Throne And Liberty Targeting May Closed Beta And October Simultaneous Global Release

Throne and Liberty is just arround the corner. If you've been excited to get your hands on the MMORPG, you won't have much longer to wait. According to a source citing internal company communications to MTH Korean News, NCSoft will be coordinating with Amazon Games to get a closed beta test up and running in May for North America and Korea, with a simulatenous launch planned for October.

Harkening back to previous rumors of a Throne and Liberty delay to avoid Diablo 4's release window, the source says that May was the originally planned launch window, but some on the team felt that A) they needed more time to coordinate a global release with Amazon... and yeah, B) it was probably wiser to get away from Diablo 4.

While the source says that the game itself is pretty much done and requires no further "physical time to improve perfection," the source does express concerns that some on the team are worried that more "Lineage-like" business models (read: monetization) could be grafted onto the game depending on the closed beta test results.

While the production of Throne and Liberty has been highly influenced by Lineage, at one point being created on Lineage's engine and referred to as "The Lineage" (TL) and even sometimes "Lineage 3", MTN says that making the game its own IP and migrating to Unreal Engine 4 started to change the way the game was viewed internally.

While the team consists of many Lineage team members from the past, Vice President Lee Seong-gu said that 'TL' was burdensome to become a numbering successor to the Lineage series and expressed concern in overusing the Lineage name for other games that weren't in the IP.

Interestingly, CEO Taek-Jin Kim praised Throne and Liberty in a review session as "found the next Harry Potter", and while you may like hearing that as a member of the game's team, it also could end up being one of those quotes that ages poorly should the game fail to meet expectations.

We expect to hear confirmation of these release windows in the first quarter financial reports from NCSoft, but at least we have a better idea of release windows even if it still isn't DIRECTLY from the company's PR.