If you did not already know, Lost Ark launched in South Korea last week as one of the most highly-anticipated PC MMORPG in recent years. The hype was so huge, the massive number of players managed to overcrowd the servers on day 1, experiencing different bugs and causing queue issues. Eager players from China also managed to flood the servers almost immediately. Smilegate has since issued an official statement, though problems still persist.
Q: The queue issue has not been resolved despite increasing the capacity of current servers and adding a new server. Why?
Smilegate: The number of players trying to login is still increasing despite the server expansion and adding a new server. Thus, the queue issue is still ongoing. There was a recent report which said the con-current number of players is 250,000, but this has been exceeded. We will be releasing exact figures later.
Q: You have since blocked access to the Lost Ark servers from overseas. Is this issue of overseas connection resolved?
Smilegate: Overseas connection was originally already blocked via the system. However, players from countries such as China are still trying to connect in various abnormal ways, and we have responded to those actions. We are still regularly monitoring this situation.
MMO Culture note: Many of these China players are actually farmers and botters. The gamers from China have also stopped live-streaming the game to avoid being identified.
Q: There is dissatisfaction among Korean players who are not able to log into the game for the daily attendance event. Do you have any plans to deal with this?
Smilegate: We currently have no compensation planned for players who missed the event, but we are considering it. Compensation of the queuing issues will be handled separately.
