Why was Lost Ark so much more successful than Throne and Liberty? MMORPG expert analyzes the launch

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Throne and Liberty actually had a strong launch on Steam and consoles. However, compared to Amazon Games’ previous MMORPG launches, things don’t look so rosy anymore. How do you explain the stark differences in the number of players? Our MMORPG expert Karsten Scholz analyzes the launches of Lost Ark and Throne and Liberty (but also New World).

How did Throne and Liberty launch on Steam and consoles? Thanks to official figures, it is known that Amazon Games and NCSoft welcomed more than three million registered players to Solisium during the western launch of Throne and Liberty.

Also clear, thanks to websites like steamdb.info: the all-time high (from the first launch weekend) is 336,300 simultaneously active Steam users. In the following days, the new MMORPG regularly attracted more than 250,000 players. On Steam. There are also the T&L fans who play on PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series.

How have Amazon Games’ previous MMORPGs performed? The comparison between Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark is obvious. Both MMORPGs rely on a Free2Play model, come from Asian developers, use Amazon Games as the western publisher and were already live in other countries for some time before the western release.

The Throne and Liberty launch trailer:

Throne and Liberty: Claim the Throne – MMROPG launch trailer

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However, Lost Ark was able to generate significantly greater hype in February 2022 and attract 1,325,305 Steam users to the servers at the same time at launch. That’s still enough for fifth place in Steam’s all-time list. In this case, there are no console players, as Lost Ark was only released via Steam.

After two weeks, Smilegate’s MMORPG is said to have had more than 10 million Western players and 20 million worldwide. Throne and Liberty is still a long way from that (although it is currently unclear how many players have played the Korean version of T&L so far).

Who is writing here? Karsten Scholz is the MMORPG expert at MeinMMO. He has been dealing with the best genre in the world almost every day for 15 years and was of course also at the launches of Lost Ark, New World and Throne and Liberty.

The reasons for the different success

As many similarities as Throne and Liberty and Lost Ark have, the starting points of the respective starts are just as different. Here are the general conditions of Lost Ark:

  • There was already an almost 20 minute long gameplay trailer for Lost Ark in 2014, eight years before the West Leek, which visually eclipsed everything that had previously appeared in an isometric perspective – including the Diablo trilogy.
  • The initial hype that was sparked back then was kept blazing over the years with new, comprehensive and spectacularly staged gameplay trailers.
  • When Lost Ark was released in South Korea and Russia in 2019, there were various hyped English and German-speaking streamers at the start who played the MMORPG early and very extensively on their channels.
  • Amazon Games of course used the synergy with Twitch to fuel the hype for Lost Ark more and more.
  • The streamers’ enthusiasm spread to many of their viewers. On launch day in the West, Lost Ark had 1.2 million concurrent viewers on Twitch. As of March 25, there have been more than 290,000 streams and more than 158 million hours watched on Twitch.

    • In my opinion, Lost Ark benefited from three factors:

  • The isometric perspective and combat experience made the MMORPG very reminiscent of hack & slay titles like Diablo. Fans of such action RPGs have been waiting for around ten years for a game that can replace Diablo 3 and shorten the waiting time for Diablo 4.
  • At the same time, Lost Ark’s genre appealed to many MMORPG fans who were also looking back on a long drought (there was New World a year earlier, but Amazon Games’ first online role-playing game disappointed many players).
  • When Lost Ark was released in February 2022, the world still had one foot in the corona pandemic – the international health emergency was lifted by the WHO in May 2023. Online games in particular benefited from high or increasing numbers of players during the COVID years.

    • This trailer shows what awaits you in Lost Ark:

    New video for Lost Ark shows what makes the free MMORPG special

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    What was the starting point for Throne and Liberty? The new MMORPG from NCSoft was also in development for many years, but did not attract attention with great gameplay trailers, but rather with reports of problematic development.

    Things didn’t look much better when Throne and Liberty had its first launch in South Korea. Instead of hype on Twitch, there was criticism from players (for example about the basic combat system and car systems, which are actually only known from mobile games) and disappointing player numbers. The result: a change in leadership among the responsible team.

    But despite comprehensive patches with which the developers responded to the feedback from the Korean community, there was also a hail of criticism from Western testers during the open beta in July – the subsequent list of homework for the developers was long.

    Due to this mixed situation, the anticipation for Throne and Liberty could never keep up with the hype surrounding Lost Ark. But there were also other factors:

  • The corona pandemic was followed by a hangover for the gaming industry, with many releases from 2023 attracting significantly fewer players or buyers than hoped.
  • While Lost Ark could potentially appeal to fans of two genres, Throne and Liberty targets a relatively small hardcore audience with its focus on large group content, guilds and PvP.
  • There were also concerns about monetization in combination with the strong focus on PvP and competitive guild content, which was not present in Lost Ark (although one can certainly criticize the monetization there too).
  • Thanks to later added content such as the cooperative dungeons or the solo tower, the focus of Throne and Liberty has now opened up somewhat, but the game is still not an MMORPG that wants to please everyone and has the largest possible player base in mind.
  • Throne and Liberty comes in a year in which the biggest MMORPGs on the market have each received a major expansion.

    • But: Throne and Liberty is not just an expansion for an existing MMORPG, but a fresh gaming experience. And unlike the MMORPGs previously published by Amazon Games, Throne and Liberty is not only available on Steam, but also on consoles.

    The start of New World

    What about New World? The only MMORPG developed by Amazon Games to date benefited enormously when it launched in September 2021 from the fact that there had not been an online role-playing game developed by a large, western studio since 2014 (Wildstar and The Elder Scrolls Online).

    There was no Lost Ark yet either. But in 2021 we were even deeper into the corona pandemic, and through various streamers and the Twitch synergies, Amazon Games managed to build up noticeable hype in the run-up to the release.

    The New World Aeternum trailer:

    Trailer for New World Aeternum announces console version

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    It didn’t matter that the New World team had a difficult development and, based on feedback from the testers, had to change the focus from survival and PvP to a theme park structure with quests, PvE challenges and more story content.

    913,634 Steam users were on the servers at the time of launch. A real house number for a game that you have to buy. It is unclear how many versions of the game have been sold to date. In 2022, the unofficial number of almost 17 million buyers was circulating online (via forbes.com).

    Nowadays, there are no longer 10,000 players hanging around in Aeternum at the same time. After the strong launch, the numbers fell even more drastically than with Lost Ark. Only time will tell whether the new Aeternum version can ensure a long-lasting third spring from October 15, 2024.

    A strong launch considering the starting point

    If you lump all of these factors together, in my opinion there can only be one conclusion: Throne and Liberty has had a strong launch – considering the starting point (which was partly NCSoft’s own fault).

    After the extremely difficult development, the constant Pay2Progress discussions and the launch with a combat system that used automated mobile systems and felt bad in other ways, it’s actually a miracle that the western launch version of Throne and Liberty ended up being released can attract as many players.

    All the more so in a year full of other big MMORPG releases and without – as stupid as it sounds – a supporting pandemic that has caused many people to stay at home and play significantly more. The fact that the numbers are comparatively high despite all these factors is probably due to two points that I have already mentioned:

  • Throne and Liberty is a new MMORPG with a fresh gaming experience
  • The game also appears on consoles, where the competition isn’t quite as great

    • In addition, NCSoft and Amazon Games have put a tremendous amount of effort into implementing large parts of the players’ feedback and, for example, noticeably improving the combat system and defusing the monetization.

    It will be exciting to see how quickly the number of players falls in the coming weeks and months. In a few days, the next online role-playing game, New World Aeternum, is coming up, which should attract some of those interested in the genre. Throne and Liberty even makes players want to play this other MMORPG that costs money but is less Pay2Win.

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