Image: Amazon Games
The wildly popular MMORPG Lost Ark is getting a new server region as players continue to suffer long login queues.
The massively multiplayer role-playing game Lost Ark has had a pretty successful free-to-play launch so far, becoming Steam’s second most-played game of all time over the span of just one weekend. Unfortunately, players in European servers have been dealing with hellish login queues ever since - but Lost Ark’s developers might have a solution.
The game's developers Smilegate and Tripod Studio recently announced plans to open up a new European server region to alleviate these long queue times. The developers state that the new region will be separate from Central Europe without cross-region play, however. They stress that, “This also means that region-wide features, such as your Royal Crystal and Silver balances from Central Europe will not be accessible in the new European region. The new region will be ideal for players who have not yet created their character or haven’t otherwise committed to stay on their existing server.”
So if you’re already attached to an existing Lost Ark character, you might want to consider waiting out those long queues instead. The game recently peaked with 1.33 million concurrent players, beating out other popular multiplayer titles you might be familiar with: Counter Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2. Logging into the game over the weekend reportedly took some players over an hour of waiting through queues consisting of over 10,000 players.
Lost Ark has been playable in South Korea since 2019, but only recently launched as a free-to-play game in North America, Latin America and Europe on February 11. While the game has had a relatively smooth launch in North America and Latin America, its European launch has clearly not gone as well thus far. This is only the latest MMO to experience overcrowding issues at launch, too. Square Enix suspended sales of Final Fantasy 14 back in December due to the overwhelming popularity of its Endwalker expansion.
Players affected by these launch issues aren’t walking away with nothing, however. Smilegate has announced that all of Lost Ark’s players will soon be gifted a special package consisting of a new mount, a few item chests and more. All you have to do is play Lost Ark before March 1, and you’ll get this package when the new server region launches.
Unfortunately, players in Southeast Asia will have to wait a little longer to get our hands on this game. Smilegate has confirmed that Amazon does, “not have the rights to publish Lost Ark in any additional regions,” currently, which likely means that the game will not arrive in SEA shores anytime soon. Some players are already playing Lost Ark despite this by using a VPN, but report ping of over 200ms during gameplay. If you’re impatient, prepare to deal with some bad ping.