Lost Ark Achieves New Heights With Elgasia Update

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.