The new MMORPG Lost Ark was released in soft launch yesterday, February 8. This means that only those who pre-ordered are allowed to play. Nevertheless, the game is already overwhelmed – and even more people are watching on Twitch.
What happened in Lost Ark? The head of Lost Ark mentioned in December and again shortly before the release, that he hoped for around 200,000 concurrent players for the release in the West.
This hope has now already more than doubled at the soft launch. At 10:00 PM, Lost Ark reached its peak with 532,476 concurrent players. The rush was so great that new servers went live later that night. For the Europe region, there were two new servers.
Whether this number can still grow by the release on the 11th remains to be seen, but interest in the game is enormous.
Even more users wanted to check out the game first, as more than double the number of people watching on Twitch compared to those playing.
Over 1.2 million viewers on Twitch
Lost Ark surpasses New World on Twitch: Lost Ark amazed an incredible 1,273,119 Twitch viewers on February 8 at 7:00 PM. At that time, this was about four times the number of people watching League of Legends and more than double that of those in Just Chatting (via SteamDB).
- The big competitor, the MMORPG New World, captivated at its peak on September 16, 2021, with 985,738 viewers.
- WoW peaked at 1.1 million viewers in 2020.
- Lost Ark thus crowns itself the MMORPG king on Twitch.
How is that possible? At the launch of Lost Ark, there were some issues with unpacking and the servers. Many users could not play right at the start and had to wait until they could unpack and start the game. This pushed the numbers up.
Additionally, Amazon started the Legends of Lost Ark event, where viewers could earn in-game rewards via Drops by watching on Twitch. For these Drops, you had to watch Lost Ark for at least 4 hours, which is exceptionally high for Twitch Drops.
Furthermore, many of the big streamers played the new MMORPG, which drew a lot of attention. MMO icon Asmongold had over 220,000 viewers at times just on his channel.
The community is thrilled
How is the game received? On Steam, the MMORPG currently has a 96% positive rating, which is an extremely good value. This means that only 78 out of a total of 1,942 reviews for Lost Ark are negative.
Also, on Metacritic, which aggregates ratings from various professional sites, the game currently has a score of 81 / 100 based on 23 reviews. Of these, 21 give a positive rating, and only 2 are undecided about the new MMORPG.
This gives Lost Ark currently the 4th place among the best-rated PC games of 2022 on Metacritic, just behind Monster Hunter Rise, God of War, and OlliOlli World. The website TheGamer even gives the A-MMORPG a flat 100 points.
What do the players say? The community around Lost Ark celebrates the game. Only the issues at launch concern the players, which is not necessarily noticed on reddit. Most fans take the launch difficulties with humor and are looking forward to traveling to Arkesia soon.
The positive reception of Lost Ark is likely also due to the fact that players already knew relatively well what to expect. Since the game has been running in Korea since 2018, many fans had already formed a clear picture of the MMORPG before trying it today.
But even those who were unsure could determine beforehand that the game might not be for them at all. Both could be good reasons why the general sentiment in the communities around Lost Ark is very positive.
Have you played Lost Ark yourself? How do you find the new MMORPG so far, and have you been able to have fun in the world of Arkesia despite the initial difficulties? Or have you still not been able to decide on one of the 15 classes? Feel free to let us know in the comments here on MeinMMO.
If the 15 classes at launch are not enough for you, the head of Lost Ark finally reveals how quickly we will get new classes.
