscated per-game revenue stats – so atypical for NCsoft that both we and investors called it out as an attempt to hide T&L’s Korean launch performance. (We hadn’t seen NCsoft do something like that since 2016, so it really stood out as a glaring anomaly.) During its investor call, however, NCsoft admitted that the game had underperformed with the Korean audience and that it was hoping Amazon’s global launch – still slated for 2024 – would revive its prospects (it was hard not to read that as NCsoft implying that westerners would buy what Koreans snubbed).
That was well over a month ago, and we still haven’t gotten so much as a peep out of NCsoft or Amazon about the global launch to save the franchise. But Ahn Jong-ok, the game’s Korean producer, did dispatch a missive to Korean players last week, on the occasion of the game’s 100th day since launch in the region. Ahn addresses improvements to the difficulty of the game’s latest dungeons, as well as drop rates and bug abuse.
“After the 100-day update, so many people came back to the world of TL. As time passes, I realize more and more how precious these steps are, so I am deeply grateful. We will do our best to enrich the game so that these steps do not go back through the door they came through. I realize that the experiences that have been running with you for 100 days are clearly exerting their power at this moment. We are grateful for your support, but we will not be complacent, and we will continue to run further without forgetting our past mistakes. Watch me.”
Korean news site Invenglobal also has an interview with T&L’s head of development Choi Moon-young; Choi says that development of the game continues, that NCsoft believes in the power of PC MMORPGs, that it’s tackling hackers and cheaters, and that the company is trying to “find balance through communication with users.”
“You may feel like there is no center, but I think that’s why TL was able to change so quickly,” Choi argues. “The final goal remains the same. I want to create a PC MMORPG that both PvE and PvP users can enjoy.”
The wait continues.
