Lost Ark is the new MMO sensation, but the game has been a wait-in-queue nightmare for European players. Although Amazon Games accurately predicted the number of players who would log onto North American servers since launch, it seems that the publisher underestimated the popularity of PC gaming in Europe.
Europe West's 8 new Servers
Yesterday Amazon Game Studios activated eight servers in Europe West, a new region.Amazon announced that it expects to open a new region to reduce the wait times for Europe Central.However, players who choose the new Europe West region will experience fewer long queues.If you move to this new region, youwill still be able to use your Royal Crystals, Crystalline Aura, and any redeemed, claimed, or acquired items.”
Here are the eight new servers added to Lost Ark's stack raising the total number of servers to 58 in five regions:
- Moonkeep
- Petrania
- Punika
- Rethramis
- Shadespire
- Stonehearth
- Tortoyk
- Tragon
Lost Ark does not Allow Server Transfers (yet)
Lost Ark does not allow server transfers. Consequently, you must weigh in the pros and cons of the temptation to move to a new area where there will be a reduction or elimination of queue times with the loss in progress on your existing servers.Although Lost Ark can become more wild and even clownish as it progresses, the initial game is quite dull and heavily relies on questing.It is hard to imagine players wanting to do all that again.
Incentives for players to move to the new Servers
To sweeten the deal, players who start over on Europe West servers will get the last ten daily login rewards and “special daily attendance rewards” for the first ten days of the Europe West server launch. Players who have already claimed the exclusive items in a founder's package will receive a bonus set and some other Lost Ark royal crystals currency. This bonus is open to all players, not only Europeans, who can claim it on any server.
The hope is to encourage more migration from noisy servers to quieter ones. You'd receive the bonuses if you purchased a founder's package before February 14.
Amazon Game Studios' Announcement
On Thursday, February 17 at 6 PM CET (9 AM PT), we will open a second region for European players. Before you decide where to call home, here's everything you need to know.
Due tooverwhelming demand in Europe,we are opening a second region for players:Europe West. This has been a complex process that required 24/7 effort from both the Amazon Games and Smilegate RPG teams. We want to thank you for your patience while we worked on this. We've been blown away by the number of players and can't wait to welcome more of you into Arkesia.
The new region, Europe West, will go live at 6 PM CET (9 AM PT) on Thursday, February 17
We expect to open a new region to reduce queue times for Europe Central, not eliminate them. However, players choosing the new Europe West region are much less likely to experience long queues. Please note, if you move to the new region you will continue to be able to use your Royal Crystals and Crystalline Aura but no redeemed, claimed, or acquired items move with you. The launch celebration giftwe announced on Sundaywill be granted to all players (regardless of server or region). Anyone who logs in and enters Arkesia between February 20 at 8:59 AM CET (February 19, 11:59 AM PT) through March 2 at 8:59 AM CET (March 1 at 11:59 PM PT) will receive the gift. In addition, for players choosing to play on Europe West, we'll be granting some progression support:
We understand that players have been collecting daily attendance rewards since launch and we don't want players migrating to Europe West to miss out, so the last 10 days of daily attendance rewards will be granted automatically to all characters on Europe West with the next maintenance.
Europe West players will also see special daily attendance rewards for the first 10 days of the Europe West server launch, in addition to the daily attendance rewards mentioned above.
The Europe West region will launch with eight servers. You may need to reboot the client to see Europe West and the list of servers. Additional servers will be opened if needed, based on population levels. The eight starting servers are:
Rethramis
Tortoyk
Moonkeep
Stonehearth
Shadespire
Tragon
Petrania
Punika
Founder's Pack Redemption
To make playing in the new region a more reasonable choice, we will be granting all Founder's Pack purchasers that have purchased through Steam or redeemed their key from Amazon to their Steam account before 12:00 PM PT / 8:59 PM CET on February 14 (even if it is still in your Product Inventory in-game) an extra set of the exclusive items from the Founder's Pack they claimed alongside additional Royal Crystals. Players will begin receiving these grants on Saturday, February 19, and they will roll out throughout the course of the day.Find out more here.
The additional Founder's Pack items will be claimable on any new server you choose, so we encourage you to wait and find a perfect server to call home before claiming.
Thank you, heroes, of Arkesia!