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The MMO’s Steam rating is sliding down as EU players grow tired of lengthy wait times.
While Lost Ark players on the NA servers have been able to play without waiting, players on EU servers are complaining of queues that last for hours. «18,587 in queue», says one user review from Sweden. «See you next week.» Steam’s user review rating for Lost Ark has slid down to Mixed, and European queue times are a recurring frustration. «3-4 Hrs in queue», says a German player. «3 hrs to figure out the Character Name because Names are Cross-Server. Everything remot[e]ly normal is already taken. No Numbers, no Special Chara[c]ters, no First/Last Name. My Characters Name is now ‘aripwonmhvj'».
Publisher Amazon Games and developer Smilegate RPG are aware of the issue, and have announced a joint effort to add more European servers. Those servers will be part of a new region separate to the current Central Europe region, however, and Lost Ark servers do not support cross-region play. «Due to the game’s architecture this is the only way to accommodate more players in Europe», the announcement says.
«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. If you plan to restart in the new region, you may wish to hold off on claiming any ‘per Account’ items, such as the additional Founder’s Pack Redemption, until you have created a character and are able to redeem in the new region.»
Part of Lost Ark’s design ties player progress to their server. Each character has their own combat level, but activities like collectible-hunting add xp to a roster level shared by every character you make on the same server. Some items and currency are also shared between characters on the same server, which is why server transfers, though much-requested, are not currently allowed.
While adding more servers will prevent the situation from getting worse and give new players a way to skip the queues, existing players on the Central Europe servers will have to start over if they want the same benefit, or continue waiting for things to improve.
To make players feel better about it, everyone who logs in on any server between the time the new region goes live and March 2 at 8.59AM CET / March 1 at 11.59PM PT will receive the following items as a gift.
A date for when the new servers go live was not announced. «We’ll share an update on exact timings as soon as possible», the announcement said.
Jody’s first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia’s first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He’s written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody’s first article for PC Gamer was published in 2015, he edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and actually did play every Warhammer videogame.
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