In the MMORPG Lost Ark, there has been a fierce battle against bots since the release. This battle seems to be won for now, but players are skeptical about whether it will remain so in the long term. Despite the generally good mood, a new problem has emerged. We at MeinMMO summarize.
What has Lost Ark done about bots? Over the past few months, bots have repeatedly been a hot topic in the MMORPG. Some servers were long overrun by these automated characters, and players accused publisher Amazon of merely watching.
However, in June, Amazon launched a major attack against the bots and banned over 600,000 accounts in just one week. Some fans were not satisfied, fearing that this measure would only solve the problem temporarily and that the bots would soon return to the game.
With the large update on June 30, the publisher has added some mechanics to the game that are intended to keep bots at bay. Now, from time to time, players must solve a CAPTCHA when they want to enter a new area.
Additionally, gameplay changes have irritated bots, such as the requirement to keep valuable items for three days before they can be traded in any way. This limits the bots’ ability to trade for real money and seems to be bearing fruit. Fans are celebrating Amazon for these measures in the forums, and the mood is at a recent high point.
Furthermore, the demon Vykas came to the game with the June update – check her out in our trailer:
The player numbers are plummeting: As a result of the harsh sanctions against bots and real-money traders, the number of daily active accounts in Lost Ark is plummeting. While over 870,000 accounts were logged in simultaneously at the beginning of June, the MMORPG now has only 250,000 simultaneous players (via steamcharts.com).
And although the active fans of Lost Ark do not see this as a problem and are generally pleased that there are now more players than bots in the MMORPG, a new discussion suddenly emerges.
“We simply have too many servers”
What are the fans complaining about? The discussion itself is not new, but has been rekindled by the departure of all the bots. At the western release of the game, Lost Ark was heavily populated, leading Amazon to quickly install and launch many new servers for the MMORPG.
The entire region of Europe West, for example, only came into the game weeks after the launch and is largely deserted today. However, this problem is not limited to later-added servers; even actually lively regions sometimes feel deserted.
A fan on reddit recently drew a comparison to the Korean version, providing fodder for discussion. He notes that in Korea, there are about 260,000 simultaneous users online. They are distributed across 8 different servers and one region.
The West is currently showing similar numbers, namely 252,000 simultaneous users, but is currently spread across 58 servers in 5 regions.
Regions are essentially server clusters. While players can play together within the same region through roundabout means, it is not possible between regions.
The counter-argument: Some users in the comments find the uproar exaggerated and deem at least the high number of regions simply necessary. User ffiction8 also points out that players in the West are distributed across more than 10 different time zones and that, therefore, even though the peak of 24 players is almost identical, there would be significantly more actual players than in Korea.
Some comments consider the entire discussion pointless. User Ikrai1212 writes that more servers were simply necessary at launch. At the same time, it is now the case that there are too many servers. Both opinions do not have to exclude each other.
Additionally, there is discussion about what might happen to the Europe West region. While it is technically possible to close servers on the same cluster and migrate them to others, doing so with an entire region is not straightforward.
Smilegate and Amazon already confirmed in March that a transfer between regions is technically not possible. However, if player numbers on the Europe West server continue to decline, players fear that it could soon completely vanish.
“Amazon is in a no-win situation”
What is the mood among the fans? Despite the discussion about the servers, the overall mood surrounding the MMORPG has improved. The steps taken against the bots are disliked by some, yet the results are very well received.
This is also noticeable as soon as discussions in the forums shift to other topics. One quickly gets the impression that people are currently more positive towards Amazon than they were a few weeks ago. Even in the server discussion, many players point out that Amazon can hardly do anything right.
They had to bring more servers at launch to reduce the enormous waiting times, even though they knew that they could not easily turn them off again. Here, there is refreshingly much understanding for the publisher in the comment section.
What are the fans saying? We would like to share some of the comments so you can form your own opinion (via reddit):
- RenegadeReddit writes: “Amazon is in a no-win situation. They had to set up more servers to handle the launch. Now they have no technology to merge them.”
- Jiend wonders: “Why don’t they use the server structure of Guild Wars 2? They deploy their patches live without downtime. Not being able to play once a week is just crazy in 2022, regardless of how full these servers are in the end.”
- Retrac says: “It would be great if each region were reduced to 5 servers. Comparing us directly with Korea isn’t possible anyway. We have 4 peak times a day over EU, NA, and OCE. So we should easily have 2 to 3 times more players than Korea.”
- jimmyslol writes: “No matter how many servers. They lost 70% of the Steam population in one day. It’s crazy how many bots were in the game.”
- Bogzy writes: “It has been a long battle against the bots, but it is finally showing results. Good job.”
What do you think of the current situation in Lost Ark? Are you still playing the MMORPG regularly? Do you still have problems with bots? How lively is your server right now? Feel free to let us know in the comments here on MeinMMO.
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