On August 30, 2024, NCSOFT officially announced the development of a game called Journey of Monarch, the events of which will unfold in the Lineage universe. This event was somewhat unexpected, since over the past few years there have been repeated statements that there are no plans to make new games within the Lineage franchise. The company’s management openly said that the audience had a negative opinion about the aggressive monetization system in this series of games and it would be impossible to attract new players.
However, the Lineage franchise is still very popular in a number of Asian and CIS countries. If Russian-speaking players are very attached to Lineage 2, then MMORPG Lineage Remastered is still in demand among audiences in Asia and brings good profits. Perhaps that’s why NCSOFT decided to once again create a project related to this universe.
This game first became known in February 2024, when a new project related to the MMORPG Lineage W appeared on the list of vacancies. At that time, we were only able to find out scraps of information: a cross-platform game on Unreal Engine 5 with many social activities. Among the requirements for applicants were: experience in developing and launching MMORPGs, social games and service games. Then they hastily decided that we could be talking about an MMORPG.
There are currently several other vacancies associated with Journey of Monarch, from which it follows that:
- The project is preparing for a global launch.
- The game will feature both cinematic cutscenes and staged scenes using the game engine.
- To create character animations, they use motion capture technology from live actors.
In May 2024, South Korean news outlet MTN reported that NCSOFT was working on an unannounced game based on the Lineage franchise. According to the publication, the project is called Lineage Raising (리니지 키우기) and is an idle-RPG, i.e. a game in which characters fight independently and only occasionally require active user participation. Development began at the end of 2023 amid the financial success of projects such as Seven Knights Idle Adventure And Legend of Mushroom. It is likely that the company decided to create the game after assessing the potential profits and modest development costs.
At that time, only 26 people were working on the development, 23 of whom combined work. The development is directly led by Kim Jae-ryong (technical director of Lineage W), who took on the roles of producer and technical director in the new project.
The game’s final title was revealed in July 2024 when NCSOFT filed multiple trademarks in both English and Korean.
Since then, there were only rumors about the project until NCSOFT announced Journey of Monarch on August 30, 2024. The announcement was modest and without any gameplay footage. Players were only shown one official piece of art of Prince Deforge sleeping before setting out on his journey, and were promised a release date for the game in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Shortly after this, a teaser site was launched, which also did not reveal anything new about the game. But a video dedicated to the start of pre-registration showed several frames from the game. Firstly, you can clearly see the active use of assets from the MMORPG Lineage W. Almost every character, hero, mount or location was transferred from one game to another.
Secondly, you can notice the chessboard on which your squad is formed. Judging by the images of the game published on Google Play and the App Store, in addition to Prince Deforge himself, there may be eight more heroes in your squad. Thanks to the description of the game, you can find out that the world is completely made in 3D, and players can expect not only endless development in PvE activities, but also participation in PvP battles.
From press releases we learned that the game will have many different activities: from fighting monsters to fishing. And of course, Journey of Monarch can be played on PC through the Purple app, which NCSOFT has decided to make an international gaming platform.
During a September meeting with investors, a representative from NCSOFT said that Journey of Monarch is being developed for those who want to get acquainted with the Lineage universe, but cannot do so due to the complexity of character development, high competition and financial expenses.
We would like to finish our short article with information published on the App Store page. The game page states that the release will take place on November 30, 2024, and among the supported languages you can see not only Korean, Japanese, Chinese, English and Taiwanese, but also Russian. At the moment, the developers have confirmed a release in some Asian countries in the fourth quarter of 2024. And there is currently no official information about release in the CIS, Europe or America. We will wait for official news.
