MMORPG Lost Ark: The mastermind behind the Steam hit stops – Apparently the stress was too much
Lost Ark is the biggest surprise in the MMORPG space for about 10 years. The Free2Play MMORPG has reached hundreds of thousands of players on Steam: The mastermind behind the game is Global Director Keum “Gold River” Kang-sun. He has now surprisingly announced his retirement in Korea. The news affects many players in Korea, where chief developers like Gold River are revered.
This is the announcement:
- Gold River regularly hosts a broadcast where they update players on what’s planned for the MMORPG in the future (via youtube). Lost Ark is considered the online role-playing game that has evolved the best since its release in South Korea in 2019. This is how new classes come into play on a regular basis.
- A few hours ago, Gold River made its last broadcast, so it rejected “DPS-Metern”. Anyone who starts doing so will be banned, and Amazon was also told that. He also said he’s been invited to 7 recent weddings between Lost Ark players.
- This is the last patch for which Gold River is responsible as director. His health is poor and continues to deteriorate.
Lost Ark was much more successful than everyone thought when it was released on Steam:
“The Yoshi-P of Lost Ark”
What was Gold River known for? The Global Director was held in the highest honor by many fans. In contrast to us in the West, where we see many bosses of MMORPGs critically and hardly say a good word to Ion Hazzikostas (WoW) and hardly know the names of other game directors, bosses like Gold River are revered in Asia.
The fans say he is incredibly charismatic and spoke passionately about his game.
One user calls him the “Yoshi-P” from Lost Ark. This alludes to Naoki Yoshida, the game director of Final Fantasy XIV who has been revered since he rescued the game from damnation in 2014 and then took it to new heights.
Gold River was known, for example, for his sentence that he promised to make Lost Ark a little better every day: better today than yesterday, better tomorrow than today.
In the reddit forum it says: Gold River was as popular with Korean players as Yoshi-P was in Final Fantasy XIV. Here in the west it didn’t come across that way because we don’t have the connection to him. But the South Korean players are really desperate about the news.
Also in the Lost Ark English forum, many fans say how much they appreciate Gold River and express their regret.
It is said that Gold River really cared about the game and the players. It is believed that this could have caused so much stress that it is now eroding his health. Again and again there is talk of a gigantic workload that he had to carry.
In South Korea there is a real culture of literally “working oneself to death” – it even has its own name there: Kwarosa.
Gold River itself speaks of depressive phases from which only the enthusiasm of the players saved them and how much they love their game. Ultimately, his dream came true with Lost Ark.
In the English-speaking world, Gold River was best known for an interview that Twitch streamer Asmongold commented on with relish:
What’s next? The director says he trusts his team and puts Lost Ark in very good hands. According to him, the game would continue for many years to come.
This is behind it: This personality cult around developers is foreign to us in Europe, here MMORPGs are sold more as team projects, the boss is then only the “first among equals” who coordinates everything and holds it together. They occur relatively infrequently, and most external communication is handled by community managers.
In Lost Ark and Final Fantasy XIV, however, the bosses have much more central positions: they have a greater influence on their games. They also spoke much more “I” than in “We”, as we are used to in Europe.
More on the success of Lost Ark:
Lost Ark is finally an MMORPG running successfully after 5 weeks – but why?
Reference-mein-mmo.de