Lost Ark: "We Made a Mistake Releasing the March Game Update Too Quickly After Launch"

ign.com:

Amazon Games has said releasing Lost Ark's first major update just a month after launch was a mistake. In a blog post reflecting on the first month of the action-RPG, the publisher said it misjudged when players would be ready for more content.

"We made a mistake releasing the March game update too quickly after launch. Data we analyzed alongside Smilegate RPG from their previous launches projected that a larger portion of players would have reached the level required to challenge Argos," the post reads.

"However, we overlooked certain variables, such as players spending more time on horizontal content and the price of honing materials increasing due to bots and real-money transactions. These factors contributed to a scarcity of T3 honing materials."

Argos is the final boss of Lost Ark's first raid, and players must improve their gear to a certain level before taking it on. Doing so requires upgrade materials that became difficult to obtain without using real-world money, so many players felt pressured to essentially pay for the new content.

Amazon Games is releasing more of these Tier 3 upgrade materials in order to combat the issue, and recently banned more than one million illegitimate accounts that were running bots.

Lost Ark has proved incredibly popular since it was released on February 11, shooting to second place in Steam's most-played games of all time and amassing more than 20 million players in less than a month.

In our 8/10 review, IGN said: "Lost Ark is an extremely generous free-to-play ARPGMMO that draws a lot from Diablo – including its well-worn story about humans and Heaven teaming up against demons."

Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer who occasionally remembers to tweet @thelastdinsdale.