007 First Light is a pretty good James Bond videogame and, by early appearances, a hit, and so it's no great surprise that more of them are going to happen: So says Amazon Gaming general manager Jeff Gattis in a new interview with Polygon. But will IO Interactive be involved in the process? That, apparently, is uncertain.

Amazon acquired the James Bond movie franchise in 2025, five years after IO Interactive announced that it was making a Bond game. Because of that pre-existing deal, Amazon "didn't have the full rights to this First Light James Bond game," Gattis said, and so IOI was able to self-publish. But sequels, he continued, will be "done by MGM and, theoretically, by Amazon Game Studios."

Bringing future Bond games in-house is part of Amazon's strategy to capitalize on the properties it owns, and its ability to deliver them across a wide range of media.

"We do see this continued integration of video and movies and videogames, where that line is becoming much more blurry," Gattis said. "We think that's a real opportunity for us to create IP that extends—or kind of expands upon—TV shows and movies. So there'll be a Tomb Raider TV show on Prime Video that'll go alongside the games. There's a lot of things we have in the works on new games that'll relate to Prime Video IP."

That naturally leads into questions about what kind of Bond games we can look forward to in the future. After years of trying and failing to establish itself as a force in gaming, Amazon famously opted to move away from big-budget development in 2025: Steve Boom, Amazon's vice president of audio, Twitch, and games, said at the time that Amazon Games leadership had been evaluating its plans over the past several months "through the lens of our mission to deliver the very best gaming experiences to customers while leaning into the things that Amazon does best," citing as an example the "AI-powered Snoop Dogg game where he's a judge."

You know what that means—it's time for the trailer:

Amazon hasn't completely abandoned the space: It is, for example, publishing the upcoming Tomb Raider games Legacy of Atlantis and Catalyst, and it could strike a similar publishing deal with IOI for a new Young Jimbo adventure. But it might also decide that, dollar for dollar, it's better off with an AI-led mobile game—free for Prime Video subscribers, maybe. That sounds terrible, but given the company's history with games, I don't think anything's off the table at this point.

I've reached out to Amazon for more information on its plans for the future of 007 First Light and will update if I receive a reply.

Some high-profile layoffs at Amazon Game Studios has Lost Ark fans worried that the game is approaching its end of days, despite still putting up decent player numbers on Steam. In a message posted on its website, the Lost Ark dev team acknowledged that cuts have happened, but said it will "keep working to improve the game and move Lost Ark forward with every update."

Layoffs were first reported by former Lost Ark community manager Roxanne Sabo, who wrote on X (via PCGamesN), "Half a decade of work, countless innovative projects, a career-changing promotion, a Forbes 30 under 30 award. To the Lost Ark Community: You will always be my proudest achievement."

Producer Henry Stelter shared news of his own layoffs on X and a longer message on LinkedIn, where he wrote, "With the latest round of layoffs at Amazon Games, I was informed this morning that my 9 year tenure with Amazon would be drawing to a close soon."

Sean Hamilton, another Amazon Games community manager, reported being laid off in his own post, in which he said "many talented teammates and friends" were impacted by the cuts as well.

Welp, it was my turn to be sacrificed to the blood god. I was laid off this morning.After 5.5 years at Amazon Games I got the axe. I’m so proud of the great UR team I built there, the talented researchers I had a chance to work with, and the skilled game teams we supported. 💔

— @kohizeri.bsky.social (@kohizeri.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-03-18T20:52:20.470Z

The response to the layoffs among some in the Lost Ark subreddit is grim, and not just because many of the departed developers were popular among the community. Amazon effectively gave up on the big-budget game business in 2025, opting instead to embrace AI slop, and that slash-and-burn included the decision to pull the plug on New World, which will go dark at the end of January 2027.

New World wasn't a huge hit but it did seem moderately successful, at least based on concurrent player counts—but not successful enough to keep the lights on. Lost Ark can easily be slotted into the same category: Doing okay, but maybe not okay enough.

"After NW, it was just a matter of months before they do the same with the Lost Ark team," redditor Bomahzz wrote. "I hope they won't kill the game but I suppose it takes minimum effort for them as SGS [original Lost Ark developer Smilegate Studios] is doing all the work besides the localization."

Comment from r/lostarkgame

A couple redditors noted that the closure of New World is slated to happen just before the fifth anniversary of Amazon's Lost Ark launch, and predicted the timing means Amazon Game Studios will be rolled up entirely, passing what remains of its gaming responsibilities on to the cloud platform Luna. Given that, a few express hope that Smilegate will find another Western publisher (Smilegate itself only publishes Lost Ark in South Korea), and the game will be allowed to carry on.

For the immediate future, though, Amazon says it will continue to forge ahead. "We want to address some recent changes you may have noticed. Some talented individuals have recently left the Lost Ark team as part of broader organizational decisions. We're grateful for their contributions, and transitions like these are never easy for anyone involved," a message on the Lost Ark website states.

"The March 11th 'Ends of the Abyss' update six days ago, brought a story conclusion, a host of quality of life and balance updates, Guardian Raid improvements, Paradise Season 3 and much more. We hear your feedback, both positive and constructive, in and out of game and it will shape what comes next. We know trust is earned through actions, not words. We'll keep working to improve the game and move Lost Ark forward with every update. Thank you for your continued support, passion, and feedback! We'll see you in Arkesia!"

XDespite being a moderate success, Amazon's New World MMO will be taken out behind the woodshed on January 31, 2027 and put down for good. But Facepunch Studios chief operating officer Alistair McFarlane says "games should never die," and has thus made an offer to buy it—and a couple other well-known industry figures have said they're willing to help.

First things first: I don't know if this is a serious offer. It sounds like it isn't, but also like it could be—or, at the very least, that it might be one of those situations that starts out as a joke but then spirals into an actual thing. It's the sort of ambiguity I normally enjoy, except when it makes my job more difficult, such as now.

Anyway, it all began when Facepunch developer Errn wrote on X, "I tried to get Ali to buy NW for me but he told me to fuck off :(" McFarlane replied, "25m, final offer," tagging the Amazon Games account. He then followed up with the message, "Games should never die."

Not the most iron-clad, lawyers-and-contracts offer, no, but it did attract attention from some interesting quarters. "I'll go halfs with you if we release the original NW alpha as a separate game mode," Pocketpair communications director and publishing manager John Buckley wrote in response to McFarlane's message.

Simon Collins-Laflamme, who recently (and, it seems, quite successfully) rescued Hytale from cancellation oblivion, also chimed in: "If you need tips about buying cancelled games, lmk."

Popular streamer Gothalion expressed enthusiasm for the idea too, leading Errn, who started the whole thing, to repeat, "We offered to buy it to save it."

All in good fun, and probably not something to be taken too seriously, although sure, it could happen. Amazon is basically throwing in the towel on game development anyway, and while $25 million isn't big money on the Amazon scale, it's $25 million more than it'll get if it just closes the game and walks away. Surely that'd be enough to finance a small truckload of AI Snoop Dogg garbage, right?

First and foremost, though, is whether McFarlane is actually serious about the whole thing, and on that point, well, he's not saying no.

"We're opening a publishing arm of the business quite soon and we're always looking for new opportunities and we are open to all avenues," McFarlane told PC Gamer. "Games shouldn't die. Garry's Mod turns 20 this year, and Rust just recently turned 12, with the latter thriving still. We don't like to kill games off."

Dare to dream, New World fans. A lot can happen in a year.

Amazon's slow, shambolic withdrawal from mainstream videogame development continued apace with today's announcement that it has offloaded the free-to-play MOBA March of Giants, which is still in development, onto Ubisoft. The deal will also see Amazon Games Montreal, headed up by former Rainbow Six Siege creative director Xavier Marquis and Ubisoft Toronto managing director Alexandre Parizeau, join Ubisoft as part of its Montreal studio.

"Returning to Ubisoft brings things full circle," said Marquis, the creative director on March of Giants. "We built some of our most meaningful work here, and we're excited to continue developing March of Giants from within Ubisoft. This game has enormous potential, and I know Ubisoft can help us take it to the next level."

Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot shared similar sentiments, saying that March of Giants "has a real opportunity to bring something fresh and dynamic to players, and to help Ubisoft compete in one of gaming's biggest arenas."

"We're looking forward to welcoming back Alexandre, Xavier, and many of the seasoned March of Giants team who have previously worked at Ubisoft, and the entire team's ambition, creativity and talent align perfectly with our desire to build bold new experiences for players," Guillemot said. "We look forward to supporting them as they shape the future of this promising new IP."

The MOBA genre can indeed be lucrative, if you happen to be the company that made League of Legends or Dota 2. For everyone else, it's more of a fistfight over the crumbs. Gigantic: Rampage Edition and Seekers of Skyveil both crashed out quickly after launch, and while Smite 2 continues to trundle along, Hi-Rez Studios has struggled badly with layoffs and game shutdowns over the past couple years. The only game with the potential to shake things up in the genre is Deadlock, almost entirely due to the fact it's being developed by Valve.

The response to the March of Giants closed alpha in September might suggest that it's in for a similarly rough ride. Not that the reaction is overly negative, there just doesn't seem to be much of it at all: The "closed alpha recap" post, the most recent update, has drawn a total of six comments, and the game's Steam forum in general is largely devoid of activity; the March of Giants Discord seems similarly moribund.

How likely it is that Ubisoft will be able to turn that around is anyone's guess, although the odds don't strike me as particularly great. But assuming it follows the LoL/Dota 2 pricing scheme, March of Giants does seem like it could be a good fit for Ubisoft's focus on live service games in the future.

Amazon, meanwhile, hasn't completely stepped back from the videogame business. It remains committed to publishing the two new Tomb Raider games announced at The Game Awards 2025, and it also seemingly sees big things in AI-fuelled garbage like Courtroom Chaos Featuring Snoop Dog.

This may not be a great time for Ubisoft to try busting into the MOBA biz, but at least it's better than that.

An Insider Gaming report says Glowmade Games will lay off employees in January 2026 after its debut game, the Amazon-published King of Meat, flopped badly. While the number of employees being put out of work isn't known, sources told the site that the process began earlier this month with discussions about voluntary redundancies that would impact about a dozen people.

Word of the layoffs, confirmed by multiple Glowmade employees on LinkedIn, comes just a couple months after the release of King of Meat, a "co-op party platformer" for up to four players. It's yet another ugly outcome for a game studio, but what makes this case particularly interesting is that the report claims "leadership"—whether that's at Glowmade or Amazon isn't specified—was expecting a concurrent player count for King of Meat of at least 100,000.

The actual number? On Steam, it peaked at just 320, according to SteamDB, a number it only managed to achieve thanks to a free weekend. The player count quickly tailed off after that to double-digits, and at this moment sits at just 12, enough to populate three matches.

That doesn't tell the full story, since King of Meat is also available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S. But even if each of those platforms had 100 times as many players as Steam, which seems extremely unlikely, King of Meat would still only be 1/50th (figures approximate, I am bad at math) of the way toward the minimum number of players anticipated by management.

That's not just a big flop, it also speaks very poorly of the judgment of the high-ups who thought this game would be a hit on that scale. We can't say for certain whether that reported figure is accurate, but we can say that a lot of money and effort was poured into marketing King of Meat, including an announcement trailer at the Geoff Keighley-hosted Opening Night Live show at Gamescom 2024—that couldn't have been cheap—and an entire Mr. Beast special, complete with $250,000 prize.

Optimism is great—you won't get far in the videogame business without it—but the expectations placed on King of Meat were wildly out of place. And that's not just hindsight speaking: Turn the page back to that ONL reveal in August 2024, when PC Gamer senior editor Wes Fenlon said King of Meat "seems doomed to be a casualty of the live service era before it's even out."

What comes next for King of Meat isn't clear, but probably nothing good. Amazon made major cuts to its gaming business as part of a massive wave of layoffs in October, which also saw it pull the plug on New World, a not-terribly-old MMO that was still attracting a decent audience. If New World can't make it on Amazon's watch, I don't imagine King of Meat has much hope for a bright future either.

I've reached out to Glowmade for comment and will update if I receive a reply.

While Amazon's announcement that it would be ending updates for its MMO New World: Aeternum came as a surprise to many, given that MMOs with lower player counts have carried on for years, it didn't come to a surprise to all of the devs. At least, not to the ones who snuck a goodbye letter into the Nighthaven expansion released on October 13.

Senior game designer Rachel Barnum tweeted the location of the note, which can be found on an island near the Tower of Strength in Nighthaven, crediting it to quest/level/game designer Jason Bowes. It reads:

We were there when you first found Thorpe in the forsaken grove after dragging yourself across a foreign beach. We were there when you found your first settlement, and explored its charm and denizens. We were there when you fought pirates, tigers, corrupted, ghosts, and all manner of hazards across the land. We were there when you set foot on forsaken sands filled with lost secrets and hidden dangers. We were there when you discovered the untamed wilds filled with beasts and verdant jungles. We were there when you crept into the dark heart of lands filled with opulence, madness, and terror.

Through it all we watched. We delighted. We reveled in your enjoyment of every perfect moment, every carefully crafted story, and we even bore witness to the joining of two souls who met here in Aeternum.

We did it all for you dear adventurer.

Thank you for so many amazing stories, triumphs, and fits of laughter.

We raise a glass to our fallen comrades:

Divya
Shaun
Kelvin
Aaron

Good luck, and good night.

The Nighthaven expansion and accompanying update will be the last addition to New World, though bug fixes and some seasonal events will continue, and Amazon has committed to keeping the servers "live through 2026". Though the option to buy New World was removed from Steam, that was apparently an accident, and it's now been restored for anyone who wants to join the funeral march as another MMO begins its crawl toward the grave.

September 30, 2016 was a big day for Amazon Game Studios: It was on that day, at TwitchCon, it unveiled Breakaway, Crucible, and New World, signalling a major push into the realm of big-budget game development. Not quite a decade later, we find ourselves standing amidst the rubble of that once-great ambition, with a single question on our minds: What the hell went wrong?

Because things very definitely did go wrong. First, Amazon halted development of Breakaway in 2018 after some iffy previews and an open alpha that failed to impress. It followed that up by not halting development of Crucible, even though it probably should have given that Crucible ended up being 'un-released' just a month after it went live and was ultimately canned outright.

And yesterday, it nailed the trifecta: New World, despite appearing to be at least a moderate success (which makes it a big success by Amazon standards) was brought to an end: Amazon said the game will continue to run until at least the end of 2026 (although it also said New World would remain available for purchase, a commitment that held up for about 12 hours) but active development is over.

Various other whiffs have been interspersed throughout—failed games, forgotten game stores, that sort of thing—but for me, the fates of those three games really encapsulate Amazon's gaming misadventure: Big talk, half-assed execution, ugly endings, all of it leading to yesterday's announcement of major layoffs at Amazon Games.

Of course there's no single answer to the question of what the hell went wrong, because obviously a lot of things did. But the end of New World, and seemingly of Amazon's gaming ambitions as a whole, bring to mind what former Prime Gaming vice president Ethan Evans had to say about it earlier this year—essentially, that hubris and money are a dangerous combination.

Amazon's overarching goal, according to a LinkedIn post we reported on in February, was to "disrupt the game platform Steam." No problemo, right? As Evans wrote on LinkedIn, "We were at least 250x bigger [than Steam]," and that's a pretty good starting point.

Ah, but problemo indeed. "The 15+ year long attempt to challenge Steam started before I was VP of Prime Gaming, but we never cracked the code," Evans wrote. "Not under my leadership or anyone else's."

Twitch tried to break into the digital marketplace via acquisition, and failed; then it tried to build its own storefront into Twitch, which was also a bust. Then it built the cloud gaming service Luna, which went largely unnoticed. Steam, meanwhile, continued its uncontested dominance of PC gaming, ably guided by Gabe Newell and a potato.

"At Amazon, we assumed that size and visibility would be enough to attract customers, but we underestimated the power of existing user habits," Evans admitted in his February LinkedIn post. "We never validated our core assumptions before investing heavily in solutions. The truth is that gamers already had the solution to their problems, and they weren't going to switch platforms just because a new one was available.

"We needed to build something dramatically better, but we failed to do so. And we needed to validate our assumptions about our customers before starting to build. But we never really did that either. Just because you are big enough to build something doesn't mean people will use it."

The extent of Amazon's failure to crack the Steam nut is revealed in the fact that not only did it fail to compete, but lots of people didn't even know it was trying in the first place. That's, uhh, really not a good sign.

Today I learned amazon had a platform competing against Steam. lol

— @3mbg.bsky.social (@3mbg.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-10-29T19:21:13.716Z

Amazon: "you took everything from me"Steam:

— @bearpigman.bsky.social (@bearpigman.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-10-29T19:21:13.771Z

Amazon was OFFICIALLY competing against Steam this whole time?

— @sliwinski.bsky.social (@sliwinski.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-10-29T19:21:13.744Z

I’ve had steam since it was a thing, and this is quite literally the first time I’ve heard they have a game store Like I knew about New World or whatever their MMORPG was but that’s it.

— @richs.bsky.social (@richs.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2025-10-29T19:21:13.688Z

Amazon isn't giving up on games entirely, but it's shifting focus away from major productions like New World to stuff like the AI-powered Snoop Dogg game where he's a judge. I'm sure that'll work out much better.

Original story:

In the wake of "strategic changes" at Amazon that cost 14,000 jobs and drove a stake through the heart of its best-known RPG, New World, the game's Steam page has become a sort of tombstone for it. Options to purchase the game are gone, the recent reviews are an angry chorus of fans blindsided by Amazon's decision to kill the game, and even the screenshots have vanished. In their place is a single, static image informing onlookers that content updates are done.

You can compare the page's glow-down yourself. On the Wayback Machine, a version of the New World Steam page from October 7 features 14 screenshots, three trailers, and 'Mostly Positive' recent reviews, plus options to purchase either the game's standard or deluxe edition. It's now all gone.

Which is more than a little odd, since Amazon explicitly said yesterday that the MMO would remain available for purchase "on all platforms until further notice." Canny readers may note that Steam is a platform, and that no notice was given that the game was being removed from it. I've reached out to Amazon to ask about this, and I will update this piece if I hear back.

"New World: Aeternum is no longer releasing content updates. Season 10 and the Nighthaven Update (released in October 2025), were the final updates," says the page's only image. "Servers will remain active through 2026 and all existing content will continue to be playable but there will be no further content updates released in the game."

As you might expect, players who were rather enjoying their time in New World are unhappy with this sudden death knell. Servers might be slated to stay online through next year, but it doesn't feel especially cynical to think that, come 2027, they'll be unplugged sooner rather than later.

"Recently started playing [and] was enjoying it, now it's being shut down because Amazon being Amazon," reads one recent negative review. One player, with over 7,000 hours registered in the game, writes "Now AGS has 'sunset' the game. Corporate language meaning: we stopped understanding our own product and decided to turn off the lights.

"New World did not die because of the players. The players were loyal, stubborn, delusional, passionate and impossible to break. New World died because AGS kept reacting to the game like it was a problem instead of a miracle they accidentally created."

Perhaps the most heartbreaking recent review is actually a positive one. "I wish this game stayed for a little longer because it's very nice," wrote one reviewer with nearly 60 hours clocked.

I gotta say, it does feel remarkable how quickly Amazon has washed its hands of this whole thing. A few days ago I'd have told you that New World was one of the more successful games in the Bezos stable. Not a mega-success by any stretch, but a game that had carved out a niche for itself and seemed to be doing well off of it. Now its Steam page looks like one of those houses they blur on Google Maps because a horrible crime happened in there.

Perhaps it'll all be worth it when Amazon completes its casual-gaming pivot with its Luna streaming service and we're all playing the AI-powered 'Judge Snoop Dog' game. Hey, you never know.

Amazon Games was hit with "significant" layoffs today, part of the massive 14,000 job cuts announced by Amazon but also reflecting "strategic changes" at the company, including "the difficult decision to halt a significant amount of our first-party AAA game development work—specifically around MMOs." As it turns out, that includes the MMO New World: Aeternum, which will receive no further content updates and could be gone completely by the end of 2026.

"After four years of steady content updates and a major new console release, we've reached a point where it is no longer sustainable to continue supporting the game with new content updates," today's update states.

"The recently launched Season 10 and Nighthaven update will serve as the final content release for New World on PC and consoles. It is only after much consideration that we've reached this decision. To thank you, the New World community, for your support over the years, we have made the Nighthaven release available to you for free. To ensure all New World players can experience this content, we also made Rise of the Angry Earth free for all PC players."

This comes as a genuine surprise to me—a shock, really. New World wasn't a huge hit by any means but seemed a reasonably successful mid-tier MMO, which quite frankly is about as good as Amazon Games has managed. Its concurrent player count ebbed and flowed, but the peaks of 50,000 and 60,000 players suggests to me that the players are there—the failure is in keeping them engaged.

New World: Aeternum will remain available for purchase, and you'll still be able to buy in-game currency as usual, although I'm not sure why you'd want to. Because let's be honest here, the countdown clock is ticking: New World isn't being taken offline right away, and Amazon said it will "continue to keep the game running smoothly" with bug fixes and server merges as necessary. "World bosses, bonus weeks, and some seasonal events" will also continue, so New World will keep ticking along without any major hitches, at least until it becomes obvious that nothing new has happened in the past six months or so.

But Amazon only committed to keeping the New World servers "live through 2026," and the likelihood of it surviving beyond that, especially given the self-fulfilling swirl of declining player counts, is very slim. So I can see continuing to bang around in the game with your online pals as the sun slowly goes down, absolutely—but why would anyone put money into an MMO with no future?

More details on how exactly the plug will be pulled will be shared "in the coming months," but Amazon promised "provide a minimum of six months’ notice before making any changes that impact your ability to play New World: Aeternum."

Amazon's AI-powered layoff of 14,000 employees will see "significant" cuts made to its game division, according to a new Bloomberg report, which will result in a reduction in development efforts on big-budget games, including MMOs like New World.

The Bloomberg report cites a memo sent to Amazon Games employees by Steve Boom, Amazon's vice president of audio, Twitch, and games, which was confirmed and shared in full by Variety. In it, Boom says the layoffs are part of the sweeping cuts at Amazon, but also represent "strategic changes [that] go beyond what is happening company-wide."

Boom said Amazon Games leadership has been evaluating its plans over the past several months, "through the lens of our mission to deliver the very best gaming experiences to customers while leaning into the things that Amazon does best."

As an example, he cited Amazon Luna, which "leans into both streaming entertainment and delivering value for Prime members" with things like, uh, the "AI-powered Snoop Dogg game where he's a judge."

This is what Amazon envisions as the future of gaming.

Anyway, things are less rosy on the big-budget side of the coin, according to Boom: "While we’re proud of our successes in first-party AAA game development and publishing, we have made the difficult decision to halt a significant amount of our first-party AAA game development work—specifically around MMOs—within Amazon Game Studios, including making significant role reductions in our studios in Irvine and San Diego, as well as our central publishing team."

Despite the cuts, Boom said Amazon is continuing to work on the mysterious new Tomb Raider game with Crystal Dynamics, which made two rounds of layoffs of its own earlier this year, and an open world driving game being made by Maverick Games.

Amazon has struggled somewhat to establish itself in the videogame business, despite bringing virtually unlimited resources to the table. New World, rebranded last year to New World: Aeternum, seems a solid but not especially noteworthy success (update: perhaps I spoke too soon), but the free-to-play shooter Crucible was an unmitigated disaster, becoming one of the vanishingly few games I've ever seen actually be un-released. A Lord of the Rings MMO planned for 2022 was cancelled a year before its launch—after which Amazon for some reason decided to try again. It made a mess of the Western launch of Throne and Liberty in 2024, and earlier this month the co-op platformer King of Meat launched to virtually zero interest: SteamDB says there are currently eight people playing on Steam.

It hasn't been a Stadia-sized catastrophe, but neither has it been the cakewalk that Amazon apparently expected. Comparing the company's efforts to muscle in on Steam's territory, for instance, former Prime Gaming VP Ethan Evans said earlier this year that "we assumed that size and visibility would be enough to attract customers, but we underestimated the power of existing user habits. We never validated our core assumptions before investing heavily in solutions. The truth is that gamers already had the solution to their problems, and they weren't going to switch platforms just because a new one was available."

It seems so simple when you put it that way, but I guess when you're a top executive at one of the world's biggest companies, you have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars and put thousands of people out of work before you can really be sure. Boom told Variety earlier this month that Amazon's new focus on Luna does not mean it will be eliminating conventional game development entirely, but it will be moving more toward "console-friendly titles, known IPs, or known play patterns."

The number of Amazon Games employees being put out of work by these layoffs hasn't been revealed. I've reached out to Amazon for comment and will update if I receive a reply.

Lost Ark was mostly a pleasant surprise for me when I reviewed it back in 2022. I enjoyed both its spectacular ARPG combat and its increasingly absurd MMO story, which shifted from conventional fantasy fare to throwing you into enormous clown battles and exploring islands inhabited by Borrowers-like characters. But there came a point where the progression barriers were thrown down, and my movement across its colourful archipelago was increasingly inhibited by grind.

It seems I'm not the only person who has struggled with Lost Ark's progression, as developer Smilegate and the game's Western publisher Amazon are cooking up a bunch of changes designed to improve the RPG's forward momentum.

These changes were originally announced in a livestream that focussed on the Korean version of the game. Later, after some community members voiced concerns about plans to nerf gold income in various raids, Amazon published a Steam blog addressing how the changes will affect the Western version of Lost Ark.

Chief among these changes is a nerf to several crafting requirements in the game, with required gold and materials for several in-game crafting processes such as advanced honing and armour and weapon transcendence reduced by as much as 50%. While Amazon specifies the changes are not 1:1 with the Korean version, it does plan to implement many of the announced updates.

“To ease progression costs for new and returning players, we will be implementing the Transcendence and Advanced Honing nerfs,” the company writes. “These changes will help make progression more accessible without the negative impact that gold nerfs might have caused.”

Elsewhere, Smilegate is looking at an overhaul to Lost Ark's gem system, where players can plug gems into their skills to increase their damage or reduce their cooldowns. Smilegate feels like the system currently “creates barriers to both character progression and playstyle flexibility” and so is examining potential solutions to make the system more accessible.

In addition, Smilegate is planning to address Lost Ark's infamous T3 dead zone, a “known progression pain point” upon reaching character Tier 3 where character progression grinds to a halt. Apparently this is not exclusive to the Western version of the game, and something that Smilegate has wanted to deal with for some time. Now the studio is actively doing so, although Amazon says it's are not able to share the exact plans at the moment.

Why this sudden focus on smoothing player progression? Well, it may have something to do with the fact that Lost Ark's player retention isn't great. The game's Western launch was massive, attracting a peak concurrent 1.3 million players in February 2022, according to Steam DB. But that figure dropped off rapidly over the following six months and has declined consistently since.

In the last 24 hours, Lost Ark attracted just shy of 17,000 players at its peak. While not a bad number by most metrics, it's still a huge fall-off compared to launch. It's also a lower 24 hour peak concurrent than fellow Korean MMO Black Desert, a game that achieved a considerably smaller all-time peak of just over 60,000 concurrent players nearly six years ago.

From this, it's clear Lost Ark has a problem with picking up and holding onto new players, and it doesn't surprise me that ponderous progression is the issue. Lost Ark is at its best when you're barrelling through one of its wacky side adventures like an intercontinental ballistic missile flying through a circus, and I think the easier Smilegate makes it to encounter those stories, the more popular Lost Ark will be.

New World was Amazon's big swing into the world of MMOs, and when it launched in 2021 a lot was riding on it—especially after the embarrassing failure of Crucible. It couldn't have gone better. A perfect storm of Amazon marketing and an audience desperately hungry for a big blockbuster MMO led players to the shores of Aeternum in their droves. 

At its peak, around a million settlers duked it out in this new fantasy land together, netting Amazon its first proper videogame success story. Concurrent player numbers that high are rare, especially in a game with an upfront cost, but a more action-themed combat model, coupled with nods to the enduringly popular survival and crafting genre held it in good stead. 

That new MMO smell started to grow stale, however, and those numbers dramatically dropped; by spring of 2022 they had plateaued to around 20-30,000. Now, that's hardly a low number. Tens of thousands of players kept coming back and playing together, and New World managed to maintain this level of popularity until this year, where by May it had dwindled to less than 10,000 concurrent players. 

This dip was most likely due to the impending launch of New World: Aeternum, and this is where New World's story gets a bit confusing. See, Amazon immediately started treating New World: Aeternum like the launch of a new game. The initial announcement focused mostly on it launching on consoles, but it also completely omitted the fact that it was an MMO. It was an action-RPG that you could play with your friends, Amazon said. 

A dramatic pivot, for sure, but one that's almost purely marketing. During a presentation in June, I was told it was a "spiritual successor", but that's just not the case. New World: Aeternum is simply an update, and one of the only things setting it apart from your usual MMO update is the slightly frustrating way it's splitting the game up. Existing servers will become 'legacy worlds' that function like they always have. To enjoy the changes, you'll need to roll a new character on a 'standard world'. You'll be able to make new characters on the legacy servers, and even transfer standard characters over to them, but it doesn't work the other way around, meaning that you'll need to roll a new character on a new server to play New World: Aeternum.

Otherwise, it's just a pretty standard, if fairly big, MMO update—not even at the level of an expansion, let alone the major change that Amazon was initially touting. I should add, though, that the changes are broadly good things. The addition of the first 10-player raid, a free-for-all PvP zone, a gear score bump, cinematics, a new starting experience and, finally, swimming. All good stuff, undeniably, but there's nothing here to justify the rebranding or confusing messaging from Amazon—much of which it backpedalled after the original announcement.

MMOs change all the time. WoW, for instance, frequently includes big game-wide changes before the arrival of a new expansion, like The War Within's Warband system or the introduction of Chrome time—allowing players to level in whatever expansion they want—just before the arrival of Shadowlands. This is just a normal part of an MMO's lifecycle, as it adapts to feedback, changing player populations and broader gaming trends.

What this isn't, then, is a Final Fantasy 14: A Realm Reborn-style overhaul, with the entire experience being rebuilt from the ground up. FF14 was famously awful, shut down, and then returned like a phoenix, transforming into one of the best MMOs around. I can confidently say that if you tried FF14 back in the day and hated it, you should still give ARR (and its many subsequent expansions) a shot, because there's a good chance you'll love it. It's hard to imagine saying the same about New World: Aeternum. If you didn't vibe with it before the rebranding, there's a good chance you won't vibe with it now.

If your issues were more specific, though, and you just wanted a more polished levelling experience, or PvP where you only have to rely on yourself, then maybe there will be enough here to keep you entertained. The proof will be in the pudding, and that's being served up tomorrow, October 15.

I was one of the folks who didn't really vibe with New World back in 2021. "New World's engaging crafting and faction rivalries are held back by abysmal PvE and a boring world," I said in my New World review. And despite some improvements, I wasn't too hot on it in 2022, either. "Things aren't looking good," I said in my State of New World feature. Despite this, I'll be giving it another chance tomorrow, and sharing my impressions soon after, so keep an eye out for that later this week.

Amazon Games CEO Christoph Hartmann was interviewed by IGN this week, and he said several interesting things. He revealed that the upcoming Lord of the Rings MMO was "still early" in development, and commented on how "the bar is so high" for doing a new Tomb Raider game. But his most startling statement came on the subject of using generative AI in the games industry, leading him to claim that "for games, we don't really have acting".

As noticed by GamesRadar, Hartmann was asked about his insights into the status of the games industry right now, to which he responded how he hoped that generative AI might "shorten the life cycle" of game development. "I think game development takes way too long, like five years per game," he said . "It just means basically, everything will be lucky shots and hopefully AI will help us to streamline processes so hand-done work will go fast."

All of which are fair statements, although the extent to which AI will help to solve the problem is highly debatable. In response, IGN asked Hartmann if he had been monitoring the SAG-AFTRA voice actors' strike, which was called last month for "fair compensation and the right of informed consent for the AI use of [actors'] faces, voices and bodies" in the words of SAG-AFTRA national executive director Duncan Crabtree-Ireland.

Hartmann seemed to understand the sensitivity of this topic. "I have got to be careful," he said. "Because we are a big company and have to deal with all those organisations, so I don't want to get in the middle of it." Then he proceeded to state that "When we talk about AI, first of all, hopefully it will help us to have new gameplay ideas, which has nothing to do with taking work away from anyone. And especially for games, we don't really have acting… The majority of the team sits in programming and that's not going to go away because that's all about innovation." 

The news that video games don't have acting will surely come as a shock to SAG-AFTRA's 2,500 video game performers, and the 160,000 SAG-AFTRA members who have refused to work on video games produced by the industry's major developers in support of those performers. Indeed, one could argue that acting has been an essential part of the industry for years, and is more central to video games now than it ever has been before. Games like Baldur's Gate 3, The Last of Us, and Final Fantasy 16 (which is coming to PC soon) all feature stunning performances that elevate the stories those games tell. Baldur's Gate 3 in particular has broken new ground in the relationship between acting, narrative, and game design. You might even call it innovative.

After voicing his opinion on AI and acting, Hartmann went on to discuss other areas where he thinks AI will "help" game development, which he says is mainly in "the boring parts" such as localisation. "It's just going to make us translate our games into more languages. Which is great for gamers, because there's countries which maybe not everyone speaks perfect English and they would love to have [it] in a local language." Although AI can provide broadly accurate translations quickly, it's worth noting that localisation is a much more involved process than, for example, finding out how to say "Which way to the library?" in French. It involves translation of a lot of nuanced narrative and dialogue, which may include situationally and culturally contextual jokes and references that require an acute understanding of both languages.

Hartmann concluded his thoughts on AI by saying "I don't believe any technology can replace human creativity and uniqueness" because "I don't think it will be able to translate those unique things into fresh ideas." It's certainly true that generative AI can't come up with its own ideas. It's equally true that everybody has ideas, and what separates ideas from great art is talent and hard work, rather than asking a machine to do that hard work for you. This, incidentally, happens to be what SAG-AFTRA wants its members to be fairly compensated for.

Last year, we wrote about how every new live service shooter starts with its own distinct aesthetic before inevitably succumbing to Cosmetic Uglification, when tie-ins and collaborations result in a game overrun by "a clown show of brands." Impressively, the next game Amazon is publishing, King of Meat, has decided to skip over this painful process by starting with an incomprehensible aesthetic mishmash from day one. 

This is Jackson Pollock: Gamer's Edition, a grab bag of random ideas and systems smashed together in the hopes of reverse-engineering why Roblox prints a million dollars a day. The core setup: a four-player co-op game in which you make your way through short dungeons, smacking braindead enemy mobs with light three-hit weapon combos and solving a few puzzles like "stand on the button" or "pull the lever on that platform" to progress. The theming: a game show, complete with sarcastic announcers commenting on what happens as you go. (The developers describe it as "joyfully unhinged," which mainly means there are some trite jokes about commercialism in this game published by a two trillion-dollar company.)

Because the conceit of the game is, and I quote, "where high fantasy meets the glitz, glamour, and media-infatuation of modern-day celebrity," King of Meat's developers seemingly gave themselves carte blanche to say yes to every possible aesthetic choice. Let's get some wizard stuff in there. Some samurais. Guitar swords. 1990s Chicago Bulls jerseys. Soda machines (remember commercialism!!) and spraypaint. Black hole powers. Exploding rubber duckies. A smelly breath attack. A big horse hoof that comes down from the sky and smashes things. 

Put another way, King of Meat is that Key & Peele Gremlins 2 sketch: "You mean a gremlin with leathery wings just flying around flip-flopping bust through a wall make a perfect bat symbol in the wall get outside get in some wet concrete jump up on a building and just dry in place like a gargoyle gremlin? We are cooking with gas now I love it it's in the movie. Next!"

The crucial distinction is that Gremlins 2 gives off genuine cocaine-fueled gonzo energy, while King of Meat's wackiness is a facade for how derivative everything is underneath the surface.

That may sound crueler than I mean it to be, but my first impression was that King of Meat looked like the parody game that a parody version of Amazon would make in, I don't know, The Boys or something. My feelings did soften once I played it: the combat is fine, serviceable in the way light co-op games often are. As you level up your character you'll unlock some extra combo attacks and character abilities that do meaningfully change what you're capable of, though still within the realm of a simple hack-and-slash. A new downward strike, a charged dash stab, that sort of thing. I'll give King of Meat credit for not basing its entire progression system around gear drops that give you 1% bonuses to your stats.

I did experience a few bugs that slowed down the action—things like enemies getting stuck walking into a wall somewhere halting progress until we killed them, my character's animations breaking after I pressed the wrong combination of buttons, being randomly barred from using one of the two special abilities I equipped prior to a match. They were minor issues I expect will be fixed, but I don't think there's any saving what is fundamentally a game with so little oomph to its combat or stakes.

It's popcorn light, seasoned with a whole shaker's worth of "so random!" humor. Fortnite may be a Cosmetic Uglification superspreader, but underneath the Gokus and Thanoses running around its "metaverse" there's at least a shooter with substantial depth and an even higher skill ceiling with on-the-fly building. The best-case scenario for King of Meat is being the kind of game you and your Discord friends drop into when you don't want to play anything that requires more than 20% of your active attention.

If you're already mostly tuned out, its aesthetic mishmash probably just becomes the same kind of background noise as an ad break on cable TV. Brain calibrated to bare minimum engagement, I think it would be a fine enough game to mash your way through. But there's no compelling hook here to get people on board, which makes me almost certain that King of Meat's big pitch—that players can build and upload their own levels, and all the official levels were made using those very same tools—is doomed from the jump. 

People bought Super Mario Maker because they like Mario, not because they like the abstract idea of making a 2D platformer. Trying to launch a user generated level-based game from ground zero has the same cart-before-horse failure rate of declaring a new FPS an esport before normal people have even decided if they like it or not. I just can't see this one tempting the kiddos away from whatever much wilder stuff they're building in Roblox. For everyone else over the age of 20, you've already seen everything here too many times to find any nourishment in this meat. 

Only a few years after Amazon launched New World, it's launching again in the form of New World: Aeternum. This new version of the game is being billed as a "spiritual successor" to the original MMO, but it's also a mix of console port (that will also be available on PC), remaster and big update. 

Aeternum is separate from the original New World but also contains everything from New World and its Rise of the Angry Earth expansion, rejigged for consoles, and featuring a slew of changes and additions that go beyond what you'd expect in just an update. 

One very notable change is how much focus is being put on solo play. In the press release, the word "MMO" was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Amazon describes it as an "action RPG". The whole thing can be played on your own, and you'll be able to experience all the story beats without needing to team up. This means that things like expeditions (New World's dungeons) are entirely optional, and the big moments that were once exclusively contained within them can be experienced by solo players outside of these group instances. 

It's a bit strange that Amazon's really pushing this angle. Most MMOs are largely solo-friendly these days anyway, and I count vanilla New World among them—despite the expeditions—but all of New World's strengths lie in the multiplayer side of things. If you fancy a solo RPG, there are so many better alternatives (which won't set you back 60 bucks). And while I did quite enjoy gathering and crafting, New World comes up short when you compare it to the multitude of dedicated survival games available.  

This is still, however, absolutely an MMO. In a presentation ahead of today's reveal, the developers emphasised that it's still a shared experience, if you want it to be, and you'll still be able to group up for expeditions and embark on faction-based PvP wars. Indeed, there's more group activities coming, including the first 10-player raid and a PvP zone.

Here's the list of what you'll be able to expect at launch:

• New, more cinematic introductory experience 
• Upgraded player onboarding experience 
• Improved quest flow from 1-65 
• In-game cinematics and pre-rendered scenes 
• Revamped story dialogue experience 
• Character archetypes 
• First 10-player raid 
• First PvP zone 
• Endgame solo trials 
• Gear score increase 
• Swimming 
• Bear mount 
• Cross-play (but not cross-progression) 

After I finished my New World review, I never went back. For my sins, I spent 250 hours playing, and while I enjoyed the faction conflict, PvP and crafting, the world itself and the PvE left a lot to be desired. It was particularly weak when it came to storytelling, so the dialogue revamp sounds like a good call, but I confess that there's not much here that's tempting me to return. It's nice to see players can finally swim, though, after years of unintentional hilarity.

New World: Aeternum will be launching on Steam and consoles on October 15, and if you already own New World and the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion you'll be able to get it for free. If you log into regular New World between June 7 and October 14, you'll also unlock a wolf mount. 

New World's first expansion arrived yesterday, and along with the addition of flails, the ability to turn into some kind of vengeful nature monster, a transformed zone and another expedition, it also solves one of my big launch bugbears: it's finally added mounts. 

Customisable horses, dire wolves and lions can now join you on your adventures, with their arrival accompanied by a new riding skill that will eventually see you netting higher speeds and better buffs. At last. 

Plenty of MMOs have launched without mounts, but their absence felt egregious in New World given the vast amount of backtracking its quests require, and the limited fast travel options. And while the world is rather pretty, it's also quite sparse when it comes to diversions, meaning that you have to spend a helluva long time legging it through forests and fields with nothing to do—unless you have a big crafting project that requires a gathering binge. 

That's a problem of the past, thankfully, though only if you shell out for Rise of the Angry Earth. Everyone else will have to continue their mountless existence. Sorry.

Some players have expressed disappointment that they have to buy "$30 mount DLC", which is a touch unfair, given all the other additions, but I sympathise with the sentiment. I would have maybe considered returning to New World just to check out the mounts, but I'm not willing to part with that much cash for the privilege.

Despite this, the expansion has certainly reignited interest in the MMO, with the base game leaping up the Steam charts. Here in the UK it's sitting at #1, and globally it's only below Counter-Strike 2, while Rise of the Angry Earth has taken the #3 spot. Player numbers have also doubled, but they are still nowhere close to what we saw at launch. For most of the year New World has been sitting at around 20,000 peak players, but anticipation for the expansion saw that number jump to 50,000 over the last 30 days.

Honestly, though, I would have expected more. In November 2022, it had a huge spike, rising to nearly 140,000 peak players. That month saw it reduced by 50% in two separate sales, which helped, but right now it's also on sale for even less, with a 60% discount.

While the player numbers might not be vast, back at launch New World at least proved that there's still a big hunger for MMOs, despite how many have fallen by the wayside. A million people playing together, or at least at the same time, gave me some faith that new MMOs could still succeed. New World hasn't been able to maintain its popularity, but the genre is still in a decent place, with lots of MMOs still getting updates and expansions, and some interesting ones on the horizon, like Mainframe Industries' Pax Dei.

Bandai Namco's upcoming action-MMO Blue Protocol, which will be published in the west by Amazon Games, has been delayed. It had been set to come out in the second half of 2023, but Amazon confirmed today that the launch outside of Japan has been pushed to sometime in 2024.

Blue Protocol was revealed in 2019, while confirmation of a global release followed at The Game Awards 2022. The game "takes players on a heroic journey through a planet teetering on the brink of destruction after millennia of conflict and technology overuse," executive producer Sokichi Shimooka said. "A journey in which we transcend space and time, unlock our memories, defeat powerful foes, and alter the destructive future that threatens all mankind."

That's a little vague as far as the narrative backdrop goes, and the Steam page doesn't have much more to say about it on that front, except that the game doesn't take place on Earth—it's set on a world called Regnas. It does, however, promise "deep customization" options, action-based combat with simple controls, and quests, boss battles, and "massive online raids against towering monsters."

Shimooka said in the Game Awards video that Blue Protocol would be out sometime in 2023, and in Japan it will be, on June 14—but the rest of the world is going to have to wait a while longer.

Word of the delay first surfaced in a tweet from the Blue Protocol Database fan site:

Amazon Games confirmed the delay in a statement sent to PC Gamer.

"We are excited to celebrate the announcement from Bandai Namco Online and Bandai Namco Studios that Blue Protocol will be releasing in Japan on June 14, and for the first time, players will set foot in the world of Regnas," Amazon said. "With the final launch date revealed in Japan, we have a few updates to share on our plans for Closed Beta and launch.

"Our planned release window is moving to 2024 as we work toward launching Blue Protocol in the West across PC, Xbox X|S, and PlayStation 5. With continued efforts to localize the deeply immersive stories and build the infrastructure needed to engage in multiplayer adventures and massive online raids against towering monsters, we’re working hard to ensure the best possible experience for our players at launch."

There will be an opportunity for people to get their hands on Blue Protocol in 2023: A closed beta test for the PC version of the game is planned for later in the year. If you'd like to give it a spin, you can sign up for a shot at the beta at playblueprotocol.com.

Amazon Games is taking another crack at a Lord of the Rings MMO, it revealed on Monday. The news that it will focus on the period covered by the Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit puts it in direct competition with the established Lord of the Rings Online MMO, however, and developer Standing Stone Games has been trying to reassure its community that it's not in trouble. 

Lord of the Rings Online has been kicking around for 16 years and continues to be updated, even as so many of its former MMO peers have fallen by the wayside. But the news of a rival with extremely deep pockets has left some players wondering what the future holds for the classic free-to-play MMO. 

Spotted by Gamespot, Standing Stone has responded to its community with a brief forum post. "We wanted to give everyone in the community an update and assure you all that LOTRO is not going away," it reads. "Like you, we, and our partners at Middle-earth Enterprises are huge fans of LOTRO. It is beloved, it is sixteen, it is evergreen. LOTRO is like the long-lived Ents, Elves and Dwarves; and we mere mortals, are the stewards of LOTRO and its community. Standing Stone has every intention of growing and supporting this community. The road goes ever on…"  

While Standing Stone's statement focuses on its MMO and doesn't sling any mud, Amazon Games VP Christoph Hartmann takes some swipes—albeit diplomatic ones—at its rival in a Gamesindustry.biz interview. "I think they actually can co-exist. Even the most likely scenario is… for people just to move over, because the other one is an old game. It's not a bad game, but the industry moves on at some point, and it's a long time from their release to ours."

Hartmann also claims that the two MMOs will be "worlds apart" and that, while LOTRO's fanbase is "dedicated", it's "not huge". 

While Amazon is being a bit more aggressive here, Hartmann is probably right. If you're a Lord of the Rings fan and MMO player, why wouldn't you check out the new Lord of the Rings MMO? And Amazon has already shown how hungry people are for new MMOs, attracting millions of players to New World at launch, which didn't have a major fantasy licence backing it up. 

I don't think that necessarily means LOTRO is going to vanish. The MMOs that have managed to stick around despite the genre's decline—games like EVE Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic and Star Trek Online—have shown themselves to be extremely resilient and adaptable, and cater to players who treat these spaces like a second home. Veteran players have invested a lot into these games, and even if they do hop on over to the hot new MMO, that doesn't mean they'll be leaving their old stomping grounds for good. 

We also don't know when Amazon's MMO will actually appear, or if it will even make it to launch. Amazon's enjoyed some major successes, but has also experienced lots of failures and cancellations. The future, then, is a bit murky.

Despite falling out with Tencent during its last attempt to develop a Lord of the Rings MMO, Amazon Games has decided to get back on the horse and try again. It's spawned out of a new deal with Embracer Group, which acquired Middle-earth Enterprises last year, and with it the "intellectual property catalogue and worldwide rights to motion pictures, video games, board games, merchandising, theme parks and stage productions" of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit. 

The last attempt fell through when Leyou, which previously had the MMO rights, was acquired by Tencent in 2020. This prompted Middle-earth Enterprises to terminate the rights to the LotR licence, necessitating new terms. But Amazon and Tencent couldn't get on, so an agreement wasn't hashed out and the MMO was canned. 

Now Amazon has entered into an agreement with Embracer and Middle-earth Enterprises without Tencent, and the company will develop and publish the new Lord of the Rings MMO, which has yet to be blessed with a title. It's in the early stages of production with Amazon Games Orange County, the developer of New World, but we'll have to wait until a later date for concrete details. 

Despite Amazon making The Rings of Power, the announcement notes that the MMO will be set around the era of the core books and films—the Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit. That might be bad news for existing MMO Lord of the Rings Online, currently published by Daybreak Game Company, which has been kicking around for 16 years and also covers the end of the Third Age of Middle-earth.

I wasn't enamoured with New World, but I'm still interested to see what lessons the studio has learned from developing and maintaining a large MMO. Not that I expect to see the results for a long time. I'm in no rush, though, because I don't have a clue what I'd want from another LotR MMO. Aside from the fact that I'd be very keen to play as a hobbit-eating orc. 

Remember when we asked everyone to please stop making Discord servers for things that shouldn't be Discord servers? Apparently Amazon wasn't listening, as it has revealed plans to shut down the forums for its New World and Lost Ark MMOs in favor of—you guessed it—Discord servers.

"With the launch of our official New World Discord along with the features, functionality, and accessibility for players we have made the decision to embrace Discord as our primary engagement platform for New World moving forward," Amazon said. "To help us add as much value as possible to our Discord server, we will be sunsetting the New World forums which will allow our staff to focus on providing quality engagement opportunities in a central, and easily accessible platform."

Aside from swapping out the game name, the Lost Ark forum closure message is identical.

Forum posting will be disabled on May 1, although the forums themselves will remain up for an indeterminate time so users will have a chance to save what they want to keep. Amazon "will be cataloging all of the historical feedback that players have left, assuring that sentiment and feedback left is not lost." Once that's done, the forum URL will be redirected to Discord servers (New World, Lost Ark) and social media pages. Somewhat oddly, given that it's pulling the plug on its own forums, Amazon said it will also be increasing its presence on the New World and Lost Ark subreddits.

The response to the plan from forum users is not great. Some of the pushback is a bit overwrought (one thread on the decision to end the forums calls it "a horrendous, vile mistake," which is pretty heavy) but plenty of users make the valid point that Discord and forums are very different tools designed to serve very different purposes.

"Discord is obviously useful for many reasons, most gamers use it," New World forum user Gavyne wrote. "But it’s a terrible place to have a back & forth discussion on several topics, as well as search for data & content."

"While the chat layout on Discord serves a better purpose for small talk and one-liners, the bulletin board forum layout however gives a much better overview for deeper discussion/analysis, easier to access and have far better and more tools for formatting," Julezer added. "People in general also put much more thought into posting on a forums than in a chat. Looking at your current Discord layout it is in no way capable of replacing a forum. It will very quickly end in a disorganized mess."

"It is impossible to have an engaging discussion in Discord, it is a real time chat app," NSilva wrote on the Lost Ark forums. "There is absolutely no fucking point of leaving feedback or posting if users can’t easily read all the related messages. Even if you post stuff there it is just gone, out of reach forever after 2mins."

I'm an old forums guy myself (I still occasionally find myself thinking about the old, long-lost BioWare forums) so there's definitely some bias at play here, but I have to agree with the sentiment that this isn't a great move for New World and Lost Ark players. Forums are a litany, a place to share considered thoughts and find arcane knowledge buried in time; Discord, by comparison, is an unruly tavern: Great for meeting with friends and fighting with strangers, but very much a "moment in time" sort of thing.

Luckily, New World and Lost Ark players have other channels for forum-like communications, including Reddit and Steam, so the closure of their native forums doesn't represent the complete end of civilized interactions. Even so, it's kind of a bummer: Call me old-fashioned if you will, but big games deserve their own forums—Discord may be a new way of doing things, but that doesn't mean it's better.

As Amazon Games works to tweak, tune, and dig for a bigger audience for New World, it's also continuing to enter into publishing agreements with other companies on delivering competing MMOs. The most recent addition to that lineup is NCSoft's upcoming Throne and Liberty, which will be published in North and South America, Europe, and Japan—everywhere but Korea, basically—by Amazon.

"NCSoft has created some of the most popular and longest-running online games in the world, so it’s no surprise that Throne and Liberty is among today’s most anticipated MMOs," Amazon Games vice president Christoph Hartmann said. "Publishing games that live and grow over time remains a critical piece of our strategy, and delivering games of the highest quality from the world’s most talented developers is one of the cornerstones of our business. 

"The last year has taught us a great deal about publishing and managing a successful live-service game on a global scale, and we’re ready to bring Throne and Liberty players an incredible experience at launch."

Throne and Liberty promises "story-driven adventure and action combat" with both PvP and PvE action in a world of "constantly shifting geographical and environmental features that change the course of play." Players will have the ability to transform into animals that will enable them to fly or explore the oceans, and trigger environmental effects like eclipses and storms that can turn the tide of battles.

What I find really interesting about Throne and Liberty is it's actually been around for a very long time, but under a different name. Elderly gamers may have faint, fuzzy memories of an MMO called Lineage, released by NCSoft in 1998, and Throne and Liberty was originally intended as a new game in that series called Lineage Eternal, which was announced in 2011. But development struggled, and in 2022 NCSoft scrapped the Lineage connection entirely and went with something new.

Also interesting is that while Amazon is still trying to find its stride with New World, it seems to be doing quite well as a publisher of other companies' games: Throne and Liberty will be the second big Korean MMO it's brought to the West, alongside Smilegate's MMO Lost Ark; it's also publishing Bandai Namco's action-RPG Blue Protocol and the next Tomb Raider game.

Throne and Liberty doesn't have a release date at this point, but you can get a closer look at what it's all about at tl.plaync.com, and have a look at some screens below.

Like every MMO, Lost Ark has an endgame it wants to hook you with so you keep playing forever. You're not done when you hit level 50. That's just your character level, my sweet summer child. After that there's a gear level to push up, and up, a slog of a grind that takes hundreds more hours.

It's alleviated by a steady drip-feed of additions courtesy of developers Smilegate. The biggest of these add entire new continents with quests that extend the storyline, while between those expansions we get smaller events, often taking place on an island somewhere.

The latest of these is a crossover with The Witcher, which is an odd choice. While Geralt has cameoed in other games like Soulcalibur 6 and Monster Hunter World, The Witcher is dark fantasy in the Elric tradition, while Lost Ark is so light you need shades. In fact I have a pair, a set of deliberately pixelated "8-bit" sunglasses that are part of my extensive collection of ridiculous cosmetics alongside a pumpkin head, a dinosaur costume, and a bright pink helmet shaped like a local triceratops creature. Even when Lost Ark stops being frothy and aims for dramatic, it's undercut because the camera cuts back to me and I look like a mouse dressed as a naval officer. Which, to be clear, I'm in favor of because Lost Ark's not great at being serious.

The Lost Ark/Witcher crossover plays with the clash of tones, having first Geralt and then several of his pals (Ciri, Yennefer, Triss, and Dandelion) pop out of a portal on the island of White Wolf Haven just as a festival is setting up. Geralt is suspicious of the magic that's transported them here, and ends up investigating a theft that's not what it seems because he can't help suspecting bad things are about to happen. He's in the wrong genre though, and the resolution of the five quests that come with this update are entirely pleasant.

Though they only take a few minutes to wrap up and are mostly just dialogue and cutscenes (the voice actors from the Witcher games returning), you can only do one quest per day. It's an artificial way of slowing your roll that stops you from zooming through the whole thing in a single sitting and noticing just how slight it is. The first quest does let you become Geralt while he uses his witcher senses to investigate a tiny mystery, as if he's taking on a sidequest in one of his own games, but you don't get to fight or do anything more than press Q to follow a trail. Pretty soon your own character reappears, still dressed as Petty Officer Mouseketeer in my case. 

Compared to what followed, that was substantial. Calling them fetch quests would be an insult to the noble art of carrying things from A to B, which Death Stranding made plenty enjoyable. I walked between characters, clicked through dialogue, watched Dandelion play a song with Lost Ark's bards, collected my rewards, and it was over. 

There's no satisfying resolution to the mystery of how these characters were abducted from their happy ending in a vineyard (this crossover treats the ending where Ciri becomes a witcher as canon, but is diplomatically vague about whether Triss or Yennefer is Geralt's partner). All you get is a lame "it's all about the friends we made along the way" platitude and they're off home. Even Ciri's mention that she's visited Arkesia once before on a previous crossworld jaunt amounts to nothing.

Other Lost Ark events have come with minigames like kart-racing, a water-pistol shootout, and a boss fight against a giant chicken, but there's none of that at White Wolf Haven's festival. There's not even a chance to play Gwent, though there's a joke about Geralt trying to teach it to the locals. It's an underwhelming experience where the highlights were seeing Roach pop out of a barrel, and taking selfies with the more stoic cast of a more serious game. I can't imagine Geralt and Yennefer appreciating my use of the stickers Lost Ark lets you use in its selfie mode.

Several selfie stickers come as rewards for these quests, including one of Geralt barfing after coming through a portal I may never find a use for. I also earned a pile of witcher-themed potions that will expire before I ever get a chance to use them, a new title, some emoticons, and cards of the characters I met, plus I scored a Mokoko skin with scar and witcher medallion for having Twitch open in another tab while Lost Ark streamers played. (Does anyone who collects Twitch drops actually watch the streams, or are we all just inflating viewer numbers for the sake of free loot?)

The skins that make you look like Geralt or Ciri are only available in the real-money store, however, though they've stared showing up in the auction house for in-game gold. They're the real point of this collaboration, I suspect, as the subset of Lost Ark fans who are also hardcore Witcher fans will doubtless pony up for the various weapon skins and Ciri's hairstyle.

The real endgame of Lost Ark isn't actually honing items to raise your gear level. It's fashion, whether you're buying dyes to personalize your outfit, or forking out for the bikinis and tight trousers that are inevitably the most popular options, or trying to make yourself look like a character from another game, or ruining every cutscene by wearing a mint-green dinosaur costume in it.

Since shortly after its western release in February of 2022, Korean MMO Lost Ark has had a problem with gold-farming bots. A month after release Amazon Games banned "over a million" accounts for using bots, and committed to regularly banning more. It also made changes to the in-game economy as part of its plan to deal with one of Lost Ark's top issues.

Almost a year later, it's still an issue. January's ban wave was a significant one, with Amazon Games posting on the official forum that, "many players have noticed a drop off in the number of concurrent users displayed in Lost Ark's Steam stats. This change is the direct result of a roll out of a significant number of bot account bans, which utilized new and highly-effective tactics to target and remove bots from the game." 

Those "new and highly-effective tactics" have apparently also caught up a large number of players who simply hadn't logged in for a while, resulting in a game ban that appears on their Steam profile.

That's because players caught up in this wave are receiving game bans rather than VAC bans. The difference is that VAC, or Valve Anti-Cheat, is "an automated system designed to detect cheats installed on users' computers" as Valve explains. Game bans let developers decide who to ban, and those bans are visible to anyone who looks at a user's profile. As Valve says in the Steam support page, "It can be frustrating to play a game with a cheater, and it helps to know when such a user is removed from the matchmaking system." It's a public shaming, one that will make people in other multiplayer games consider you a cheat.

Unsurprisingly, those falsely banned are not happy about this blemish on their public Steam accounts. Lost Ark's overall user rating on Steam is Mostly Positive, but the recent reviews tell a different story, dropping to Mostly Negative as former players protest. "[H]ave not opened the game since February, got banned for no reason", says one. "Thanks for tainting my steam profile :)", another says. ""HOW IN THE EVER LOVIN' HELL CAN A DEV BAN YOU FOR NOT PLAYING THEIR GAME???!!!" shouts a third.

Amazon Games responded with a post on the forum, admitting that, "we've seen an increase in ban appeals from players who have been incorrectly impacted by these bans." The studio goes on to say, "We have determined the error that triggered these false bans, and are actively working on reversing them for all affected legitimate players regardless of whether a support ticket who has been filed. In the meantime, you are still welcome to submit a Ban Appeal ticket to Customer Support so that the team can more quickly assist with restoring your account and removing all penalties."

I've reached out to Amazon Games for more information on how exactly this happened, and will update this story if I receive a reply.

John Smedley, the former president of Sony Online Entertainment and co-creator of EverQuest, is to leave his role as head of Amazon Games' San Diego studio. "After a lot of thought, I've decided it's time for me to try my hand at something new" wrote Smedley in an email to staff obtained by Bloomberg.

Smedley had been at Amazon Games since 2017, so six years, and did not ship a game in that time. Which is not all that unusual at Amazon Games, which has had a rocky ride over the last decade including cancelled games, launched-and-cancelled games like Crucible, and abandoning projects like the Lord of the Rings MMO.

Part of the company's early strategy, spearheaded by studio head Mike Frazzini, was big ticket hires: developers like Kim Swift (Portal), Clint Hocking (Far Cry 2), and Smedley. All of these people, including Frazzini, have now left Amazon Games. That's not to suggest the publisher is in trouble—recent years have finally seen it win some success with New World and Lost Ark—but it does seem notable that so much talent has been-and-gone from Amazon Games without ever shipping a game. Smedley's had his moments, but EverQuest is arguably the foundational MMO, and this is someone you'd want to see more games from.

"John is a game industry legend, and we're grateful for his contributions to Amazon Games over the past six years," Amazon told Bloomberg. The San Diego studio "remains focused on bringing their unannounced project to life" and Smedley will stay for a transition period.

The most recent news from Amazon Games has an interesting aspect in light of this: It will be publishing and co-developing the next Tomb Raider game. Given the success Amazon has found with Lost Ark, and the not-great track record it has with solo projects, you can see why this hybrid approach may seem a more attractive strategy. 

Isometric fantasy fashion parade Lost Ark is one of those games that's at slightly different points in different regions. The Korean version runs ahead of the western one, essentially, meaning that players of the Amazon Games published version over here usually have some idea of what they're getting: and one of the most anticipated additions has been the addition of a new class, the Artist.

The Artist is a young woman who, in the Korean version, favors extremely short skirts. And it appears that Amazon considers some of the Artist's Korean skins to be, well, just a bit too thirsty. "Nothing gameplay-related will change for the Artist Class, but some skins will be modified to better fit Western norms", reads the official announcement. "Specifically, skins with short skirts will have shorts added underneath the skirt, and other skins will have adjusted pant lengths or tights added."

This class itself summons monsters by painting them, though I think they can also just whack monsters with their brush. The Artist is a support-leaning playstyle with damage on the low side but a whole bunch of ways to buff and heal the party, and the developers say it's the first of a new class category called specialists, with another example to arrive later in the year.

The Korean version also began a Witcher crossover event back in November, which the western version will be receiving in January. Geralt, Ciri, Yennefer, Triss, and Dandelion are all coming to the game with "voiceover work from the game's original actors", along with a new event set on an island called White Wolf's Haven. There will also be a bunch of Witcher-themed cosmetics (clothes being the game's true endgame), and QoL improvements to the guild systems and guild PvP.

February will see the one-year anniversary of the game's launch in the west, and is going to be celebrated with a series of quests set on the continent of Rowen. After completing these questlines players can choose a faction to compete in open-world PvP and the war over the continent begins, leading up to a new type of PvP activity being added in March. This is a 96-player (48vs48) battle with bases to capture and secondary objectives, which are held at certain times during the week.

April and the Artist is as far as this 2023 roadmap goes, which doesn't quite seem to fulfil the brief but there we are. The Witcher's Kaer Morhen background art is pretty sweet, and in the runup to the collab Lost Ark players are getting the Summoner class and endgame Brelshaza legion raid, among many other goodies.

As for Geralt, the man belongs in a tub but he's bloody everywhere these days. The Witcher crossovers include Monster Hunter World, Soulcalibur 6, and soon enough he'll be turning up in Fortnite Chapter 4.

Back in April, Crystal Dynamics announced that it was working on a new Tomb Raider game using Unreal Engine 5, which is said would enable it to "push the envelope of fidelity, and to deliver the high quality cinematic action-adventure experience that fans deserve." A new addition to a hugely successful game franchise wasn't exactly the most unexpected bit of news ever, but today's announcement caught me a little by surprise: It's going to be published by Amazon Games.

"Amazon Games is committed to bringing players games of the highest quality, from the best developers, across all variety of platforms and genres, and we’re honored by the opportunity to work with this storied developer and franchise," Amazon Games vice president Christoph Hartmann said. "Our team is incredibly excited about collaborating with the talented and visionary Crystal Dynamics team to bring the next chapter of Lara Croft’s saga to players around the world."

The announcement doesn't contain any details on the new game, describing it as "a single-player, narrative-driven adventure that continues Lara Croft’s story" with "all the elements that have made Tomb Raider one of the most revered franchises in gaming, giving players control of the confident and multidimensional hero Lara Croft in an environment that rewards exploration and creative pathfinding, with mind-bending puzzles to solve, and a wide variety of enemies to face and overcome." That sounds good, but it could also apply to pretty much every Tomb Raider game ever.

What makes it a little surprising is that Crystal Dynamics is owned by Embracer Group, which has plenty of publishing capabilities of its own. Crystal Dynamics was still owned by Square Enix when the new Tomb Raider was announced—Embracer didn't begin the process of acquiring the studio until a month later—and it's possible that the Amazon publication deal was already in place at that time. Something similar happened with the new Tales from Borderlands game that came out this year: A publication deal with 2K Games was already in place when Embracer snapped up Gearbox, and that held despite the change in ownership.

"Crystal Dynamics has an extraordinary opportunity following our acquisition by Embracer to redefine what a publishing relationship is for Tomb Raider," Crystal Dynamics studio head Scot Amos said. "Transformative is what we're looking for, and with Amazon Games, we found a team that shares our creative vision, ambitions, and values for a Lara Croft universe across the spectrum of possibilities. They're uniquely positioned to rewrite what publishing and development collaborations are, and we’re eager to forge this new path together, starting with building the biggest and best Tomb Raider game yet!"

The new Tomb Raider is a big pickup for Amazon Games, but it's not the only one: Amazon announced at last week's Game Awards that it will also be publishing Bandai Namco's Blue Protocol in the second half of 2023. Hopefully it will have better luck as a publisher than it's had as a developer. The fantasy MMO New World is perfectly fine but not exactly setting the world on fire, while its third-person hero shooter Crucible was cancelled before it even got out of closed beta testing.

Massively multiplayer fashion-brawler Lost Ark began a Witcher crossover on its Korean servers in November, but only now has Amazon Games confirmed when Geralt and pals will be arriving on western servers: January, 2023.

Geralt, Ciri, Yennefer, Triss, and Dandelion will all be coming to Lost Ark, with "voiceover work from the game's original actors" according to a press release from Amazon Games. It also explains their arrival will be part of an event that's only available for a limited time, which will also add an island called White Wolf's Haven. 

The island is apparently "a setting for merriment and festivals until a mysterious vortex suddenly appears, pausing the celebrations. As players investigate the source of the unexplained phenomenon, they encounter a visitor from a different time and place – Geralt of Rivia, the famed Witcher. This starts a chain of events in which the player will face the mystery of this interdimensional vortex, meeting even more visitors from another dimension along the way. In this collision between worlds, players of Lost Ark will team up with characters from The Witcher to solve a puzzle that spans time and space."

As well as the quests that players will get to take part in alongside PC Gamer's favorite gravelly videogame father figure, the event will of course add some additional fashion options to Lost Ark. "New Witcher themed cosmetics will be available in the store, and new character customization scars, Cards, Stronghold structures, Emojis (and more) await adventurers who participate in the event", Amazon says.

While the versions of the characters who will appear as NPCs in Lost Ark look pretty much like they do in The Witcher 3, the wearable Geralt and Ciri skins for PCs to buy are a little disconcerting. As you can see in one of the Korean trailers, while there are slight differences between the versions for each class, all the Geralts look quite young, clean-shaven, and handsome in an anime prettyboy kind of way. Meanwhile, the Ciri skins for nonhuman classes have pointed elvish ears for the mage or are tiny and childlike for the artist (a class currently only available in the Korean version who uses a magic paintbrush to work ink-based magic, and is basically a hobbit).

I will probably end up buying some of the weapon skins and the Kaer Morhen background art for the character screen, but I don't expect too much from the story in a promotional event. Meanwhile, Lost Ark's also getting the summoner class and endgame Brelshaza legion raid as part of a December update along with the Caliligos guardian raid, T3 hardmode cube and boss rush, a new accessory type for bracelets, and new chaos dungeons.

The Witcher has previously crossed over with over videogames, including Monster Hunter World, Soulcalibur 6, and mobile game AFK Arena. Geralt's also been spotted in a leaked trailer for Fortnite Chapter 4. He sure does get around.

Amazon's New World MMO celebrated its reworked beginning by opening a bunch of "fresh start" servers earlier this month, and it's caused a bit of a population crisis. The game's legacy servers aren't quite as bustling as they used to be now that so many people have departed for the green and fertile lands of the new ones. So Amazon's gonna mash a bunch of them together.

The server merge will take place on Friday, December 2 at 7 am GMT / 2 am EST (which means December 1 at 11 pm for people on PST), and will see 13 servers merged into 6 over the course of a 2.5 hour downtime period. The list of servers being merged is as follows:

• Tupia will be merging into Asgard.
• Fae will be merging into Niflheim.
• Eden will be merging into Olympus.
• Themiscyra and Frislandia are merging into Heliopolis.
• Aukumea will be merging into El Dorado.
• Eridu will be merging into Delos.

Those servers were picked based on a "combination of average concurrency, active characters, faction population, and more," so if your server didn't get picked, it's probably because it's too dang popular. Or it's based on whatever mysterious category falls under "and more". Tarot readings, probably.

Player response to the merge's announcement has mostly been positive, although a few are remarking that it isn't expansive enough, and should include fresh start servers, too. Others are just remembering past merges, like that time a predominantly French-speaking server merged with a predominantly-English one, resulting in something like a prolonged, frustrating Monty Python skit before things calmed down.

We weren't too keen on New World when it released back in 2021, giving it 60% and criticising it for feeling "scattershot and underbaked". Despite an incredible launch, it struggled to hang on to its initially large player base, making merges like this one necessary. I suppose it'd be foolish to write this one off, though, it's not as if Amazon is strapped for the cash it needs to keep the game going.

Amazon games' MMO New World has opened up a suite of "Fresh Start" servers, letting you kick off a new character on an untapped server where there're no long-established players from the game's first year. The new servers come alongside an entirely reworked early game experience for the game, requiring less travel and grouping quests closer together along with requiring far less grinding.

The rework also has a "huge improvement to the overall pacing," says the Amazon Games team. New World also recently released Brimstone Sands, a big expansion update with lots of Egyptian and Ancient Roman-themed action.

"It’s a great opportunity for new and lapsed players to experience all that has changed over the game's first year," said Amazon Games. Amazon games has also posted a video to YouTube—embedded above—highlighting what's new in the past year.

That new content includes a boatload of new expedition dungeons: Tempest's Heart, Barnacles & Black Powder, and the Ennead, alongside mutator versions of old expeditions and a group finder for them. That's also not really including the new weapons, which are a bit like New World's classes: the Greatsword, Void Gauntlet, and Blunderbuss weapons are all new, and have new abilities to go with.

New World has plenty of lapsed players, who may or may not remember that their one-time purchase of the game lets them go back whenever they please. It was a massive success at launch, selling a ton of copies and hitting a high of nearly a million players on Steam, but that high collapsed over time into a steady daily top concurrent count of about 15-25 thousand. Since the release of the Brimstone Sands in October that number has popped back up to 50-60 thousand, and a recent Twitch drop campaign saw peak concurrent numbers return to over 100 thousand.

You can find New World on Steam, where it's 50% off until November 8th. You can also go find their official website, newworld.com.

Good spot, Eurogamer.

"Fresh start servers" are designed to give players a chance to sample MMOs when they were—you guessed it—fresh and new and not overcrowded and overrun by max-level players and all their stuff. Blizzard, for instance, announced earlier this year that World of Warcraft Classic's Wrath of the Lich King expansion would launch with fresh servers, where all players would start with new characters at level 1. Starting in November, players of Amazon's New World will have the same opportunity when Fresh Start Worlds for that game go live.

"We’ve received a lot of requests for Fresh Start Worlds, so we are using the time between the Brimstone Sands release and the opening of these worlds to ensure you have a high quality, fresh start," Amazon said in the announcement.

"All coins, loot, and characters must originate in these servers. That means no powerful or rich Adventurers can transfer into any of the new worlds. A blank canvas complete with a revamped starting experience awaits."

Brimstone Sands, by the way, is an update going live today—October 18—that will add a new ancient Egyptian-themed zone to the game, along with a new expedition, Heartgem abilities, the greatsword weapon, and that "revamped starting experience" mentioned in the announcement, which Amazon said will reduce backtracking, improve quest accessibility, and tie the new player experience more tightly to the central storyline. You can check out the full patch notes here.

Fresh start servers aren't a new concept, but they're more commonly seen in older games: ArcheAge, which launched in North America in 2014, rolled out fresh start servers in September, and Old School RuneScape, from 2013, is opening its own fresh start servers later in October. World of Warcraft is a decade older than either of them, although Wrath of the Lich King isn't quite that age, having debuted in 2008.

New World, on the other hand, is just barely a year old: It launched on September 28, 2021. And it hasn't been what you'd call an overly smooth year, as players have struggled with technical issues, gold scammers, dupers, complaints about the economy, and a general sense that the game was not in a great state. Launching fresh start servers after just a year of operation could be seen as another indicator that things haven't gone exactly according to plan, and in fact some players in the New World subreddit welcomed the move not so they could enjoy the game as it was on day one, but simply because it might help alleviate the problems they anticipate will arise when Brimstone Sands goes live.

"I think this is the right decision ultimately," FineLeg wrote. "It gives them the chance to avoid and fix massive game breaking bugs or glitches from Brimstone that could sully the new servers."

"They're also lowering the huge influx of players that both Brimstone and fresh start servers could create," Otiknayluj replied. "Imagine welcoming returning players with +2000 players queues."

Cyprux, on the other hand, took more of a pessimistic, "why not both?" position. "Launching fresh starts later means that people don't have to choose between brimstone/fresh," they wrote. "Now people can clog the servers for both events."

Eaglered2167, on the other hand, was more upbeat, arguing that while players want fresh start servers right now, the decision to launch them two weeks after the Brimstone Sands update is "the correct way to do it."

"Ensure that the major update bugs have been patched and then release fresh servers to ensure that the experience is the best that it can be," they wrote. "You only get one shot to get back old players and this is it. If you launch everything at once and there are major issues, you have lost your chance.

"Plus, they just dropped the Territory Management Update dev blog which is a major change to how factions currently take advantage of settlements. This will actually help the economy of Fresh Start servers specifically. So they need this in before Fresh Start servers open up."

New World's Fresh Start Worlds are set to roll out on November 2.

What happens when you give one of the world's biggest licences to two of the world's biggest companies? One of them takes its ball and goes home, it turns out. When Amazon's Lord Of The Rings MMO was suddenly cancelled last year, we were left wondering what it was that had caused the talks between Amazon and Tencent to break down after what felt like a significant amount of hype for the game.

In an interview with Gamespot, Amazon Games president Christoph Hartmann revealed that the game's development got so complicated after the involvement of Tencent—the Chinese tech giant with investments all over the world—that Amazon decided it would rather drop the whole thing. Hartmann said the companies "maybe could have worked together" on a different project, but they were "too big as companies to really turn into partners" on the MMO. So Amazon walked.

Amazon's initial deal regarding its LOTR MMO was with the Hong Kong company Leyou, a firm that was practically microscopic compared to the gargantuan bulk of Amazon and Tencent. Things were proceeding relatively well until Tencent acquired Leyou in December of 2020. That put a spanner in the works: Middle-earth Enterprises—the LOTR rights holder—terminated the MMO's rights to the LOTR licence and made it necessary to hash out a new deal.

Negotiations dragged on, but it seems that Tencent and Amazon just couldn't come to terms on how the Tolkienian pie would be divided. Hartmann makes it sound like the disagreement stemmed from a dispute over which megacorporation would have control over the relevant rights. He mentions that a situation in which Tencent owned the licence and Amazon developed the game was not acceptable, so Amazon decided to bail.

It doesn't seem to have worked out too badly for either company. Tencent continues to pull companies into its orbit with slow-burning inevitability, while Amazon has a couple of successful MMOs on its hands in the form of Lost Ark and New World. "I want to keep on investing in that," says Hartmann somewhat hopefully. "I know, it's not going to be Lord of the Rings, but we have our own fantasy; why not keep building on that."

As Amazon releases its Rings Of Power series to great fanfare, you've got to wonder if some small part of the company wishes it had a lucrative, Middle Earth MMO to show off to its new viewers.

Fans of the series have the upcoming Gollum game and a project from Take Two's Private Division to look forward to, but after that any future Lord of the Rings games will be coming from Embracer Group, which recently acquired the rights to adapt the series. Tencent and Amazon are giants but Embracer's been on an acquisition spree itself, clearly has money to burn, and didn't buy those rights for nothing.

Lost Ark, Smilegate and Amazon's intensely popular MMOARPG, has had another growth spurt this month. The April update—live now—is a chunky one, introducing a new advanced class, the Glaivier, and a whole new continent, South Vern. 

The Glaivier wields a spear and, naturally, a glaive, with each weapon giving her a different stance and set of skills. "The shorter spear is used to unleash a furious barrage in the Focus stance, while the longer glaive harnesses the Flurry stance for gracefully lethal strikes and sweeping attacks," the patch notes read. 

If the Glaivier is tempting you, check out her entry on Lost Ark Academy to learn all about her skills and stances, along with some tips to get you started. 

South Vern, which you'll be able to check out once you hit item level 1340, is Lost Ark's newest region, and was once a barren land before settlers used tech from various races to terraform it into an idyllic, verdant realm. Something not-quite-right is apparently going down, though, with the continent being locked down by the senate, which also formed a new knightly order. "The South Vern storyline will conclude in an epic battle, with the power to shift the future of Arkesia," Smilegate promises. 

More endgame diversions will also be making an appearance, but not straight away. South Vern's Chaos Dungeons, Field Boss and Chaos Gate will be part of a future update, "when more players have reached the minimum item level required to participate (1415)," Smilegate explains. This is no doubt in response to criticisms regarding the March update, which introduced a new endgame activity that few players were actually ready for. 

A pair of events will also make it easier for newer players to catch up, while letting you skip stuff with an alt. The Express Mission event will let players do the titular express missions to give their level 50 characters an item level boost, as long as they are below item level 1000. The missions will net you level 302 gear, along with other progression rewards like silver, honing materials, potions, engravings and more.

"For newer players, we hope this helps them catch up to friends while still learning Tier 1 & 2 and the game modes within them," says Smilegate. "For players already in Tier 3, this event can be used to quickly level up a new alternate character (maybe a new Glaivier?)."

The Feiton Powerpass, meanwhile, works just like the previous Vern Powerpass, letting you boost an alt after you've finished the Feiton storyline, bumping your new character to that point in the game, along with a set of level 960 gear. Both progression events are live now, and will run until June 30.

In free-to-play tradition, Lost Ark will soon contain a battle pass. The Ark Pass was already in the Korean version of the game, so its inclusion in this version is no surprise. It's mostly as you'd expect: complete missions to level up the pass, and with each new level you'll get rewards in both the free and premium tracks. Freebies include honing material chests, pirate coins and a mount, while the premium track will give you extras like a pet and gems.

Complicating things just a little bit, however, is the 'Super Premium Ark Pass', which throws in chests containing items from the Noble Banquet skin collection and wallpaper, as well as legendary rapport chests. At 3,000 royal crystals, the super premium pass is twice the price of the regular premium pass. Since this currency is only available in bundles, you'll be spending at least $20.

It's quite short, too, with only 30 levels, and less than a month to earn them all. The premium and super premium passes will be available on the store from June 18, and you'll have to race through it by July 14.

The update also comes with a long list of tweaks and fixes like improved co-op for secret maps, six more character slots and numerous squashed bugs.

Michael Frazzini, the head of Amazon Games, has stepped down from the position and is leaving the company after 18 years (via Bloomberg). Frazzini cited a longstanding desire to take a mid-career break as his impetus for making the decision in a post on LinkedIn.

"And while there's never really a perfect time to step away from a great role," Frazzini wrote, "now is a good time. We've launched two top 10 games in the past six months, and have a growing portfolio of promising new games in the pipeline."

Frazzini had previously been Amazon's director of author services before being placed in charge of the company's nascent videogame division in 2009. The output of this section has been surprisingly low, with a selection of mobile games and one Twitch extension having been released by 2018.

Amazon Games saw numerous high-profile cancellations in recent years, including the shuttering of its planned Lord of the Rings MMO, as well as the debacle surrounding its multiplayer hero shooter, Crucible, which was quickly shut down following release.

AGS' success with New World last year was a welcome change, but even New World has struggled, entering into a bit of a doldrums following its successful launch.

The company has found more unambiguous success as the publisher of the smash-hit South Korean MMO, Lost Ark, in Europe and North and South America. Unlike New World, Lost Ark hasn't shown any signs of slowing down.

It's unclear what effect Frazzini's departure will have on Amazon Game Studios' future projects or broader culture. A former senior developer on Crucible attributed that game's failure to executive-level decision making, but Amazon Game Studios' relative success with New World may indicate that positive changes have already taken place. 

Amazon Games has warned Lost Ark players to not waste their time on the Tytalos raid right now after a recent patch broke some things, making the guardian "extremely difficult" to defeat.

Though Tytalos is already meant to be a solidly difficult boss, it's proven to be a little too difficult. It's damn near impossible to defeat at the recommended item level within the 20-minute time frame, with players even a couple of hundred item levels higher having a tough time with it (thanks, Eurogamer). There have been debates going on in Reddit and the Lost Ark forums for a few days, arguing whether or not the whole thing was supposed to be so intentionally rough. With how little information Guardian Raids can offer on mechanics or strategies, it makes sense that people weren't too sure what was going on.

Now, a forum post has confirmed that the fight is indeed broken, with a hotfix set to be pushed out sometime later today (March 14). "We are aware of an issue within the Tytalos Guardian Raid that makes defeating Tytalos in the time frame allotted extremely difficult for the powerlevel required to participate in the Guardian Raid, creating a blocker for progression," the post read. "For the time being, we strongly suggest avoiding the Tytalos Guardian Raid so you do not expend valuable time or resources on an encounter that is currently not performing correctly."

It's not super clear what exactly is wrong, though players are theorising that some of the boss's mechanics aren't working correctly in a group format. Many are reporting that things are smooth-sailing when going solo, however.

The post also said it may be putting together some form of compensation for those who've attempted to tackle Tytalos while it's been a bit bugged. There are no specifics on what that compensation could look like though, with Amazon saying it'll "share more information" down the line.

I've been a gunslinger whose rifle shot plows a furrow in the ground leading directly to Hell, a paladin who wields a sword that Cloud from Final Fantasy 7 would call "a bit much," and a deathblade who carries more knives than a knife convention. Still, my favorite of all the advanced classes in Lost Ark is the artillerist, who simply has a big gun.

I'm not sure why artillerists aren't a more popular choice, but we seem heavily outnumbered by paladins, berserkers, and bards. They're missing out. Being an artillerist is like being a cross between the Heavy Weapons Guy from Team Fortress 2 and a naval broadside.

In the Sherlock Holmes stories, Dr. Watson quite illegally carries a service revolver from his Army days because he feels a sentimental attachment to being able to shoot people. The artillerist is similar, except instead of the Army you seem to have been a member of some kind of steampunk Air Navy, and instead of a revolver you've elected to carry a ship's cannon with you into civilian life.

I can see why. It's more than just a cannon. At the press of a hotkey your weapon can transform into a gatling gun, a howitzer, a flamethrower, a rocket launcher, or a rocket launcher that shoots a missile made of ice. My favorite attack plants a laser target on the ground with a circle around it that slowly fills until a straight-up nuclear bomb hits, complete with miniature mushroom cloud and a field of radiated ground that causes continual damage to anyone left alive in the vicinity. Few people ever are. I sure hope Lost Ark's wizards have a cure for cancer.

Though it's an MMO, Lost Ark doesn't much bother with the boring trinity of tank/healer/DPS roles. The only 'support' classes in the current version are the paladin and bard, and both of them can easily be specced for damage-dealing. As an artillerist I'm the hardiest and least-mobile of the various advanced classes in the gunner category, basically a tank who is also a ranged DPS specialist. Which, when you think about it, is what actual tanks are in the real world.

In a raid it's my job to plunk down a turret with a handy defense-stripping debuff (you're welcome), then throw up Energy Shield to protect myself (the shield also explodes, because when you've got a theme you ought to stick to it). The shield's there because several of my attack animations are slow as balls and I'm probably taking hits while I set them up. 

First comes Homing Barrage, which is the aforementioned nuke, and the second is Air Raid, which is a similar area-of-effect blast. After that I might throw down Napalm Shot, though since Napalm's my only ability that can counter I might also save it for when the boss glows blue—that's when you can prevent them from attacking by using a counter ability, one of way too many mechanics Lost Ark is half-hearted about explaining. Like stagger, which I do a lot of.

Multiple Rocket makes a good follow-up because it does exactly what it says on the tin, and also the rockets set people on fire. Flamethrower does bonus damage if I can get behind enemies, and conveniently lights up a whole line of them. (I currently have Flamethrower specced to do water damage, which it somehow does by shooting blue fire.) Finally there's Enhanced Shell, which just shoots a single rocket. It's basic, but it has a low cooldown and gets the job done.

Pretty much all of these abilities involve things going boom or burning. The artillerist is like an explosion at the explosion factory. (That's the place where they manufacture explosions.)

Every advanced class in Lost Ark has an identity skill, something a bit special, but the thing about being an artillerist is that your basic abilities are so good you don't need it. Which is important, because that identity skill is the one weak option in an otherwise lovely set of murderbuttons.

It's called Barrage Mode and it turns you into a stationary artillery piece, able to lay down impressive amounts of damage, but unable to move. Given the number of ways I already have to blow up jerks, getting a couple extra in return for being even more of a target than I already am isn't often worth it—except when you're fighting a boss with knockback attacks who tries to push you off ledges, in which case being able to plant your feet and laugh off any attempt to move you actually isn't bad.

Of course, Lost Ark is a vanity MMO where looking cool is as important as throwing out unseemly amounts of damage. Like every class, the way gear changes as you level up to 50 has made my artillerist seem like a teenager going through many phases in quick succession. At various points my look has been: Horatio Hornblower; literally a cowboy; guitarist in a Guns N' Roses cover band; steampunk but make it sexy; Horatio Hornblower but make it fancy; literally a cowboy (slight return); and goth who knows a little bit too much about World War 2, if you know what I mean.

I should note that though a couple of those looks showed a fair bit of skin, even during my brief sexy pirate phase I'd stand next to almost any woman in Lost Ark and be like, "What are you wearing? Is that a bra made of bicycle chain?" 

Lost Ark's skimpy outfits for women, combined with the high heels and hipsway, is the reason I picked one of the male classes to be my main. I have a sorceress alt as well, and she seems to get less and less clothed the higher level she gets. At level 60 I can only imagine they'll run out of things to remove and take her flesh away, leaving her looking like an anatomy lesson.

Smilegate has said that it's planning to add more outfits that aren't so revealing, and though I look forward to that I hope the beachwear skins from the Korean version make it in as well, because the options for male gunners include a casual pink robe-and-budgie-smugglers combo that I would enjoy wearing while I make literally everything explode.

The big fantasy MMO Lost Ark is a hit, but it's not without problems, including the fact that its classes are gender-locked: Warriors are men, mages are women. It's an old-school approach, and one that doesn't really hold up anymore. Developer Smilegate is attempting to address the situation through the addition of "advanced classes," which are specializations that enable both male and female characters in individual classes. 

Gunner advanced classes, for instance, include the artillerist, deadeye, and sharpshooter, which are male, and the gunslinger, a female. The Martial Artist class is balanced the other way: Three advanced classes—the scrapper, soulfist, and wardancer—are female, while only the striker is male. 

It's far from a perfect solution, but Smilegate told Eurogamer that further advanced classes, with better gender balance, will continue to "roll out over time."

"Classes are tied pretty closely to their character models in terms of function and animation, so bringing opposite gender characters to a class takes more work than just making a differently gendered model available," Amazon Games' franchise lead Soomin Park told the site. 

"However, Smilegate RPG is actively working on this; the female Berserker is the next class coming to Korea. While not every class in the game currently has a male and female counterpart available, we made an effort to include those that do in our launch class lineup. In the future, Smilegate RPG will be creating more counterparts for classes that are still gender locked, and we will bring these to Arkesia in time."

The explanation echoes that of Ubisoft's years-ago excuse for not including a playable female character in Assassin's Creed Unity, although at least it didn't end with a shrug and a "sorry," and then an awkward follow-up statement that doesn't really address the matter at hand. 

Park also said that Smilegate is working to address complaints about Lost Ark's revealing female armor sets: Existing armor pieces won't be changed, but the game's marketing and character creation screen will be adjusted so "the more revealing options won't be front and center." New, less revealing outfits are on the way as well, but Park specified that they will be an addition to the game, not a replacement.

"As we are aware of the balance between hardcore fans who want a Lost Ark experience that is close to the original Korean version and new players who may not like the current armour and costume options, we are adding outfits and alternatives to the game instead of taking away options," Park said.

Lost Ark originally launched in South Korea in 2019, but didn't make its way to the West and Europe until February 2022. It was an immediate hit and has held up very well in the month since, with concurrent player counts remaining in the high six figures. Unfortunately, that success has come at a cost: Lost Ark's Europe Central region suffered from long server queues because of unprecedented demand, and while Amazon Games quickly launched a new Europe West region to help alleviate the load, it's unable to increase the capacity of Europe Central itself. 

Fortunately, the recent "ban tsunami" seems to have helped free things up: A message posted in the Lost Ark forums a day after the bans rolled out indicated that EU Central queues had been dramatically reduced. 

A former senior developer at Amazon Games has claimed that it was "pretty apparent" the incredibly short-lived sci-fi shooter Crucible was doomed to fail.

Stephen Dewhurst spent seven years at the developer and publisher as a senior systems designer, spending the majority of his time there working on Crucible. Dewhurst cited fundamental issues with how Amazon Games operated, calling its workplace policies "draconian."

"It's pretty apparent in hindsight—and honestly was pretty apparent at the time—that the project was going to fail and Amazon is not a great place to make games," Dewhurst told NME in an interview. "Fundamentally, their executive leadership has a lot of hubris that stems from having been very successful at a bunch of stuff and thinking that their success in those things translates to success in other things when they're not remotely similar."

Dewhurst said Amazon went through "a lot of growing pains" during Crucible's development, with higher-ups failing to understand which skills could be transferrable to games development and a bizarre policy that banned staff from pursuing any personal projects. "We recruited a bunch of top people, the Crucible team had a wonderful culture," he said. "All that was great, but the outside work policy is wildly stifling."

He continued: "During my seven years there I was prohibited from learning anything about how to create art or engineering, or production, or [allowed] to work on a smaller team, or a larger team or in a different role." Dewhurst said how Amazon failed to recognise the team's desire to continue learning and growing, saying how executives would maintain an attitude of "why would learning things help you do your job?"

However, Dewhurst wasn't completely down about his time at Amazon, saying he learned "a ton" from his time there. "I met a lot of people and I got to work on a product that I loved a ton and I think could have been amazing. Also, Amazon pays very well, so there are a lot of things that are like that. That was a fine way for me to spend seven years of my life."

Crucible died a death nearly as quickly as it was birthed into the gaming world. The game was released in May 2020 to paltry reviews, including our own score of 48 from Morgan Park. It was pulled back into beta a mere month later before being shelved completely in October 2020.

Amazon Games has pressed pause on plans for a Russian localisation of New World following the country's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Speaking to TechRadar, Amazon Games vice president Christoph Hartmann said: "We were looking into localising New World for Russia, and we stopped that." Following Hartmann's comments, a spokesman confirmed that it was due to the ongoing invasion. Amazon has also promised to match any employee donations made to Ukrainian relief organisations. While the team has put a stop to a Russian localisation, it appears that the game will still be available to purchase and play in the country.

The publisher joins a rapidly-growing line of games industry figures who have pulled support and sales from Russia and Belarus in one way or another. This week has seen the likes of CD Projekt Red and Bloober Team remove their games from the sale, while EA has removed Russian teams from FIFA and NHL. Ukraine's deputy prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov has been pledging for the industry to pull any and all support from Russia—including closing any studio offices in Russia and cancelling any esports tournaments due to take place in the country.

MMO and fashion simulator Lost Ark was released in English last month, but it's been out in Korea for years. Only some of what's been added to the original version over the course of its life was brought over at launch. More is coming, beginning with an update due some time this month, as announced on the official site.

The first thing confirmed for the March update is more storyline, with a story episode called Kadan that covers the Isteri and Illusion Bamboo Islands. Continuing from where the current main quest leaves off, it sees you searching for the first Guardian slayer and the last of the lost arks. To start the new quests you'll need to have finished the continent of Feiton and the quests Let There Be Light on Yorn, Start of Our Story on Whispering Islet, and End of the Trials on Illusion Bamboo Island. It's recommended for characters who are at item level 1,100.

Also coming is a new endgame activity called Abyss Raids. Like the existing Guardian Raids, these are Monster Hunter-inspired boss hunts where you have a time limit to defeat a single gigantic guardian, only where Guardian Raids are designed for 1–4 players, Abyss Raids are specifically for groups of eight. The guardian you're hunting will power up through three phases, with different mechanics for each, and different rewards for each phase as well. The first Abyss Raid will be against a guardian called Argos.

The announcement notes these two additions aren't all that will be coming in the update, and we should "stay tuned for the full release notes, including details on additional changes and bug fixes." A date for the update, and the downtime that will come with it, will apparently be following soon.

A separate announcement on Lost Ark's launch issues elaborates on upcoming tweaks in the next weekly update. The difficulty of endgame content is being lowered, with several tier 1 and tier 2 Guardian Raids and Abyss Dungeons being toned down. Currently, guardians have a ridiculous amount of hit points and taking them down is a time-consuming chore—especially for something that's designed to be a repeatable daily task—so I'd be happy for that to get nerfed.

Additionally, the post addresses the problem with gold sellers and bots that Lost Ark's been having. "We are constantly adjusting tools," it says, "improving chat filters, and acting on reports to ban gold sellers and bots from the game at a rapid rate. In fact, spammers last an average of less than 10 minutes in-game before getting banned." To limit them even further, characters under level 30 won't be able to use area chat, though they'll still have access to group chat and so on.

Bots have become pretty common in Lost Ark's quest hubs. Rows of identical-looking berserkers and sorceresses with names that look like the result of someone falling asleep on their keyboard can be seen clumping together around questgivers then buzzing off at lightning speed. The post notes that player reports help the support team get rid of bots and spammers, and ctrl-clicking on a player name in chat lets you bring up the menu to report them.

Amazon Games has shared a look at what's coming to the New World public test realm in March, which will see the conclusion of the story of Isabella and the addition of a powerful new weapon, the fearsome blunderbuss.

The blunderbuss is a ranged weapon, of course, that promises "high mobility coupled with potent close-to-mid range damage." Damage output will actually scale based on the player's strength and intelligence—the first weapon in New World to do so, apparently—which makes it especially good for "bruiser or mage builds."

Two weapon mastery trees will be available, each supporting a distinct playstyle:

• The Containment tree is all about closing the gap and unloading hot lead into your enemy’s face.    
• The Chaos tree focuses on keeping your distance and bombarding areas with explosive AoE damage.

The blunderbuss will also have its own legendary weapon quest series: After reaching level 60 and the maximum blunderbuss skill level, hit up Wang Tang Zhi in Ebonscale Reach to kick things off.

On the narrative side, Tempest’s Heart - The Myrkgard Expedition will continue the main storyline with a pursuit of Isabella back to Shattered Mountain and into "a corrupted dimension of reality." Tempest's Heart is an endgame expedition for five players with a recommended character level of 60 and gearscore of 550 or higher.

The PTR update will also include "new encounters in the wild, impactful balance changes across a variety of weapons, and a huge swath of bug fixes," Amazon said. A date for the PTR hasn't been set, but it's expected to begin "soon," before going live in the main game "eventually." The timeline isn't exactly carved in stone yet, as you can see, but the full PTR announcement is up at newworld.com.

Lost Ark players are reporting large numbers of gold spammers and farming bots clogging up the chat and obstructing player progress. These are two slightly different issues, but they both have the same result of hampering players' experiences of the massively popular MMO.

Gold spammers are chat-bots programmed to regularly advertise sales of gold (one of Lost Ark's numerous currencies) in the public chat, making it more difficult for players to communicate effectively and organise group activities. On top of this, there are also reports of large numbers of character bots grinding starter zones. Not only is this stopping players from accessing key enemies in zones, the bots are also contributing to the lengthy server queues players are having to sit through in order to play the game.

A good visualisation of the latter problem was provided in this post by user nitoss in the Lost Ark forums. In the post, you can clearly see berserker bots, all wearing identical kit, queueing up to receive quests at NPCs. Nitoss claims there are "massive" numbers of bots  "in almost every channel, every zone of the map, in every continent."

You can see an example of the bots in the image below:

Amazon is aware of the Gold spamming issue and is taking steps to address it. In a status update from the 20th of February, the Lost Ark team said "We are also aware of the increase in gold sellers spamming chat and are running frequent scripts to ban them." They are also working on a "more permanent fix" and in the meantime, suggested that players use Lost Ark's in-built options for chat filtering. "You can create a new chat tab by clicking the "+" icon in the chat box and selecting the chat types you want to include or exclude," the post explains. "This will allow you to hide area chat."

The update doesn't mention the presence of farming bots in the game, however. And these aren't the only problems Lost Ark is currently facing either. Many players are encountering issues surrounding a premium account bonus known as Crystalline Aura, while players in Australia and New Zealand are struggling with latency issues due to the lack of Oceania region servers.

Lost Ark players from Australia and New Zealand are flocking to the game's official forums to ask Amazon for region-specific servers, citing latency issues and long server queues.

Requests for an Oceania server region began back in November 2021, several months before Lost Ark's global launch. In a thread title "Please Reconsider Oceania Servers" user ooglydit wrote "While I'm very thankful for the work that AGS have put into having the region-lock removed for Australia & New Zealand, having a dedicated server for our region would go leaps and bounds toward making the game more enjoyable for us." The main reason behind the request was concerns over high ping when connecting to more distant servers. "As it stands, if our only options are NA/EU, we're looking at either -250 ping to NA or -300 ping to EU."

It appears that ooglydit's concerns were well-founded. As of writing, the request for Oceania servers is the top post on the Lost Ark forums, with over 3,000 respondents adding to the call for a region-specific server, and that number is growing.

As players feared, high ping caused by connecting to distant servers is impacting the experience. "I can tell I'm missing out on the satisfaction of my abilities: as the delay between animation and impact/result puts a dampen [sic] on the whole thing," writes user Poppleop. Meanwhile, Rigeth notes that high ping puts Oceania players at a disadvantage during PvP. "It's also more common for most Australians to sit around 203ms, so when we enter PVP and are up against someone with 18ms or even better we will usually lose 1v1", they point out.

Latency issues aren't the only reason players are calling out for Oceania servers. Without local servers, players are having to join the already lengthy queues in regions like North America and the EU. "Just got into queue at 4pm AEDT and it's 8000 long" writes user Archmage. " Lately I have been getting 8-9k queue, around 1 hour queue time every night" adds Hiroyuuki.

The Lost Ark team is aware of the feedback, and has been since before the game's launch. A community manager by the username Roxx responded to the initial requests back in November, stating that they would "take note" of the feedback and "make sure it gets shared". But it appears the players' calls are unlikely to be heeded any time soon. "There are currently no Oceania servers in the works," Roxx said in an update on January 24. "While this may be re-evaluated at some point in the future, right now there is not an update to give as there has been no significant change surrounding the topic."

No reason has been given for Amazon's decision not to add servers for the Oceania region, although it's worth noting that New World, Amazon's other big MMO, does have Oceania servers, in the form of the AP Southeast region. Whether Amazon's decision is based upon financial or infrastructural reasons, what is true is that players from Australia, New Zealand, and other countries in the region are going to stuck playing on distant servers for the foreseeable future.

It's safe to say Lost Ark's launch has exceeded the expectations of both publisher Amazon and developer Smilegate, to the point where it's causing some major problems. We've already reported on the massive server queues players are having to wade through to get onto the game. But there's another, less reported issue that is also impacting player experiences, and it all surrounds a feature of the game known as Crystalline Aura.

Crystalline Aura is described by the Lost Ark team as a 'premium account benefit' that players can purchase with Blue Crystals, one of several in-game currencies in Lost Ark. Blue Crystals can be acquired either with in-game-earned gold at Lost Ark's currency exchange, or through buying the Lost Ark store with Royal Crystals, which are paid for with real money.

When activated, Crystalline Aura provides a bunch of bonuses. It gives you 50% off using the game's Ocean Liners, halves the cooldown period of your Song of Return, reduces the time it takes to resolve actions at your Stronghold, and a bunch of other things. You can read the full list of bonuses below:

• Triport cost waiver 
• Ocean Liner 50% discount
• Crystal Benefactor Title applied (While benefit lasts)
• Daily NPC Affinity Interaction +1
• Life Energy recovery +10 percent
• Bifrost slots +2
• Song of Return Cooldown -50 percent
• Stronghold Crafting time -10 percent
• Stronghold Dispatch time -10 percent
• Stronghold Research time -10 percent
• Stronghold Action Energy  recovery speed +10 percent
• Free Ultimate Stress Buster in Stronghold
• 'Crystal Benefactor' Title

All resulting effects from activating the Aura last for 30 days. At least, they're supposed to. Many players are reporting that their Crystalline Aura is vanishing before the 30 days period expires. A post on the Lost Ark forums titled "My Crystalline Aura is gone!" currently has almost over 1800 replies, most of which are players claiming to have encountered this issue. 

The problem, which started before the official launch, is still ongoing. "I lost my 30 day aura that I activated about 2 days ago," posted user D0nkih0te on February 22, while user Mazt says "This is the 2nd time this has happened. Last one was 3 days ago. Got it back for 1-2 day, now it's gone again."

Amazon is well aware of the issue. On February 14th, the Lost Ark team addressed the problem of missing Crystalline Aura in a broad post on current top issues, explaining that the issue was linked to another problem regarding missing premium content: 

"For these entitlements, two different servers need to talk to each other, the game server and the commerce server," Amazon says. "Right now there is an issue where the commerce server, due to the massive load that it is experiencing from how many people are playing Lost Ark, fails to properly communicate with the game server." The post also states that: "For Crystalline Aura specifically, we know that this is a paid premium account benefit that has a timer associated with it." 

Yet while this explained this issue, it obviously didn't resolve it. On February 20 the official Lost Ark twitter issued the following post:

Around the same time, a forum moderator, Solaire, provided an update to the "My Crystalline Aura is gone!" thread, stating that Amazon "would like to take a closer look into this issue with you all" and providing a contact link to Amazon Games. However, Amazon's responses don't appear to have been particularly helpful. "I used the Contact Us link via this topic to send a ticket, and the response was an email with a link back to the topic," replied user Airora. "So essentially, I'm just going in circles."

This isn't simply an issue of an in-game feature not working correctly. Crystalline Aura is a premium item, and many players have forked out for it directly, either by buying Blue Crystals with Royal Crystals, or through the Founder's packs and Starter Packs, all of which offered 30 days of Crystalline Aura as one of the pack benefits.

While Amazon has repeatedly stated that it is aware of the problem, it does not appear to have issued any kind of recompense for players who have paid for this item and not received it. In a separate post titled "Crystalline aura won't be compensated", user notinuse stated "You are putting in potential fixes for this problem every few days, but none of them have solved it. And yet you are acting like this is something given for free to us and not even mentioning a compensation."

The scale of the global interest in Lost Ark has clearly caught both Amazon and Smilegate off-guard, and they are still scrambling to meet demand. However, this doesn't change the fact that many players have paid money for an enhanced experience that, at present, they are not receiving.

Lost Ark players in Europe have been dealing with lengthy queues since the game went live in the EU and North America earlier this month. Last week Amazon Games set up a new region called Europe West to help alleviate the strain, although it warned that the Europe West servers would only "reduce, not eliminate, queue times for Europe Central."

Unfortunately, it appears that's about as good as it's going to get. In a new update, the Lost Ark team acknowledged that there's not much it can do for Europe Central itself, apparently because of the game's underlying structure.

"The Europe Central region is at capacity and unfortunately there is no way to increase the number of players per world in Europe Central," Amazon Game Studios community manager TrevzorFTW wrote. "Adding more servers is not possible based on the complexity of all the systems that need to work together."

The situation is further complicated by the fact that Lost Ark does not fully support server transfers. A server transfer option "just rolled out" in Korea, where Lost Ark has been running since 2019, but it's a manual process, run weekly, and doesn't support cross-region transfers, meaning that players can transfer to other servers within Europe Central, but not to the new servers on Europe West.

"Therefore, unfortunately, it is not a viable option at this point for the western version," TrevzorFTW wrote. "But we will not rest until we’ve exhausted all options."

In the short term, at least, the Europe West region will be a real boon for newcomers and players who haven't progressed very far into Lost Ark on Europe Central, but less so for players who are deep into it and don't want to walk away from their characters and progress. In a statement emailed to PC Gamer, however, Amazon Games said the launch of the Europe West region is already helping to relieve the load, resulting in queue time reductions.

"This is the balance of bringing great games to new territories—new surges in demand can also bring new, unforeseen challenges," Amazon Games said. "Given the complexity of the systems that have to work together, adding more capacity in Europe Central data center is not an option. Instead, Smilegate and Amazon Games partnered to deploy a new data center for European players in just five days—Europe West—to respond to the regional demand. To further clarify, the terms 'Europe Central Region' and 'Europe West Region' are the names of specific data centers, and do not refer to the geographical region of Central Europe.

"Since opening four days ago, the new Europe West Region data center now houses just under 20% of our European players and is growing every day. We know queue times are very frustrating for our players, and we are encouraged to see this new data center has already reduced peak queues by 48%. We’re monitoring this number closely while continuously working to further improve queue times.”

Amazon is also offering a second variation of Lost Ark founders packs to players who purchased them so that they can start up new characters in the new Europe West region without losing all the startup loot they paid for.

The Lost Ark update also touches on changes aimed at improving matchmaking, reducing gold seller spam, avoiding fraudulent purchases, and improving stability. Full details are up at playlostark.com.

There's nothing an ARPG loves more than a big fight, except perhaps rummaging through the corpses that are left over for a snazzier pair of shoes. So, with Lost Ark having recently entered the fray as a major contender to the ARPG throne, I thought it might be fun to toss it in a pit with the genre's other big-hitters of the last decade, namely Diablo 3 and Path of Exile, and let them duke it out in a series of arbitrary, but lethal, challenges. Which game has the loveliest loot, or the most satisfying skills? Which best conveys the feeling of turning a god into jam with the click of a mouse?

The plan is to compare how all three games handle different aspects of the core ARPG formula. It's a general comparison of broad-stroke systems, rather than an in-depth analysis of how each game handles, say, individual class-types. That said, to keep things balanced, I tried to play as similar classes while comparing the games (Warrior for Lost Ark, Barbarian for Diablo 3, and Marauder for Path of Exile), so that the results were not based on three wildly different playstyles.

The click

At the heart of any ARPG is the click, how pressing the left mouse-button translates to smiting your foes on the screen with your basic attack. It’s the foundation upon which any ARPG is built—the base feedback loop that'll keep players hooked for tens of hours.

At least, that's the theory. But of our competitors, only Diablo 3 has much time for the click. Lost Ark's skills have such speedy cooldowns that you'll rarely use your basic attack, instead constantly flowing from one ridiculous ability to the next. Path of Exile's basic attack gets more use in the early game, but your character will soon evolve away from the left mouse button, whether that's through more powerful skills, or mechanics like totems that let you avoid engaging with enemies entirely.

Hence, Diablo 3 wins in this category by default. But it's worth noting that Blizzard's game has the best click anyway. Lost Ark's basic attack is weedy compared to your many combat skills. Path of Exile's left-click is more functional, landing with a thunk and dealing respectable damage to enemies. But it lacks pizzazz.

Diablo 3, by comparison, puts a vast amount of design effort into making that left-click feel incredible. In fact, part of its success is how it treats basic attacks like combat skills, offering multiple variants that unlock across the course of the campaign, each more powerful than the last. But they feel good from the outset, flinging foes across the map in piles of physics powered limbs, or bursting them in showers of gore.

Winner: Diablo 3

Skills and Abilities

An ARPG's combat system is usually fleshed-out by a wide range of active skills and abilities. These affect enemies in different ways and define your character's fighting style. Much of the game is about finding the most effective combination of these abilities, and since they form the crux of an ARPG's action, they need to look spectacular and feel powerful.

All three games are strong in this area, offering a broad range of colourful, satisfying abilities that are fun to discover and experiment with. But Lost Ark slightly edges out the other two. This is partly down to being the newer game. Both Path of Exile and Diablo 3 are approaching 10 years old, while Lost Ark released in Korea at the end of 2019, so has the benefit of greater graphical whizzbang.

But it's also because Lost Ark has zero restraint. Diablo 3 and Path of Exile both start out relatively low-key—the latter in particular is very understated in its opening hours, which fits with its grungy, grimdark style. In Lost Ark, every single power is dialled up to max from the first five minutes, with stellar audio/visual design baked into each skill. You move through the game's zones and dungeons like a traveling fireworks display, whacking hordes of enemies with apocalyptic spells and powers that punch like God's nightcap.

Winner: Lost Ark

Character progression

One of the main appeals of ARPGs is taking your character from being a naked, angry li'l guy and gradually building them into a walking fission reaction that obliterates anything in their path. At a basic level, this means unlocking bigger powers and acquiring better equipment. But a good ARPG will also let you tinker with your class, modifying active and passive abilities to maximise your character's murder metric.

All three games approach this in different ways. In Diablo 3, every power you unlock can be modified with a rune, while your character also acquires passive abilities that can be plugged into a set number of slots for further alteration. Lost Ark, meanwhile, has you spend ability points to level up individual combat skills through multiple tiers, each of which unlocks three potential modifiers that you can switch between at any time.

Both are perfectly good systems, but neither has the raw potential of Path of Exile's approach to progression. Here, skills are unbound from character classes, instead based around gems that you plug into items, letting you mix and match to create whatever ability loadout you fancy. Meanwhile, stat upgrades are based around the game's enormous passive ability tree, which is shared across starting classes. This means you can carve out an entirely unique destiny for your character, moving away from their intended pathways and creating Marauders that rely on summoning or Duellists who can avoid direct conflict entirely.

Winner: Path of Exile

Loot

No ARPG is complete without loot. While your character may be on a quest to save the world or kick God into a bin, the player's goal in most ARPGs is to net the sweetest swag in the realm. The promise of a better sword or a snazzier pair of pants is what pulls you through the game, whether that's for the stats or to dress your hero up in flash new kit. Either way, the design of an ARPG's loot system can have a significant impact on the core experience.

There's greater spread between the games in this category. At the bottom of the golden pile is Lost Ark, where loot is scarce and predictable. You'll very rarely pick up items outside of quest rewards, and these rewards rarely provide anything other than incremental stat upgrades. The best loot is locked away behind the more multiplayer-centric elements of the game, such as raids and zone bosses. Which is fine for the most part —it is an MMO, after all. But the game would certainly benefit from sprinkling some more eye-catching gear across its central questline, if only to make you actually look at your equipment stats once in a while.

Diablo 3 has the best presentation of loot. The way you rummage through bookshelves, turn over corpses, and open chests that vomit coins at you like broken slot machines is all very satisfying. As for the actual quality of loot, it's decent enough during levelling, although it revolves largely around incremental stat upgrades. But it comes into its own in the endgame, which puts much greater emphasis on finding kickass gear.

Overall, Path of Exile does the best job of providing a constant flow of interesting loot. This is partly down to the gem system. Since each piece of loot has a different number and combination of slots for inserting gems, it means that every loot item, no matter how basic otherwise, is potentially interesting in terms of how it can help you build your character. Add to that all the more typical ARPG stat boosts from individual items, and you've got a loot system that constantly has you thinking about how best to outfit your character.

Winner: Path of Exile

Conclusion

Broadly, all three games provide a quality ARPG experience. But they all emphasise slightly different aspects of the genre. If you want to smite your foes in the biggest and most spectacular way, then Lost Ark is the game to opt for. But the base feel of Diablo 3's combat is still hard to beat, while its loot system is broadly superior to Lost Ark. Path of Exile isn't as flashy as either Lost Ark or Diablo 3, but it's unmatched when it comes to character progression, and also has the most engaging loot system of the three.

Ultimately, the decision comes down to how familiar you are with ARPGs, and what kind of experience you want to get out of them. If you've never played an ARPG before, then Diablo 3 is probably the game to shoot for. It has the best balance of spectacle, modular characters and decent loot. For a more challenging and rewarding journey, choose Path of Exile for its creative potential. And if you just want to play with the biggest toys in a world that's as weird as it is massive, pick Lost Ark.

While Lost Ark players on the NA servers have been able to play without waiting, players on EU servers are complaining of queues that last for hours. "18,587 in queue", says one user review from Sweden. "See you next week." Steam's user review rating for Lost Ark has slid down to Mixed, and European queue times are a recurring frustration. "3-4 Hrs in queue", says a German player. "3 hrs to figure out the Character Name because Names are Cross-Server. Everything remot[e]ly normal is already taken. No Numbers, no Special Chara[c]ters, no First/Last Name. My Characters Name is now 'aripwonmhvj'".

Publisher Amazon Games and developer Smilegate RPG are aware of the issue, and have announced a joint effort to add more European servers. Those servers will be part of a new region separate to the current Central Europe region, however, and Lost Ark servers do not support cross-region play. "Due to the game's architecture this is the only way to accommodate more players in Europe", the announcement says.

"This also means that region-wide features, such as your Royal Crystal and Silver balances from Central Europe will not be accessible in the new European region. The new region will be ideal for players who have not yet created their character or haven't otherwise committed to stay on their existing server. If you plan to restart in the new region, you may wish to hold off on claiming any 'per Account' items, such as the additional Founder's Pack Redemption, until you have created a character and are able to redeem in the new region."

Part of Lost Ark's design ties player progress to their server. Each character has their own combat level, but activities like collectible-hunting add xp to a roster level shared by every character you make on the same server. Some items and currency are also shared between characters on the same server, which is why server transfers, though much-requested, are not currently allowed.

While adding more servers will prevent the situation from getting worse and give new players a way to skip the queues, existing players on the Central Europe servers will have to start over if they want the same benefit, or continue waiting for things to improve.

To make players feel better about it, everyone who logs in on any server between the time the new region goes live and March 2 at 8.59AM CET / March 1 at 11.59PM PT will receive the following items as a gift.

• Vehicle Selection Chest (containing a choice of either a Terpeion or Terpeion of the Shadow mount)
• Midsummer Night's Dream Instrument Skin Selection Chest
• Healing Battle Item Chest x10
• Offensive Battle Item Chest x10
• Legendary Rapport Selection Chest x3
• Weekly Trade potions Pack x3
• Phoenix Plume x20

A date for when the new servers go live was not announced. "We'll share an update on exact timings as soon as possible", the announcement said.

• Lost Ark tips: What you should know
• Lost Ark classes: Which to choose
• Lost Ark servers: A complete list
• Lost Ark controls: How to change them
• Lost Ark mokoko seeds: How to find them

Lost Ark has launched in Europe and America like a bolt of lightning from a mage's hand. Within 24 hours of release, the game had reached a peak of 1.3 million concurrent players, making it the highest played MMO on Steam ever by concurrent player count, and the second highest-played game in general by that same metric. It's been so popular that many players have been struggling to get into the game, queuing by literally thousands to get into vastly overloaded servers.

The game's sudden and immediate dominance of both headlines and lifetimes may seem to have come out of nowhere. But the truth is this explosion of interest has been building for a long time, and it's worth taking a moment to break down precisely why. Below, I'll cover Lost Ark's long road to success, the causes behind it, why so many players are scrambling to play it, and why such a large percentage of those players are currently unable to do so.

What are Lost Ark's origins?

Although Lost Ark has only just launched in Europe and the US, it has been actively playable in Korea for several years, and has seen staggered releases in places like Japan and Russia. It also has a long pre-release history too. The game began development way back in 2011 under the codename Project T. The first mention of it comes in the form of a news post on the Unreal Engine website, which refers to Project T as a "blockbuster action-MMORPG, armed with the stunning visuals that can be achieved with Unreal Engine 3". Glimpses of the game's world, combat and characters became available in the form of various dev diaries as early as 2014, but the game didn't fully launch in Korea until December 2018.

Information regarding Lost Ark's protracted development is scarce, but we do know that Lost Ark was a substantially different game when it originally launched in Korea. For starters, each character class had a unique, Dragon Age-style introduction to the game, providing an origin story for that class while guiding players from level one to level ten. This was replaced for the Western launch with a class-agnostic prologue that started players at level ten. Furthermore, in the Korean launch version, the player's progress from level 10 to 50 was slower, with more involved questing and less streamlined zones.

We also know that Lost Ark was a big hit on its Korean launch. According to a report by the Korea Herald, Lost Ark drew "A record 350,000 concurrent users" on its national debut. As with most MMOs, this number dropped off significantly over the new few years, but the game saw a resurgence in players in 2021. According to the Herald, this was down to multiple  factors. Firstly, the f2p structure of Lost Ark is considered "soft" compared to other, more pay-to-win oriented Korean games. Indeed, Lost Ark allegedly benefited from several controversies surrounding MapleStory. another popular Korean MMO which, among other things, was accused of "manipulating the ratio of random cash items" resulting in players switching to Lost Ark.

What makes Lost Ark appealing to western players?

The answer is going to be subjective from player-to-player. In my review, I highlighted the things that struck me about the game, the spectacular combat, the creative character powers, the varied and exciting dungeons, and the wild swings the game's central adventure takes. While the game's story isn't amazingly told, as an adventure it's constantly taking you to new and exciting places, which can vary significantly in theme and tone.

But there's also the persistent online side of the game that more MMO oriented players will enjoy, from participating in raids, completing daily challenges and grouping together to battle powerful zone bosses, to gathering resources in the world and using them to build out your home fortress, which is unique to every player. There's a lot to keep you coming back, and if you're the kind of player who likes to focus on one, all-encompassing game, Lost Ark does a good job of providing that.

The two sides of the game's personality also complement each other in many ways, catering to both fanbases without either side of the game feeling too compromised. If you come to it as an MMO fan, then you're getting all the stuff you normally see in an MMO, but with much more exciting combat. If you're more of an ARPG fan, you get all the cool powers and character building of an ARPG, but with a massive world to explore. The relationship not always symbiotic. For example, the constantly respawning mobs in open zones, which only provide a tiny amount of XP, make combat feel somewhat redundant in these areas. But you're only ever a few minutes away from an instanced zone or dungeon, which do a much better job of scratching that ARPG itch.

On the subject of scratching the ARPG itch, perhaps the main reason behind Lost Ark's success is that it caters to an audience that hasn't been especially well served in recent years. Diablo III is ten years old this year, and while there have been a few good ARPGs released since, such as Path of Exile and Grim Dawn, the last decade hasn't exactly been a bumper period for the genre. Hence, Lost Ark is landing at an opportune time to fill that gap in the market, hoovering up all those fans who have exhausted Diablo III and want a change from Path of Exile.

What are Steam reviewers saying about Lost Ark?

At the time of writing, Lost Ark's Steam reviews are mixed, although this aggregated rating paints a slightly misleading picture. There are currently around 76,000 Steam reviews , 67% of which are positive. The positive reviews praise elements like the combat, class design, and the variety of activities to do. "The most enjoyable combat system in any ARPG I've ever played" says one example. Another states "It's a game where your first few skills look cooler and have more substance than every skill in other isometric ARPGs combined."

In the negative reviews, the most common complaint is that players cannot access the game due to the servers being overwhelmed. "No oceanic servers forcing all Australians onto a single server for stupidly high queue times to play" says one. "No server-to-server transfers and populated servers have 4-6 hour queue in EU servers" explains another.  I'll talk more about this issue later, but it is definitely the biggest gripe affecting the game's overall metric.

There also seems to be several issues surrounding the Founder's Pass and various player packs made available for purchase prior to the game's release. The Founder's Platinum pack currently has "Mostly negative" reviews with users complaining about how the pack is locked to a single server, which is causing access issues now that the servers are flooded with players. The Vanquisher Starter pack also has mostly negative reviews, with players claiming that its listing of the character skins available in the pack is "misleading" and "deceptive" as you only get to unlock one of the skins listed. Amazon has recently updated the text on the pack's Steam page to clarify this, but this hasn't resulted in an adjusted rating so far.

In short, most Steam users rate the game, but server issues and poor communication regarding the various passes and content packs have negatively impacting the overall rating.

How are the server queues affecting the experience?

As mentioned above, the server queues are currently the main bone of contention surrounding Lost Ark. Amazon and Smilegate seem to have substantially underestimated the anticipation surrounding the game, and as such many players are stuck in server queues ranging from a few hundred players to tens of thousands. Many players cannot even get into a queue to begin with, instead confronted with the message "Cannot Connect Due To Heavy Traffic".

The sheer demand on Lost Ark's servers is also causing instability within the game itself. Many players are finding themselves either kicked out of queues or kicked out of the game entirely, as the servers struggle to cope with the constant influx of new players. The situation is particularly bad in the EU, where interest in the game appears to be way beyond what either Amazon or Smilegate expected.

Amazon and Smilegate foresaw a potential issue in the days before launch, as early adoption of the game via the Founder's Platinum Pass exceeded expectations. In response, they announced 15 new servers across North America and the EU. But this effort was evidently insufficient.

The obvious solution is for Amazon to add new servers until supply meets demand, but apparently the problem Lost Ark faces is more fundamental than that. In a news post titled "Update on Current Top Issues" Amazon states they can only expand regional capacity to a certain extent "due to limitations with Lost Ark's architecture". What exactly this means is unclear, but Lost Ark was originally built on Unreal Engine 3, so the problem may be related to the game being based on older tech.

On February 13, Amazon announced it was setting up an "entirely new region" of servers in Europe to cope with the especially high demand. While this will undoubtedly help relieve the pressure on the servers, it will cause other problems. As a distinct server region, players won't have cross-play ability with other regions, meaning certain region-wide features like Crystal and Silver balances (two of the game's currencies) won't be accessible to migrating players. But Amazon claims this is "the only way to accommodate more players in Europe".

No date is given for the new server region, but Amazon say they're working with Smilegate "24/7 until it's live."  Meanwhile, attempts to increase general server stability continue, with Amazon and Smilegate issuing regular hotfixes to keep players online. But it's likely that it will be several weeks before the current server demand is fully alleviated.

[This article contains spoilers for Lost Ark's main story.]

For its first ten-to-fifteen hours, Lost Ark is a typical fantasy ARPG. It spins a classic tale of good versus evil featuring errant kings, undead scourges, and Helm's Deep-style castle sieges. All of this is presented in the game's enjoyably spectacular, over-the-top fashion. But while visually impressive, it's not especially original, with little to separate it from your Diablos and Path of Exiles.

Once you've completed the continent of West Luterra, however, Lost Ark begins to reveal the weirder sides of its personality. After West Luterra's traditional fantasy vibes, East Luterra pitches you against an altogether stranger foe, culminating in what can only be described as a massive clown battle.

The antagonist in question is Kakul Saydon, a ludicrous trickster demon who makes the Joker look about as eccentric as a middle-manager in an IT firm. Kakul Saydon is one of a conclave of demons who you'll sporadically encounter during the remainder of your adventures across Lost Ark's vast world, and the first among his brood to take the fight directly to you.

Kakul Saydon begins his crusade against humanity in traditional clown-demon fashion, namely by driving the inhabitants of East Luterra insane. After the first couple of zones, where you help reconcile two estranged brothers and, er, ruthlessly put down a pumpkin-themed peasant's revolt (Lost Ark's binary view of good and evil sometimes leads it into ethically questionable waters), you enter a zone where many NPCs have descended into violent frenzy due to strange, ambient music playing through the area.

This zone sees your first proper encounter with the motley minions of Kakul-Saydon, known in-game as 'Mayhem Demons'. These nasty critters have set-up an evil circus across the river from the main settlements in the zone. This quickly leads to one of my favourite side-quests in Lost Ark, where a researcher named Cyrun asks you to 'infiltrate' Kakul Saydon's dark carnival. You do this by stealing a 'clown trumpet' from one of the clown mobs waddling around, and then blowing it, after which Cyrun utters what is probably the best single line in the entire game:

The quest is mechanically simplistic, like nearly all quests in Lost Ark. But it's a well-established fact that pretending to be an evil clown will immediately improve anything, be it Hallowe'en, Stephen King novels, or children's birthday parties. MMO questing is no different. While skulking around the circus, you talk to other evil clowns, check the evil clown noticeboard (they're very organised, these evil clowns), and perform a couple of other clown-adjacent activities. 

It's a delightfully silly taste of what's to come. Following this, Lost Ark goes back to being a mostly normal fantasy RPG for a couple of zones, with heretical cults and riffs on Robin Hood dominating the next hour or two. Then you reach a zone called Borea's Domain, and it's here, among the zone's cracked plains and lava-strewn chasms, where shit goes down to clown town.

The focal point in this zone is a tumbledown fortress in the bottom-right corner, the garrison of which is led by a man named Harlock. Initially, Harlock is incredulous to learn that his fortress is about to be assaulted by a huge army of clowns – the sensible and appropriate response to receiving that news. But your raw charisma overwhelms the rational part of his brain, and you spend the rest of the zone preparing for human-on-clown warfare. 

Once you've gathered your forces and followed all the obligatory breadcrumbs Lost Ark lays out, you return to the fortress and a cutscene plays. As a lone watchman overlooks the Rift of Mayhem from the fortress' battlements, purple portals begins to appear in the sky, and the heavens start raining clowns. I'm not talking about a drizzle or a summer shower here, either. I'm talking a full-on, category-five clown typhoon.

Soon, the fortress walls are overrun with Kakul Saydon's minions, from the scuttling, trumpet-wielding dudes you masqueraded as, to fat mace-wielding jesters, to spiderlike harlequins with spikes for legs, all swarming around several massive demons that could almost stride over the walls if the mood took them. You desperately carve your way through these carnivalesque hordes, manning giant cannons that can take out dozens of clowns in a single shot as you try in vain to hold back the tide.

The whole sequence encapsulates Lost Ark at its best, that combination of massive scale, ridiculous spectacle and just throwing bizarre scenarios out there and seeing what sticks. It's reminiscent of the Yakuza series in some ways. Mechanically the game is fairly simple, and on the face of it takes itself quite seriously. At the same time, however, it's constantly throwing tongue-in-cheek curveballs at you that build up to these utterly wild moments, and you can't help but smile as the game endlessly seeks to one-up its own silliness.

This isn't to say the game is as good at this as Yakuza, at least not when it comes to storytelling. For one, Lost Ark's character work is nowhere near as strong, and that lack of a core cast of likeable or dislikeable individuals undermines many of its bigger moments. Kakul-Saydon is a fun enough foe, but he's also a one-dimensional archetype, an unsubtle Joker rip-off without the years of backstory which make that character interesting. And while the clown battle will grip through its sheer absurdity, it's hard not to wonder how many of Lost Ark's other major set-pieces would be more impactful had Smilegate not cut down the main game's story and questing to accelerate players' journey toward level 50. 

Nonetheless, Lost Ark's massive clown battle is a significant moment in the game (as a massive clown battle would be in any game). It's the point at which Lost Ark shows how it isn't just Diablo on an MMO scale, that it has the capacity to surprise you in seriously big ways. It's also far from the last moment like this. Going forward, every new continent has its own theme and structure and unique events, many pushing far beyond the western fantasy tropes the game starts out aping. It's a hard game to pin down in terms of personality, and often feels like it's outright making stuff up as it goes. But that's also what makes it fascinating and, above all, fun.

Fun as Lost Ark is, the new player experience is terrible. You begin at level 10, choosing an advanced class that dumps about six skills on your hotbar—maybe a couple more on separate hotbars if you're a gunslinger—plus an identity skill. I hope you like reading tooltips and immediately understanding the implications of various niche mechanical terms. I also hope you can memorize them, because during your first boss fight Lost Ark's going to tell you to use a skill with the Stagger effect without telling you which of your skills has it. And it's not like you can pause in the middle of a fight with a giant monster to do some light reading.

The story isn't introduced any better. There's a slideshow of Photoshop-filtered images summarizing your backstory, then an angel delivers the same generic fantasy exposition about you having a special unique destined path that you know a million other players have heard. That's a lot of chosen ones. 

Then suddenly you're part of an expedition to a lost city led by a one-eyed captain whose bandage goes underneath his weird plastic-looking beard and hair for some reason, being told more world history that will only be relevant hours later.

It wasn't always like this. When Lost Ark launched in Korea in 2019, it had a completely different prologue for every class. Like the multiple beginnings of Dragon Age: Origins, these tailored introductions gave players a personal connection to their character before sending them off to save the world. The warrior was enslaved and forced to fight in a gladiatorial arena, while the assassin was part of a team infiltrating a gothic fortress. These prologues took you up to level 10, and only then did you choose an advanced class.

The individual prologues took hours, however, and were entirely solo. If you wanted to play Lost Ark with friends, you'd have to wait for everyone to finish their prologues first. They became skippable when you were making alts, but your first character had to play the whole thing. 

Class prologues were removed, turned into slideshows, and replaced by the current unified prologue long before Lost Ark was westernized. You can see why. Since they functioned as tutorials, the MMO's evolving mechanics required changes to each one. That took more time than updating a single, unified tutorial. Plus they made adding new classes more work. The assassin, for instance, wasn't a launch class. That whole castle questline and all its neat parts, like a room full of dead bodies who burst to life and attack while you're sneaking through them, had to be finished before the assassin could be released.

It was clearly a lot of work, and it shows. The assassin had one of the most well-regarded prologues, and you can get a sense of what it was like via an abbreviated playthrough on YouTube, though it comes with the shonky translation of an unofficial English patch.

While it made sense to do something about the prologues, what they were replaced by is pretty flawed. The slideshow summaries look cheap, and feel completely disconnected from what follows. The new prologue is quicker, but it's not nearly as atmospheric as the warrior getting to play Gladiator or the martial artist's kung fu revenge fantasy. 

Coming to Lost Ark by myself, in no rush to be shoved into an overworld full of other players, I'd have preferred the gentler introduction of a class prologue. Make them skippable for sure, and if they're too much work for new classes don't bother making more, but leave them in as an option. Live-service games are constantly removing old stuff to make room for the new—the way Destiny 2 continuously puts locations and activities into a vault killed off any desire I had to return to it—with no way to get it back. Let me tick a box, download a few extra GB, and play the game I want to play rather than a version that's been streamlined to death.

A lot of what Lost Ark launched with was streamlined specifically to help everyone get to level 50, when the difficulty goes up and a sweet endgame of the kind MMO players obsess over begins. The quests that get you there have had so much friction removed many of them slide by without leaving an impression. Objectives are often insultingly close at hand, making you wonder why questgivers don't walk five steps and do it themselves. When there's a set of things to complete, finishing one or two usually counts for the lot: "Defuse the explosives!" someone urges, so you rush over to the three bombs, defuse two, and then the quest autocompletes. It's fast, sure, but it's anticlimactic. Why some of this filler wasn't a candidate for removal instead is baffling.

Fortunately, Lost Ark gets good before level 50. Along the way there are highlight dungeons full of escalating peril like Morai Ruins and especially King's Tomb, as well as mass battles and strange locations including a demon circus and a shrunken settlement where pixie people farm ladybugs and fight pirates. I just wish I had the chance to make my character feel like part of the same world as all this neat stuff, with a history I got to experienced, rather than being a blank observer sliding past it all on a treadmill.

On Monday, Steam strained under the weight of preloads for Lost Ark, a free-to-play Korean action RPG MMO that's now launching in the Americas and Europe. Prospective players complained about long download times, and Lost Ark acknowledged the issue and said that Valve was looking into it. Things started looking smoother last night, but Steam's bandwidth appears to be peaking once again as Lost Ark's servers open for players with head-start access.

As we saw with the Halo Infinite and New World launches, Steam reported a big spike in download traffic as players rushed to hit that big green "pre-load game" button. Halo Infinite logged a spike in bandwidth of 23.5 Tbps on the day its free-to-play multiplayer surprise launched. During Lost Ark's pre-launch yesterday, the meter hit 30 Tbps.

"We are now seeing improvements in players being able to download and decrypt the game, and have confirmed this with the team at Valve," the developer has since said.

Lost Ark originally launched in South Korea in 2019, and is just now being released in other regions by Amazon. Jody tried it out back in November and called it "a bizarro action-RPG married to a trad MMO." 

The pre-launch rush seems to show that players are still very, very hungry for a new MMO, especially a free-to-play one. As it announced previously, today is the first day of head-start access for players who purchased Founders Packs.

Steam's download traffic peaked again today, this time past 40 Tbps. SteamDB indicates that over 532,000 players are currently running the game. Lost Ark is already warning players about server queues: "Please be aware that there are servers in each region with no or low queue times that you can join if you want to enter Arkesia more quickly!"

For everyone planning to play for free, Lost Ark servers open this Friday, February 11 at 9 am PT. If the pattern of the last 24 hours continues until then, you might want to go ahead and start that pre-load now.