The German company Gameforge has made a strong sales start with the new MMORPG Swords of Legends Online, selling 200,000 units in the first week. The publisher is celebrating the success of the game and assures that the online role-playing game will continue to be developed strongly. Initial problems caused by the influx of players have been resolved. On Steam, the player count currently stands at around 10,000.
How did the launch of Swords of Legends Online go?
- Normally, new MMORPGs launch terribly: there are long waiting times and server issues. Especially on the first weekends, when particularly many players log in, often nothing works. The MMORPG Swords of Legends Online has largely been spared from such problems: The launch went smoothly in Europe, while there were minor issues in the USA.
- On Steam, the MMORPG peaked at 18,701 players – an average of 10,040 people played Swords of Legends Online. The Steam reviews are at 76%, placing it in the upper middle range.
- The publisher Gameforge is pleased with 200,000 units sold in the first days after the launch on July 9.
What does Gameforge say: In an interview with the US site MMORPG.com, Gameforge expresses extreme satisfaction with the first days of Swords of Legends Online.
“We are very grateful for the great reception we have received from the media, players, and content creators. We will continue to work hard with all partners like Microsoft to provide players with a great gaming experience.”
Server issues in the USA have been resolved with Microsoft
What’s going on with Microsoft? While the launch in Europe went smoothly, there were some problems on the West Coast of the USA and in Oceania. Players there experienced high ping issues.
However, Gameforge says that these problems have already been resolved. They are typical issues for all games: They result from the distance of players to the servers.
In conversations with Microsoft, these problems have been resolved.
200,000 units sold of the MMORPG Swords of Legends Online
So many games have been sold already: Gameforge says that the success of Swords of Legends Online has remained strong over the weekend. They have now sold 200,000 units of Swords of Legends Online.
Are new servers planned for Swords of Legends Online? Even though the game continues to grow, Gameforge believes that no new servers are needed. The existing ones can handle the load, and new ones would not have solved the weekend’s problems. After all, they ran smoothly in Europe.
Swords of Legends Online 10 times larger on Steam than Astellia
What’s behind this: In relation, the Steam launch of Swords of Legends Online is extremely large for “Gameforge” standards.
- The last big MMO from Gameforge was released in November 2019 (Kingdom Under Fire 2) on Steam and peaked at 1200 players, averaging 620. Swords of Legends Online is about 10 times larger.
- The MMORPG Astellia came to Steam in February 2020 – it had even lower numbers, averaging only 700 players.
- The last “big new MMORPG” on Steam was MapleStory 2 in October 2018. It reached 20,000 players on average. However, MapleStory 2 was a free-to-play game, which traditionally has high numbers. MapleStory 2 could not maintain its launch success on Steam and quickly shut down.
These numbers show that there is a high demand for new MMORPGs that offer PVE and have appealing visuals. Even though Swords of Legends Online is still missing the big hype, it seems to have at least moved into a higher category than “totally niche games”.
While SOLO still does not compare to top MMORPGs on Steam like Final Fantasy XIV (31,000 players), Black Desert Online (22,000), or The Elder Scrolls Online (20,000 players), it is at least in the same league.
However, the Steam numbers are not a perfect comparison: the games often have other launchers or even console versions. Swords of Legends Online is available on Steam, Epic Game Store, and its own launcher.
If you’re interested in diving into the new MMORPG Swords of Legends Online, we have an article for you:
