Only a few days ago we reported that Lost Ark already managed to lure a large number of players to its early access phase, which was open to owners of Founder's Packs. At that time, Lost Ark ranked sixth on Steam's all-time concurrent player chart with a peak of 532K.
However, the game has since been fully released to free-to-play players. We anticipated this would likely enable it to surpass Amazon's New World, previously at the fifth place, but Lost Ark didn't stop there. Two days ago, the MMOARPG registered a peak of 1 million and 325K players, higher than Cyberpunk 2077, Dota 2, and even Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. This means the game developed by Smilegate RPG now holds second place, albeit very far from PUBG: Battlegrounds (which remains firmly on top with its 3 million and 257K peak recorded four years ago, at the height of the Battle Royale craze).
Of course, such a huge success also comes with some downsides. The servers were literally assaulted, creating long queues and other issues. Amazon Games (publisher of the game in North America, Europe, Latin America, and Oceania) announced steps to improve the situation, including setting up a separate region of servers for Europe. Do note that this will be separate from the rest of Europe, which means no cross-regional play and no access to existing Royal Crystal and Silver balances from Central Europe, either. The new region is meant for newcomers, basically.
As a thank you to the community, Amazon and Smilegate RPG are granting some free items redeemable through March 1st at 11:59 pm PT (March 2nd at 8.59 am CET):
- Vehicle Selection Chest (choice of either mount)
- Terpeion
- Terpeion of the Shadow
- Midsummer Night’s Dream Instrument Skin Selection Chest
- Healing Battle Item Chest x10
- Offensive Battle Item Chest x10
- Legendary Rapport Selection Chest x3
- Weekly Trade potions Pack x3
- Phoenix Plume x20
At any rate, Amazon Games appears to have found a new golden goose with Lost Ark after the waning fortunes of its own MMORPG, New World. Christoph Hartmann, VP of Amazon Games, said in a statement:
Together with Smilegate, we are proud to usher in millions of new players around the world to experience Lost Ark. Lost Ark’s unique style of action-packed combat coupled with seemingly endless class customization options opens up nearly infinite new ways to play in a dynamic, ever-changing online universe - there are numerous new realms to discover and resources to compete for in this living fantasy world.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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