Lost Ark's European Central servers can't be expanded, says Amazon

eurogamer.net:

Lost Ark had a bumper debut last month. In fact, it was so bumper that European players of the new MMO ARPG experienced long queue times before eventually getting into the game. This led Amazon to create an entirely new regional server in a bid to ease congestion.

But even with this new 'Europe West' server, queue times for Lost Ark are still huge. Speaking to IGN, Amazon Games franchise leader Soomin Park said Lost Ark's Europe Central region «continues to be filled to the brim» which as a result has led to «player queues and some instability in the region».

However, it turns out that just adding more servers would not actually help rectify this congestion. Park explained that Lost Ark has a «limit to how many peak concurrent players it can support in any one universe, or region». As such, there just isn't the option to add more servers to Europe Central.

Park goes on to say, «There's theoretically unlimited [Amazon Web Services] capacity in each 'region,' but the game can become unstable if it tries to scale past its maximum capacity per region».

Amazon and Smilegate have both been overwhelmed by Lost Ark's immense popularity. Park said the development teams from the companies are «shocked and thrilled» by the game's reception since its launch in the West last month.

This popularity saw Lost Ark become Steam's second-biggest concurrently played game ever, with only PUBG ahead of it.

Eurogamer's Robert Purchese said he was «impressed» by Lost Ark, complementing its «lovely touches» and depth of combat.