The Korean free-to-play MMORPG, Lost Ark, has already topped the Steam Charts only three days after its initial release in the West.
It is currently the most popular game on Steam, with a staggering 710,224 current players. Along with this, it is now the game with the second-highest number of concurrent players, according to SteamCharts.
Before Lost Ark’s free-to-play release, the numbers already hinted at how popular the game would become, with 505,675 concurrent players during its pre-release stage.
This prompted the developers to warn players about the possibility of long queue times to join servers on launch day.
On Friday, February 11, server deployment issues delayed the game’s release. However, after these issues were addressed, Lost Ark shortly became the most played game on Steam, with a peak of 1.3 million players within only 24 hours.
This legendary debut means that Lost Ark surpassed Dota 2 and Counter-Strike Global Offensive on Steam’s ‘Top Games by Current Players’ list to take its place as number one.
Straining under the weight of success
Due to the game’s massively successful launch, complaints of overly lengthy queue times have been piling up on Lost Ark’s Steam page.
These complaints come mainly from the game’s European player base, and both developer Smilegate and publisher Amazon have confirmed that they are working towards adding new European servers to address this issue.
We’re working as quickly as possible to set up an entirely new region of servers in Europe. We understand lengthy queue times may persist and will need time to help accommodate all players to get in game.
Read for details.https://t.co/fOMz2rPyiw pic.twitter.com/s2fUKrWxbT
— Lost Ark (@playlostark) February 13, 2022
The new servers will ease the queue waiting times, but any progress made on the current Central Europe servers won’t carry over to the new servers when they launch because of Lost Ark’s lack of cross-region support.
Therefore, as a launch promotion, players will be given a host of gift items if they log in on any server between the time the new servers go live and March 2.
Read: Lost Ark – The next MMORPG smash hit
