In case you missed it, Lost Ark is pretty popular. Only a couple of days out from its American and European launch, the MMO is already second on Steam's all-time concurrent players list with a peak of 1,325,305. It beat seasoned veterans like CS:GO and Dota 2, and sits only below PUBG.
Given the circumstances, it's not surprising that Lost Ark servers have become congested, forcing players to wait in long queues, and also queues to join those queues. Developer Smilegate along with publisher Amazon have been working on ways to combat the congestion, and one of them includes setting up an entirely new region of servers in Europe.
"We’re blown away by the number of players that have joined us in Lost Ark since our launch on Friday. Arkesia is filled to the brim with eager players, so we’re working as quickly as possible to set up an entirely new region of servers in Europe,"said a post on the official Lost Ark forum. "Due to the game’s architecture this is the only way to accommodate more players in Europe so it’s a joint effort between Amazon Games and Smilegate RPG. Rest assured we are working 24/7 until it’s live."
The post went on to note that this will be a "distinct new region" which will be separate from Central Europe and will not support cross-region play. If you haven't tried getting into the game yet, we suggest you wait till these new servers are online and create a new character there.
Besides that, Lost Ark is also offering Founder's Pack owners an extra set of items if they move to a less populated server. Sure, they'd lose the progress they made in the four extra days they got, but this way they would get to keep the items they paid for.
In his review, our resident MMO expert Harry said, "Lost Ark is one of the most polished titles I’ve played for some time, especially an MMO. The game is free and will be hyped-up thanks to Amazon and Twitch. I can’t think of a reason why you shouldn’t try it."
