Lost Ark Shatters Concurrent Player Records

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.