Amazon warns ‘Lost Ark’ players in central Europe that its servers are ‘at capacity’

Amazon’s Lost Ark free-to-play MMO exploded in popularity as soon as it was released in Europe and the Americas earlier this month. It became Steam’s most-played MMO ever merely a week after its launch, and players in Europe have had to deal with lengthy queues even earlier than that. In an attempt to solve the problem, Smilegate (the game’s developer) and Amazon have created “Europe West.” It’s a completely new server region meant for new players, however, and those already playing in “Europe Central” might have to keep struggling with long wait times.

“The Europe Central region is at capacity and unfortunately there is no way to increase the number of players per world in Europe Central,” the company’s latest announcement about the situation said. It’s apparently not possible to add more servers in the region “based on the complexity of all the systems that need to work together.” Amazon and the developer are positioning Europe West as an appealing option for those who haven’t made much progress in Central yet, because it’s not possible to transfer server regions at the moment. 

The server transfer function has just rolled out in Korea, where the game was first released back in 2019, and it requires the developer to process transfers in weekly batches. It also doesn’t support region transfers yet and won’t do European players any good in its current form, but the companies said they “will not rest until [they’ve] exhausted all options.” 

While unfortunate for European players, it’s a nice problem to have for Amazon. In 2020, it pulled the plug on Crucible, the free-to-play shooter it had been developing since 2016, after evaluating the feedback it got from a closed beta. Its New World MMO became a hit in 2021, but the reception for the older game wasn’t quite as intense as Lost Ark’s.