Amazon Game Studios brought us New World just over a month ago, and despite early issues, it’s been a staggeringly popular entry in the MMORPG scene. But Amazon announced earlier this year that it would be publishing the South Korean MMO Lost Ark worldwide, presumably confident that the two games would not be eating into the same audience. Either way, Lost Ark is now in closed beta testing, and even with a limited rollout, it’s popping off on Steam.
The Lost Ark closed beta launched earlier today, and has reached a peak of 87,635 concurrent players, as SteamDB shows. That’s the tenth-highest peak on Steam today, ahead of such perennial favourites as Destiny 2, Dead by Daylight, and Rainbow Six Siege. For comparison, New World’s open beta reached a peak of 141,668 players a few months ago.
The closed beta lasts until November 11 at 11:59am PST / 2:59pm EST / 7:59pm GMT. You can get guaranteed access by picking up a founder’s pack, starting at $14.99 / £13.20 / €14.99. PCGamesN is giving away Lost Ark beta keys and we still have some left – details here.
While Lost Ark does share New World’s massively-multiplayer trappings, it has as much Diablo in its DNA as anything else. Developer Smilegate has populated it with loot-driven action-RPG combat that’s already captured the attention of players, and the early indication is that it’s going to be a particularly engaging take on the genre. Pre-release Steam reviews are already ‘overwhelmingly positive‘.
Lost Ark is scheduled to launch early next year. For more RPG games, you can follow that link.