Lost Ark has been a monolithic success – there isn’t a free MMO released in the last decade that has retained player numbers like this game has.
500,000 concurrent players equates to well into the millions in terms of active players – and that’s just via Steam, not including Korea. And yes, I’m well aware that there are likely a significant portion of bots logged in ’round the clock.
Regardless of the games’ international success, today, specifically, we’re here to discuss the Korean version, and how it is continuing to not only set new records, but also absolutely shatter previous records they set just earlier in the year.

Now according to the website “Inven.co.kr,” Smilegate’s CEO had some very positive things to say after the release of their brand new update, featuring the new continent of Elgasia, along with an additional Abyss Dungeon.
And while those numbers are impressive in and of themselves, it isn’t until you compare them to previous records that you truly begin to appreciate the growth.

Earlier this year, Smilegate reported that they had seen a net increase of 545% in terms of total players compared to the previous year, with active concurrent players increasing by a total of 116% to 230,000 concurrent players – their record at that juncture.
For reference, every region with access to the international version combined – including bots – totaled over 513,000 concurrent players. This number alone totals 44% – almost half of the active International playerbase.
And while population numbers have declined since it launched around the world, the opposite is true for South Korea.

On the 27th of April – just last week, Smilegate reported that they saw an explosive surge in both new and returning players – 176% to be exact.
If we were to multiply their peak at the time – 230,000 – by 176%, we’d get 404,800 concurrent players.
Smilegate have repeatedly expressed that Lost Ark is in a perpetual state of growth within South Korea – so taking this into consideration – even if we were to assume a drop-off of 30% in the last few months, 160,000 multiplied by 176% is still 281,000 concurrent active players.
If Lost Ark has continued to grow since Smilegate’s previous announcement as we were lead to believe, then we’re probably looking at a number much closer to what the International version displays. Within South Korea ALONE.
Tallying both South Korea and the International players together we’re likely getting much closer to a total million concurrent players worldwide – I’d love to include Russia’s population numbers but unfortunately they’re not public.

It stands to reason as to why players are as excited as they are. This update – the story behind the continent of Elgasia has been in development since the game’s inception approximately 10 years ago. Thus, player expectations have been set unrealistically high.
It looks as though reception for the update, including the new Abyss dungeon has been relatively good if what I’m reading online is to be believed. Although more often than not, people complaining online are typically within the vocal minority.
This update, although perhaps one of the largest in terms of overall vision is not the last we can look forward to in 2022.
On the contrary, they have additional continents planned for release this year, new stories to be told and while it might be a while before us International players get our hands on any of it, it’s promising to know that Smilegate are not only working harder than the vast majority of MMO devs, but that they seem to know exactly what players want from their game.
Which is more than you can say about.. well, let’s not name names. We’re better than that.

Lost Ark is doing incredibly well – so well in fact, that today, I want to talk to you about the future of the game.

Lost Ark launched to astonishing numbers. 1.3 million players all actively logged into and subsequently stuck on the server select screen for days. It was wild.
3 days after fully launching around the globe, it was confirmed that Lost Ark had acquired 4.7 million new active players.
3 weeks after that announcement – today, actually, Smilegate confirmed that there were 20 million Global players logging in and playing the game.
Yes, a grand total of 20 million. Over 10 million of which come from North America, Europe, South America and Australia. This means that the West accounts for more than half of Lost Ark’s entire active playerbase.
Not only did Lost Ark open to the 2nd largest launch in Steam history, but it has also gone on to become one of the most actively played MMOs – and even beyond that, video games, in the entire gaming world.

In spite of this monolithic success, you might be wondering to yourself.. “but what does the future hold, though?” With how poorly New World has been handled, will Lost Ark suffer much the same fate?
The official Lost Ark Twitter confirmed yesterday that they are “making adjustments to our upcoming content roadmap based on player progression data,” and that they would be “sharing an updated roadmap following our March update.”
Which either means players have consumed content at a rate they didn’t anticipate, or the complete opposite.
Regardless, they made a separate Tweet covering what March is going to look like: the introduction of more difficult Abyss Raids for players to tackle, a brand new storyline, new areas, and more to come later this month.

The future of Lost Ark looks bright. Much brighter than New World, which is in an irreparable state right now.
It’s unconfirmed if Amazon and Smilegate expect to release updates monthly, or go for a quarterly update schedule like Final Fantasy XIV but one thing is for sure.. this game is far from being dead.
Lost Ark has been a monumental success for Amazon, and they definitely needed a win.
I look forward to seeing Lost Ark’s continued success over the course of the year, and am very curious where this game eventually ends up settling towards the 4th quarter. As the first month is still technically somewhat of a “honeymoon phase.”
The next several months will be a true test to the longevity of the game.

Despite reviews having been mixed, and opinions on the game being highly divisive, the fact remains: Lost Ark has gone down in history as one of the largest MMO releases in decades.
The game managed 1.5 million pre-orders, and the day it launched, it launched to almost 5 million active players.
Granted, of those 5 million players, only a fraction managed to make it into the game in a timely manner, with many European players still having queues in the tens of thousands due to them not wanting to lose their current progress and migrate to another server.

Today, I want to discuss the monumental success that is Lost Ark. Regardless of whether you love it or hate it, this game has broken so many records and it’s only been out for a week.

As of Saturday, February 19th 2022, Lost Ark peaked at 1,130,000 concurrent players. This is 7 days after its release, where it peaked at 1,320,000.
It’s natural to see games decline in concurrent players over the course of the first week. Players interested in the game will try it out and leave it if doesn’t interest them. Players will rush to endgame and complain they have nothing to do.
It happens with every game, and is expected even with Lost Ark, as is evidenced by the decline in almost 300,000 concurrent players over its first week.

But despite the enormous numbers logging into the game, is the title worth it? What about Lost Ark makes it better than competition in the form of – let’s say – Final Fantasy XIV? Black Desert Online? Path of Exile?
I think Venture Beat put it about as eloquently as I imagine it can be, and that is that it is “a lot of content in an attractive package.”
At the end of the day, Lost Ark has a lot of content, a lot of story, and a lot of systems while all being presented in one of the most gorgeous visual representations of the genre.

This game is a unique amalgamation of two very different genres: MMOs – massively multiplayer titles built specifically around larger-scale group content. And ARPGs – action role playing games that are traditionally either single-player or features small-scale multiplayer.
Lost Ark throws you into a massive world filled with a plethora of things to do.
Beginning the game, you’re greeted with a brief tutorial that walks you through the various systems you’ll find populating it – how to move your character, your abilities that are – at times – frustratingly bound to letter keys, the narrative.
This can very easily be skipped by clicking the massive blinking “Skip tutorial” button that remains present over the course of the tutorial, for players that have either already experienced it or have a basic understanding of how games like this work.
You’ll find the leveling experience to be relatively painless. It’s quick, and you’re only required to progress with the main scenario to hit level cap. This removes the need for players to engage in side-content that let’s be honest, most players often ignore in MMOs anyway.
You will notice there is an abundance of fetch and kill quests, though. Which at times become repetitious. Even dull. Thankfully, on the way to level cap, you’ll find that you continue to unlock additional things to do. Things that supplement the repetious nature of questing.
It’s not as simple as “hitting level cap as soon as possible,” and while that’s definitely a route you could take – if your ultimate goal is to “complete” the game, you’re going to miss a lot of fun activities along the way.

Yes, zones are linear. To the point where you hold down your right mouse button and watch something on Youtube while slowly riding to your quest objective because it’s unlikely you’ll need to alter your course.
And you’ll encounter other players out while doing this – but open-world content, with the exception of larger, much more powerful zone bosses, doesn’t require other players to engage in. This is both a PRO and a CON.
Many players from this generation are of the opinion that you should be capable of completing an MMO without ever having to participate in group-content. That group-content should merely be an afterthought. An additive feature. Something that you can do if you really want to socialize a little.
I get it – some of us just don’t have the time to wait on other people. Being given the option of moving through the entire story solo is beneficial for those of us that don’t want to be forced to rely on other people to finish our content.
That’s why dungeons are doable solo or with a group – heck, even Blue Protocol is providing the option for solo queueing or queueing in a group. Group content used to be the focus of MMOs, but general player disinterest is very evident, and developers are aware of this.
The most difficult competitive content will likely always require a multitude of players to engage in, scaling it would likely just be too difficult otherwise.

MMOs these days often feel like you’re moving through the game with no purpose, and Korean MMOs are by far some of the worst culprits. And – I’ll be the first to admit, here, that while Lost Ark is no Final Fantasy XIV or Star Wars The Old Republic, its narrative is interesting enough, engaging enough to keep you thoroughly entertained.
To grow attached to some of the characters. Sure, the premise is simple enough, but it’s executed well. The story pushes you into dungeons. Pushes you into unique instanced scenarios – some of which takes 30 minutes, an hour to complete.
Like infiltrating a massive castle with an army of troops at your side. Or when you were forced into your own castle and had to ride out to save “what’s his face?” Because he’s a pampered princess.

There’s.. ugh, Mokoko Seeds. Which – if you can bring yourself to actually collect, is an achievement in and of itself. I collect the ones I find. Mrs Stix though goes out of her way to actively seek them out via dedicated guides. Yes, she has the patience of a saint.

You gain access to your own island, which you can slowly work on, building, upgrading. Turning it into your own tropical paradise.

There’s an active PvP scene, although like most PvP MMOs… if you’re not playing one of the classes that excel at preventing you from playing your character, you’re going to have a very rough time.

You can also work on maintaining a relationship with a growing number of characters. These relationships can grow, and as they continue to progress lead to… certain.. outcomes. And this is just off the top of my head. What you’ll experience on the way to level cap. Completely disregarding all the content that gets thrown at you once you hit endgame, which we’re admittedly still working towards in this version.

Honestly, at times Lost Ark can feel overwhelming. It can. At times, you’re bombarded with so many little red dots you need to click that you feel like you’re in a mobile game.
Logging in daily to receive your login rewards. Running your daily quests. Yet even so, Lost Ark provides an experience that is so easy to get into – so easy to understand.
It’s basic, it’s fun, and not overly complex.
It takes the formula that games like Path of Exile and Diablo used to dominate the genre, and innovates it by combining elements from MMOs – like the open worlds filled with players, group PvE like dungeons and raids. PvP. Player housing.
There’s an exorbitant amount of content to consume, and it allows you to take it at your own pace. There’s no need to rush to endgame – because so much is unlocked on the way there.

With how little variety we’ve gotten over the last decade with regards to top-down isometric action RPGs, Lost Ark is a breath of fresh air.
It’s not going to dethrone Final Fantasy XIV as the most played MMO long-term, and player numbers will definitely dwindle down over the next month or so. But it’s enough to scratch that itch we’ve all had for a while now.
A gorgeous, fun, easy MMO to get into and to enjoy. It’s an MMO that doesn’t rush you, and rewards you for playing longer.

How many other MMOs can say they do that?

If you’ve ever wondered what it’d be like to play a Korean Path of Exile… then you’re going to need to keep wondering, as in the hundreds of hours I’ve spent playing the Russian, and now the North American version of Lost Ark, they’re about as similar as hands are to feet.
They both kinda.. look alike? I guess? Okay actually, in retrospect, that was a bad analogy. Let me try again.

You can walk on your hands, and pick things up with your feet. No, that really doesn’t apply to Lost Ark in this instance…

Well you get what I’m trying to say. Lost Ark is a very different game to Path of Exile or Diablo. It might have the same top-down isometric perspective, but it’s a very different beast!

Today, we’re taking a look at Lost Ark’s international release, having put hundreds of hours into the Russian version of this over the last year it’s a surreal experience to finally be able to play this officially in English.

Lost Ark is a top-down isometric MMOARPG – yes, you may have noticed that there’s an “A” in that acronym. That single letter is used to differentiate it from other MMOs – and stands for “Massively Multiplayer Online Action Role Playing Game,” something that is apparently different from an MMORPG like Black Desert or TERA that are.. well, action MMOs.
Lost Ark takes place in a fantasy medieval setting, with humans, elves.. furries, if you want to go that route.
There are multiple different classes, although – and let me preface this by stating that this is only at present – but the classes are gender-locked. Meaning that each class can only be played as a single gender. Much like Black Desert.
According to Smilegate, they are working on removing the restrictions on gender-locking, but we’ll have to wait and see whether that ever comes to fruition.
Character creation itself is fairly extensive. You can make some absolutely gorgeous characters.. and if you’re ugly like I am IRL, and you want to make something that accurately resembles yourself.. well, you can make some slightly less gorgeous characters. So we’re outta luck.

Lost Ark is a very different MMO than players are traditionally used to. And this is very evident by the sheer number of players trying the game out.
People have been eagerly anticipating this game ever since it was announced, and with Amazon’s infinite marketing potential – including every streamer opting to stream the game, there’s no wonder it achieved the concurrent numbers it did.
Again, Lost Ark utilizes a top-down isometric perspective. As opposed to the typical 3rd-person perspective we’re used to in our MMOs.
Typically, MMOs share the same control scheme: You use your mouse to rotate the camera, you use WASD to move your character, keys like C open your character page and B opens your inventory. You have abilities set to number keys or shortcuts like shift or control number keys.
In Lost Ark, you move using your left or right mouse button, abilities are bound to your letters, and your number keys are reserved for less important items or mounts.
This takes some getting used to. I can’t tell you how often I try to right click to rotate my screen so I can get a better view of something and end up running off like my dad did when I was a kid.
But hey, the good news? I have brothers and sisters I didn’t know about.
Honestly, it isn’t too difficult to acclimate to the difference in control style. I feel like it’ll always be a little awkward, but not enough where it’ll really have any kind of impact on my enjoyment of the game. Different is good. Not always, but in this instance, it is.

The world of Arkesia is an enormous place. There are over 10 entire continents to explore, with each continent having their own unique zones, their own unique cities, their own unique monsters, quests and purpose.
The zones themselves are small and linear, though, which is probably my single complaint with this game. I like large, open areas. Where you can wander in any direction. Find small treasure chests. Elite monsters you wouldn’t be aware of without exploring. Locate missable, optional dungeons.
Exploration is key to enjoying the zone you’re in, integral to fully becoming enthralled in the area you’ll be potentially spending hours in leveling. This is what made WoW’s zones so special.
Unfortunately, the map for quite a few zones consists of small, thin straight lines. Which I understand isn’t necessarily going to be an issue for everyone. Mrs Stix as an example likes it small, thin and straight.
But the world isn’t comprised exclusively of zones so small. On the contrary, zones get larger, and once you obtain the ability to sail your own ship, you have the entire ocean to explore. Which is exactly what I wanted.
The ocean is immense – it takes several minutes to get from where you are to where you want to be, and there are a variety of tiny little islands you can find scattered around the world that you can dock your ship at. This provides me that sense of exploration I was looking for.

Leveling is about what you’d expect. You follow through the main scenario, moving from hub to hub, region to region, stopping bad guys from doing bad guy things. Meeting new NPCs to join you on your journey.
Leveling is fast and fluid. I never felt like I was forced to do anything other than the main scenario if I didn’t want to, but I chose to pick up side quests wherever I could. It’s a force of habit. I don’t like hitting a leveling wall that halts your progression and requires you do side-quests because you’re too low.
Side-quests were very fast. They didn’t send me all over the zone, they were as simple as “kill a few monsters,” or “loot a few items.” I find it absolutely atrocious having to loot or eliminate 100 of the same monster or item. That isn’t fun. That’s a waste of time.
Leveling dungeons were fun. You could do them on Normal or Hard difficulties. Although admittedly – and this is both a PRO and a CON – both difficulties were doable solo.
Neither provided too large a challenge that a larger group was required to complete it. Not that queues for dungeons were an issue – with 1.3 million people playing, queues were instant. And since role-queues aren’t a thing, we don’t have to concern ourselves with those horrendous DPS queues.

Speaking of dungeons though, there is one other aspect of this game that I found to be underwhelming: The community. The number of threads I saw on Reddit from players playing through Lost Ark for the first time that were berated, insulted and verbally abused because they didn’t “skip” every scene in the dungeon was actually kind of disgusting.
I even saw this first-hand once or twice. Granted, not toxicity. More random people spamming “skip plz” over and over.
Generally, the community outside of group-content seemed fun, they seemed helpful, they seemed to be enjoying themselves. But players so focused on shaving a few minutes off of their completion timer at the expense of ruining other players’ first time experiences are entitled.
If running into other players that want to experience the content as it’s supposed to be experienced is an issue, there’s always solo-queueing.

When we see Korea is making an MMO we think 2 things: 1.) The game is going to look gorgeous and play incredibly well. And 2.) The game is going to have no story.
Lost Ark is different in that while the former holds true, the latter does not. On the contrary, Lost Ark has quite an interesting narrative. It’s voice acted. It spans every zone in the game we encountered over the course of our way to level 50.
And it actually made sense. Playing through Black Desert’s story, or Astellia‘s, Bless‘s, TERA’s… they’re all convoluted messes that you try and forget exist. Or, well, you don’t need to try to. You just end up doing it without realizing.
And while thankfully Lost Ark has a lot of story to keep you entertained long-term, it isn’t the only form of content worth looking forward to.

The game is filled with an immense amount of content to partake of. Sure, grinding to level 50 isn’t very difficult. On average you might get there playing casually within a few days. What comes AFTER level 50 is what’s important.
If you have a guide readily available, you’ve no doubt already been slowly working towards completing the goal of collecting all 233 billion Mokoko Seeds.
You’ll also want to start researching your fortress and crafting professions if you’re not strongly against crafting like I am. You’ll want to focus on completing Island quests and stories. There are Chaos Dungeons to run. Guardian Raids. Abyss Dungeons. PvP.
You might feel a little overwhelmed at times by the selection of content, but it’s all important to upgrading your item level. And the higher your item level gets, the more content you gain access to.
This is completely disregarding the creation of alts. Oh, you didn’t know you needed alts to keep up with other players? That’s so sweet. Although admittedly, alt maintenance isn’t nearly as bad as it is in games like World of Warcraft so realistically I can’t complain.

Speaking of PvP, there are 2 dedicated types of PvP in Lost Ark. On the one hand, you can engage another player in a duel. This can take place anywhere at any time and is a way of humiliating your friend because he hasn’t been playing very long and doesn’t understand his class.
Alternatively, there are PvP Arenas that are unlocked after progressing through the story. Normal Arenas have 3 game modes themselves. 3v3 team matches where players enter as a team. 3v3 individual matches where players enter individually and fight separate 1v1 matches. And finally, 6-player death matches.
You also have competitive Arena matches, co-operative battles, and custom games that you can play with your friends.
Interestingly, Arenas have their own builds completely separate from your field-build. Meaning that you’re required to build 2 different characters: One for when you’re out in the world questing, running dungeons, raids and PvE content. And one for engaging in PvP.

And for those of you, like me, who are too poor to afford a house in real life, then you can live out your fantasy of having your very own island in Lost Ark.
I’ve never been all too fond of player-housing in my games but I know Mrs Stix is. Which is why she’s always in charge of decorating our homes. I mean, I struggle at times dressing myself. But that’s what we have significant others for, right? To make up for what we lack.

At the end of the day, Lost Ark is an absolutely incredible MMORPG. Smilegate have chosen to do something completely different to what is traditional in our MMOs with this – something that was contrastingly different from the norm.
And it has worked out for them, being one of Korea’s largest MMOs and becoming the #2 largest game to have ever launched onto Steam.
They genuinely built something beautiful, something that not only looks visually superior to a large number of its competitors, but also plays substantially better.
Sure, zones might be a little snug and might not promote the same sense of grandiose exploration that I want but no game is infallible. You’ll always find fault with some aspects of what you’re playing, it’s impossible not to.
There’s likely a lot I’ve missed, but with how large and filled with content Lost Ark is, there’s really no helping it.

Is this the greatest MMO? To some people, maybe. To me? No. But it’s definitely one of the most fun MMOs I’ve played.

Combat – 10/10 I’d give the combat an easy 10/10. It’s just that good.
Graphics – 8/10 This is an absolutely gorgeous game. There’s no qusetioning that.
Narrative – 6/10 Honestly, it was much better than I would’ve expected of a Korean MMO but still nothing extraordinary.
World – 7/10 The world is massive and filled with varied environments. But the zones are too linear to fully enjoy.
Content – 9/10 There’s an incredible amount of content present that you’ll always have something to fill your time with.
Overall – 40/50 – Lost Ark is easily one of the best MMOs available right now. Given that it’s a free title, there’s even more reason to play it. It’s beautiful, it plays better than any other free MMO, and it’s updated regularly with new classes, regions and content.

Finally, an MMO that Amazon can’t mess up, right? With the monumental mass of issues that New World has had from players abusing immortality bugs to win territory wars, to the 742 different duplication methods players utilized to destroy the economy – Amazon Game Studios have repeatedly shown their sheer incompetence when it comes to game development.
But this time is different.. right? They’re not developing Lost Ark, Smilegate are. They cannot possibly mess this up, can they? There’s absolutely no way.

Amazon have, somehow, done the absolute impossible and managed to implement a duplication exploit that have allowed well over 60,000 players to duplicate millions of dollars worth of founder’s packs rewards.

This exploit wasn’t something minor, something that rolled out relatively unnoticed and was patched immediately upon being reported. Rather, it plagued players over the course of the entirety of the 2nd day of the head start.
And with the exception of a few reddit posts and mentions on the forums, this has flown relatively under the radar.

TheAMSA and MercuryZX both clipped instances of this happening over on Twitch. AMSA went on to redeem his Founder’s Pack rewards. He then proceeded to log out and log back in, after which he realized he could redeem the Founder’s Pack for a second time.

This is a game-breaking exploit, and many – and I stress the word “many” here, players went on to abuse it. Although that isn’t even the worst of it. What’s worse, is the fact that even more players were unaware of this even happening, and went on to redeem their rewards a multitude of times.
Completely oblivious to the fact that this was a bug and that this means they were technically taking part in the abuse as well. Which makes it almost impossible to make the distinction between players that were abusing the exploit by choice with the intention of beneficial gain, and those who were unaware it was an exploit at all.

Amazon did address this at a point later in the day, with Roxx making an official forum thread titled “Regarding Multiple Item Claims.” The thread went on to read as follows:

“Yesterday, a database timeout led to multiple claims of Founder’s Packs and Twitch Drops for some players. This affected less than 4% of all accounts, with the majority of these players only redeeming 1-2 extra items, which did not include any additional Royal Crystals.
We worked quickly to deploy a fix that has prevented additional items from being created, and are currently working with Smilegate RPG to revoke the items that were created during the period that this occurred. We expect this fix to come later today, as it is a priority for the team to keep the in-game economy intact.

Thank you for your patience, and we will provide an update as soon as possible.”

I want to note here that sales for the game were made public on February 10th – yesterday. There were a grand total of 1.5 million total Founder’s Pack sales made within 72 hours of the head start going live.
Do you know what 4% of 1.5 million is? 60,000. 60 thousand accounts participated in duplication of items, minimum. That’s if Amazon are being genuine here and not downplaying the situation by reporting less counts of abuse than what they saw.
They state that there weren’t any additional “Royal Crystals” duplicated, and while I can’t verify if this is the case, the fact that the duplication happened, and is still attempting to be cleaned up is still a very damaging blow to the economy, the playerbase and even the game itself.
Amazon went on to confirm that they are working with Smilegate, the actual developers of Lost Ark in an attempt to revoke the items that were created during the period this exploit was occurring, but we all know how organized and effective their development team is, right?
I mean look at New World’s latest update. They introduce a skin into the game – the new Corrupted Love Pack, and immediately have to remove the skin because there was a bug that caused servers to crash.
That’s what we have to look forward to whenever Amazon introduce something into Lost Ark.

Amazon Game Studios are not the developers for Lost Ark. Smilegate are, and Smilegate didn’t – to my knowledge, at least, ever have issues with duplication exploits being present when their game launched in South Korea. Or Russia. Or Japan.
So how is it a company with the funding that Amazon has managed to be the only publisher to mess things up to this magnitude? There’s a reason New World, and more than that, Amazon have become a laughing stock – a meme amongst the MMO community.
Claiming incompetence is an insult to incompetent companies like Nexon or Gamigo.

Amazon is the publisher for Lost Ark, which means realistically they aren’t going to be – or at the very least shouldn’t be introducing new lines of code into the game.
So realistically there should be nothing to worry about with regards to bugs or exploits. But introducing Founder’s Packs into the game has left them with the responsibility of importing them directly into the game – and effective game development is clearly something their studio is just incapable of doing.
While the future of Lost Ark looks bright – the game has broken record after record both pertaining to its head start that was available exclusively to Founder’s, and its launch for both Founder’s and free players, it’s a little disconcerting to acknowledge the fact that if Amazon ever want to introduce anything into the game, this is what we can expect.
A skin that the Korean version doesn’t have? Potential duplication exploits, potential full server crashes. An event to celebrate a holiday that Korea doesn’t celebrate? Potential duplication exploits, potential full server crashes.

I love Lost Ark. I’ve been playing the Russian version of the game actively for years and have been covering this ever since it was announced back in 2016? 2017?
I’ve already put well over 20 hours into it since the head start launched and it’s such a surreal experience being able to play it in your native language with hundreds of other people you know. And having everyone actually enjoy their time within it.
But this bug, this exploit was abused repeatedly, and is incredibly damaging to the community, and to the economy. We saw what duplication did to New World, we saw what bug abusers did to New World. This is something that cannot be allowed to happen with Lost Ark, this game has far too much potential for that!
I’m actually a little taken aback by the fact that Amazon and Smilegate opted to comb through manually removing rewards on an account-level. This is both a time-consuming process and likely one that will result in many missed instances of removal.
I’m also shocked that no bans were issued to players – or even warnings, for that matter. I don’t believe everyone that received duplicate rewards should suffer consequences, but there’s a difference between some random guy that received rewards 3 times and some other guy that received it 30.
It should be very easy to discern the difference between abusers who abused the exploit for their own gain, with full knowledge of the situation and abusers that had no idea what they were doing.

Hopefully this is the only time we’ll have to discuss something like this, because realistically, I want everyone to enjoy this game in every way they can. It’s an incredibly fun game and there’s just so much to enjoy.
But I have my doubts, as Amazon have repeatedly proven their level of incompetence. I guess only time will tell.

Regardless, I hope you’re all having a lot of fun in Lost Ark. It’s been a lotta fun for both Mrs Stix and I over the last few days, and with the exception of the delayed launch for free players, we’ve encountered absolutely no issues thus far!

Sometimes dreams do come true. Sometimes a game you’ve been waiting years for actually releases in a region you’re capable of playing from.
And sometimes it doesn’t.

Regardless of which category you fall under, one thing is for certain: Lost Ark is absolutely dominating Steam right now. AND YOU CAN DOWNLOAD AND PLAY IT RIGHT NOW!

Taking a look at the “Global Top Sellers,” you’ll see that Dying Light 2 is #1 – which really shouldn’t come as a surprise to people, but the Platinum Founder’s pack is at #2, Gold Founder’s Pack is at #3, Bronze Founder’s Pack is at #4 and Silver Founder’s Pack is at #5.
Interesting that players found the Silver’s pack to be the least worth their money, but enough where sales for even the lowest Founder’s Pack are higher than pre-orders for Elden Ring.

Honestly, looking at the Founder’s Packs, I don’t really see much of a difference in terms of rewards. I’m not a very materialistic person, as long as I get that head start access I’m happy.
The Crystalline Aura is the only thing I’d argue warrants any type of premium price, so with that in mind I’m just buying myself a Bronze Pack.
I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked which Founder’s Pack our viewers should get, but I don’t value any of the items enough to spend more than $15 bucks on the game. And that’s just so I can play 2 days early.

Now I’ve been hearing people online speculating on how large a release this is going to have. The general consensus is that Lost Ark is going to be the biggest release of the last – well, ever. And I don’t know where this is coming from.
The sheer number of people I’ve seen online – on Discord, Reddit, Twitter, even while I’m streaming on Twitch under the delusion that this is going to somehow revitalize the MMO genre are in for quite the shocking revelation.
Lost Ark is a fantastic quality game – it’s absolutely gorgeous, it’s got some highly fluid, AAA combat and effects. A narrative-driven form of progression.
Yet even with as good a game as this is, even with the hype after all these years.. I fear the game is going to buckle under and fail to live up to these grandiose expectations players seem to have for it.
Being excited for a game is one thing, but being overly excited to the point where there is no physical way of living up to said expectations is going to result in a lot of disappointment.

There’s no denying Lost Ark is going to do incredibly well over its first month. Comparing it to its competition – Lost Ark has nearly 180,000 followers on Steam alone.
Elyon has 18,000 followers and launched to a 15,000 player peak.
PSO2 New Genesis, which launched 8 months ago to a 60,000 player peak has 68,000 followers.
Swords of Legends Online has 40,000 followers with a peak of 19,000 players.
Bless Unleashed has 116,000 followers with a peak of 76,000 players.
No doubt Lost Ark’s largest competition is going to come in the form of another Amazon title – New World, which has 380,000 followers and launched to a peak of 913,000 players. Still averaging 60,000 concurrent players 4 months later.
It’s worth noting that each of these games has had exponentially longer to accumulate followers for each respective title, with Lost Ark continuing to surpass them even prior to launching – and by quite the large margin!
I highly doubt we’ll see numbers close to New World at its launch as Amazon have done very little in terms of marketing comparatively.
Yet I think the head start is going to easily achieve 200,000 concurrent players on day 1, with the full launch likely topping 400,000 given head start players aren’t turned away by the top-down isometric perspective or linear form of progression.

I’m not sure how Lost Ark is going to do long-term. It’s definitely more of a niche MMO than games like Black Desert or Final Fantasy XIV, and given there are so many releases this month – it might end up underperforming due to a higher interest in other titles.
Only time will tell. Regardless, Lost Ark absolutely destroyed records in South Korea over the last 2 months, and these numbers are looking very positive for the game.
This could arguably be the biggest MMO release of 2022 – so long as nothing equally as anticipated can compete with it – things like Justice Online or Blue Protocol. But I feel Justice is going to be much more niche than even Lost Ark, and Blue Protocol likely won’t release until 2023 at this rate.

I’ll have a deeper look at the English release of the game uploaded to the channel later this week for those of you interested.
But you know what’s even more interesting to me than Lost Ark? This game right here. This game looks like it could be the most fun game of 2022. No competition. Now I hope to see you guys over on Twitch so we can play together!

The release date of Lost Ark is fast approaching. Next month, players all over the world – admittedly with the exception of some – will be able to log in and play Lost Ark for the very first time.
Yet even though Amazon’s incarnation of the game will no doubt see a lot of success initially, Smilegate’s Korean version of the game is where players will look to for the future.

Not only will we theoretically receive every update the Korean version of the game does, but we can also get a gauge for the general direction the future of the game is taking.
If their own players respond poorly to an update, then there’s likely a reason behind it after all. Or maybe they’re like mobile gamers with Gacha games and just hate on everything they can’t have. Who knows.

Regardless, what we’re here today to discuss isn’t the future of the game necessarily. Because with Amazon as publisher, this could turn out an unbelievable success, or a critical failure.
Rather, what we’re here to discuss is the incredible success Lost Ark has been seeing over the course of the last couple months. Lost Ark has been out for years now, and has seen both its ups and downs. It launched in several countries, with more coming as a direct result of Amazon’s deal with the purchase of publishing and distribution rights.
Never, though, had Smilegate seen the kind of success they have seen recently. Nor did they likely ever think they would.
See, Smilegate revealed just 2 days ago that the number of players concurrently playing Lost Ark has risen to such astronomical heights that if we were to include it in a list of the most played MMORPGs right now, it would come in at rank 3, just behind World of Warcraft.
That’s kinda of unreal, right? Especially given how many players are playing games like Black Desert, The Elder Scrolls Online, RuneScape and Guild Wars 2.
I’m not joking. According to the press release, “the number of new adventurers increased by 545% and the number of returning adventurers by 499% compared to the previous week.”
“In addition, the number of daily adventurers increased by 135%, the number of monthly net adventurers increased by 116%, and the maximum number of concurrent users recorded 230,000, which is a significant increase in most indicators.”

So to reiterate, the total number of daily players has more than doubled, the total number of monthly players has more than doubled, and the game has recorded 230,000 concurrent players. Two hundred and thirty thousand. That is logged in at the same time, not total logged in over the course of the entire day.
To get an accurate view of the total number of players logged in over the course of the entire day you’d need to multiple that number several times.
It was also confirmed that due to the sheer number of players logging in every day there were actual login queues preventing players from successfully playing. Much like Final Fantasy XIV‘s Endwalker expansion suffered – or, rather, continues to suffer to this day.
There’s no greater reward than suffering from success, right?

Smilegate are taking this opportunity to monopolize on its current success, going on to announce that they have a lot of content planned for the future.
Part of the reason for the mass influx of new players was due to the new large-scale Winter event beginning. Their “Loa on Winter” event was streamed recently, and went on to accumulate a maximum concurrent viewership of 310,000, which is ridiculous. Especially given this was for a single game. And an MMO at that.
Honestly, I wasn’t even aware the Lost Ark channel streamed. Or that there even was a Lost Ark streaming channel, but seeing numbers that large is a testament to what Smilegate have built, and to the overall reception their game, and subsequently this update has received.
But even more than that was the announcement that the brand new “Rowen” continent would be introduced featuring large scale realm battles and a brand new class, the Painter was on the way.

The CEO of Smilegate went on to thank every Lost Ark player for participating in the events, the streams, and for playing the game for as long as they have been.
He noted that this was “the best year Lost Ark has had,” and is looking forward to creating new and interesting MMORPG’s for adventurers. I’m not sure if that’s a translation error, however, but it might be worth looking a little more into.

Lost Ark launches early next month around the world in English, and honestly I’m excited.

On October 29th, a user named Max Bacon made a thread in the Lost Ark Steam Community that went on to claim that SteamDB, a website I use to track regular updates for MMOs via the platform, just added in a slew of new supported countries. 34 in total, we find out later on in the thread.
While your country may not be included in the additional countries that now have access to the upcoming MMO, I would advise you hold tight as there has been no confirmation that they’re done expanding the list of available, supported regions.

Initially, people were of the impression that Amazon had just updated the regions available to purchase the Lost Ark packs, but shortly after, Roxx, one of the developers that moderate the Lost Ark community over on Steam made an official confirmation.

Bumps because why not spread the news With Closed Beta just around the corner, we have some exciting information to share. While working alongside Smilegate RPG to bring Lost Ark to new audiences in North America and Europe, our teams heard loud and clear that players in other regions were eager to venture into Arkesia. To ensure that this beloved game can be enjoyed by more players, we’ve collaborated with Smilegate RPG to add Estonia, Latin America, and Oceania (for a total of 34 new countries) to the list of regions that will have access to Closed Beta and at launch in early 2022. We’re ecstatic to welcome in additional players from around the world, and hope you’ll join us for the adventures ahead. Please stay tuned to our website next week for details.

Evidently, Amazon and Smilegate are definitely listening to players, trying to get as many of us into the game as they possibly can. The more regions that support Lost Ark, the more money they’ll make after all. They gain absolutely nothing from locking players – entire regions from accessing the game.
Now if we navigate on over to the SteamDB page in specific, you’ll find a list of every region that currently supports the game. Do note that the regions shown are subject to change as we continue to close in on the release date of the game within the next few months, with additional regions likely being supported over time.

As you should be well aware, the Closed Beta for Lost Ark is going to take place from November 4th at 9AM PST through until November 11th at midnight.
If you’re looking to get into the game, then this is your chance to. If you’d instead like to try the game out without the need to pay for Closed Beta access, then I have a guide on how to play the game from Russia using a fan translation.

Regardless, this is exciting news for Lost Ark players. I’m from Australia, so this is promising to see my home obtain access to the game. I hope we get Oceanic servers, though, as playing the game with 300 to 400 ping is going to make PvP impossible.

Last week Amazon Game Studios, the publisher behind the upcoming Lost Ark MMO released a blog post where they went on to outline the available classes at launch. These included the Warrior, Martial Artist, Mage, Gunner and Assassin. And while they’ve changed the names of many of the advanced classes, players noted there were some missing.

Amazon Game Studios and Smilegate both stated that they are aware other regions have additional classes, and in time these will be released into the Western version of Lost Ark as well.
They go on to claim that due to “balancing issues” the decision was made to not include them at launch, rather, to postpone them and add them at an undisclosed time after launch. Many players anticipating the game have vented their frustration with this choice in direction, with players stating that we should have every class available when the game launches in the West.

Regardless, we still don’t have a 100% confirmed release date for the game this year, other than it’ll definitely be this year.

A clip was taken directly from DatModz’ stream detailing the release date for Lost Ark’s first Closed Beta test. For those of you that don’t understand how this applies to Lost Ark or why we should even care, DatModz was one of three streamers that Amazon gave permission to stream the Alpha test for Lost Ark. Three.
Every other streamer, every other gamer was under an NDA that prevented discussion of the game in any form. And while I’m not sure why DatModz went and leaked this information, it’s pretty huge.

Now Lost Ark is available to pre-purchase right now via Steam. There are Founder’s Packs ranging from $25 through $100 and each of them has their own worth.
While the game is going to be 100% free-to-play, the Founder’s Packs in question do provide players access to not only a 3-day head start, but also confirmed Closed Beta access. Which, according to DatModz will be next month in July.

During the Alpha test the game received “overwhelmingly positive” reviews from players. This makes sense. Mrs Stix and I have streamed hundreds of hours of Lost Ark over on Twitch over the last year, and thoroughly enjoyed a lot of what we got to experience.
From the absolutely stunning graphics, to the fast fluid action combat, to the character creation, to the… well the story was in Russian and translated into very basic English, but I’m sure once we’re capable of getting into the translated story, it’ll be pretty solid.
It honestly seemed pretty JRPG-y to me. Kinda what you’d see out of an Anime, which works as the MMO community and Anime community share a lot of similar tastes.

Now pertaining specifically to DatModz’ leak, apparently towards the end of his Lost Ark stream, after he’d finished up, he went on to state that he had discussed the topic with “some Amazon guys” and that they had confirmed their intentions of having the Closed Beta ready by “late next month.”
“Late next month,” of course, meaning towards the end of July. However, other than providing him with a somewhat specific, but still slightly vague release window, they noted they didn’t want to commit to an exact release date in the chance that they can’t live up to that promise.
DatModz went on to reiterate this in future streams – unrelated to Lost Ark, and while he could be making the entire thing up for whatever reason, I feel as though a person of his size potentially making something like that up would be disasterous for his streaming career.
And very unprofessional. So I feel as though it’s safe to take him at his word and assume Amazon are planning a late-July, early-August release window for Lost Ark’s closed beta at the very latest.
I didn’t play during the Alpha test phase myself, even though we could have. Mrs Stix created a character and wanted to check the English voice overs and localization out.
She seemed relatively satisfied with those, but more importantly, upon discussing the test phase with other participants, they confirmed that there weren’t too many bugs present within the game.
This is promising news as bugs – issues are what cause delays to happen. The more bugs that are found, the longer the delay. And since the majority of issues players encountered were addressed with relative speed, it’s a safe bet to assume it’s definitely within the realm of possibility to meet that deadline.

Now players have been wondering how long the Closed Beta will last, and while nothing is set in stone as of June 18th 2021, the Beta test is expected to last longer than the Alpha test phase did, with the Alpha test running shy of a week.
Players are speculating anywhere from a week to a month – with some players of the opinion that the Closed Beta will likely run all the way until the official launch of the game rolls out.
While I don’t want to speculate personally, I would wager a guess we’ll at least get several weeks out of it. And if you’re eagerly anticipating playing the MMO as much as I’m sure you are, purchasing Beta access might be well within your best interests.
Purchasing Beta access, allowing you to play a month or two in advance of the official launch for a mere $25 seems like a pretty good deal to me, honestly. But I’m aware not everyone can afford that.
In which case, there will be Closed Beta keys around the internet for you to win and hopefully secure ahead of its launch later this year, much like they did with the Alpha Test.

I know Lost Ark has been in the news recently for a variety of reasons. We don’t have anything new concerning the IP restrictions in place that is directly affecting a large percentage of the world.
I have a dedicated video addressing the restrictions in question, along with what Amazon and Smilegate are doing to attempt to open the game to a larger audience.
However taking a look at the all-time peak that the Alpha had alone, almost 16,000 players, and given that this was a small-scale Alpha test, it is very evident that anticipation for the game is reaching hype that is probably only matched by Final Fantasy XIV’s Endwalker expansion in November.
If there were almost 16,000 players during an NDA Alpha test, can you imagine how many players are going to be logging in to play when the Beta opens up next month? Multiply that number by.. well, I don’t think you can accurately gauge the hype for this game right now.
This hype has been building for a number of years now.

As of right now, Lost Ark has yet to confirm their exact release date. In my last video I covered how they had changed the date to “October 21st, 2021” for a very short period, before changing it to “December 31st, 2021.”
It’s uncertain whether that was a “whoopsie!” moment that potentially cost someone their job, or they intentionally wanted to leak the release date to players.
Nevertheless, the MMO is coming in the next several months. And before it arrives, I do want to note that while this is a very fun MMO, I do not think it is “the savior of the MMO genre.”
I’ve seen a few reviews on Steam saying “this is what we’ve all been waiting for. This is the MMO to breathe new life into the genre, to save it.” and having played it for hundreds of hours, I just want players to keep their expectations in check.
The game is gorgeous. The combat is a lot of fun. There’s a strong narrative present. But at the end of the day, this is a very particular type of MMO.
It’s a top-down isometric MMO that uses your mouse to move your character, as your WASD keys are bound to abilities. You can’t get a camera angle behind you or over your shoulder.
There are players claiming pay to win is prevalent in the South Korean version, and, heck, Amazon haven’t even shown us the Cash Shop yet.

So while I definitely don’t want to inhibit any potential success Lost Ark might have, I do want players to go into this with the knowledge that it isn’t a “genre-changing” experience. Good game? Yes. And that’s all we really need from it. To be a good game.
I had fun with it and I’ll have fun with it again when it launches later this year, but don’t expect it to compete with WoW or Final Fantasy XIV, nor do I expect it to redefine the genre.