Many Lost Ark users who have been inactive for a while found themselves facing a rather nasty surprise when they tried to log in, in the form of a message that informed them that had been banned by the developer.
The problem appears to be very widespread, with social media pretty much exploding with reports about the issue.
Thankfully, it appears that the developers have found the issue and they have promised to reverse the bans, as they posted on the official forums.
"Greetings Heroes of Arkesia,
Following a recent wave of bot bans, we’ve seen an increase in ban appeals from players who have been incorrectly impacted by these bans.
We have determined the error that triggered these false bans, and are actively working on reversing them for all affected legitimate players regardless of whether a support ticket who has been filed. In the meantime, you are still welcome to submit a Ban Appeal ticket to Customer Support 99 so that the team can more quickly assist with restoring your account and removing all penalties.
Thank you for your reports and patience as we work to make this right with affected players."
Unfortunately, it appears that the solution won't be instantaneous for everyone, but a fix should be incoming.
Lost Ark is currently available for PC. Before Amazon Games brought it westward, it was launched in South Korea in 2019 by Smilegate. Recently, the developers have shared their plans for 2023, with plenty of content to come including the Artist advanced class that should be released on the live servers in April.
Incidentally, Amazon Games is also bringing another MMORPG made in Asia to the west, Bandai Namco's Blue Protocol, albeit we don't yet have a firm release window for that one. We know it'll come later this year.