A popular MMO is facing congestion issues – have you heard of that one before? While Final Fantasy XIV had its fair share of challenges following Endwalker’s launch, it’s now Lost Ark’s turn to grapple with swelling player counts. As per SteamDB, the new PC game is hitting concurrent player counts of 500,000 on Valve’s storefront daily, and that’s before the free-to-play update.
To avoid further congestion, Amazon Games has put several plans in motion. New people won’t be able to create characters on servers that have extensive queue times. If you already have a character on one of the busier servers – say, Mari, Azena, or Kadan – you’ll still be able to create additional characters for your roster. The devs explain that the character creation limit will likely remain in place for the foreseeable future, though Amazon Games will provide an update when it’s eventually removed.
The devs are also adding 15 new servers ahead of Lost Ark’s free-to-play launch. The NA West data centre is getting one new server, NA East is getting six, central Europe is getting six, and South America is getting two.
Even if you’re a current player, though, there’s some incentive for you to jump to a new server. Amazon Games is giving everyone who has purchased a Founder’s Pack “an extra set of the exclusive items” if you redeem it before February 14. If you’ve bought the silver, gold, or platinum pack, you’ll even get some additional royal crystals. You’ll be able to claim these extra rewards on a new server, though your old stuff will remain where you initially redeemed it.
We’ve been having a good time with this one ourselves. In their Lost Ark review in progress, Wren Romero mentions that “flashy combat and clever dungeon design ensure that Lost Ark stands head and shoulders above most of its MMO competitors”. Neat.
If you’re curious when the MMO launches in your timezone, we’ve broken down the Lost Ark release time for you. You can also find the complete list of Lost Ark servers here if you’re mulling over which one to join.