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| image by pcgamer |
Lost Ark rockets onto Steam’s untouched simultaneous player list after postponed send-off
1. Intro
Lost Ark is a browser-based arena shooter designed to recreate classic arcade games like Galaga, Star Wars, and Asteroids. It was originally scheduled to launch last Friday, but because of downtime issues with the servers at Amazon Web Services, the game wasn’t live for everyone by 3 pm Pacific Time. All three of its game modes, competitive and cooperative play, were offline at the same time.
A series of changes that Amazon instituted to improve stability and performance on its servers caused the game’s apparent problem. The company said it was making some improvements to its service architecture that would prevent such downtime in the future. But even after those changes were implemented Friday morning, Lost Ark’s servers showed no sign of improvement and kept going down.
By 1 pm PT Saturday evening, Lost Ark had yet to appear on steam or other major gaming storefronts; however, it continued to appear on Amazon’s own store (which itself did not provide support for the game). This marks the first time that Lost Ark has launched on Steam since May 2016 — when it was available through Green Man Gaming — and also marks Amazon’s first publicly available loss since 2011.
Because of these server issues, Lost Ark apparently has fewer than 20 concurrent players online. Those who have played so far have been playing in teams of up to five players each, locked into “Deathmatch,” “Team Deathmatch” or “Capture the Flag” style modes. They designate one player as a leader for each mode; once he or she dies, another player takes over as team leader for a limited amount of time before switching with no noticeable lag.
The best classes in Lost Ark are “Highlander” and “Healer.” The former is basically a mix between an elite sniper rifle-style class and a standard line-of-sight healing spinner, while the latter fits more into classic strategy ARPG territory by focusing on group healing for some hardtack damage mitigation.
Lost Ark will try to appeal to hardcore FPS fans with its “all-out assault” approach that pits up to four players against each other in an arena setting where they try their best not just to survive but also win against opponents who are larger in numbers. If you’re looking for something similar in some strategy thrown into it, though, check out Elite: Dangerous, which also uses ARPG elements but boasts open-world design within which your actions can effect your own gameplay.
2. Why did Lost Ark’s launch not go as planned?
Lost Ark is an upcoming first-person shooter video game developed by Sledgehammer Games and published by Activision for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. They announced the game at E3 2017 as a sequel to 2013’s Lost World: Jurassic Park. Once again it’s being developed by a studio that has previously made brilliant games like Halo and Call of Duty, so the project should be good.
Lost Ark’s storyline follows the crew of a cargo ship that is accidentally crashed off the coast of Malaysia near the lost ruins of Isla Nublar. The crew is forced to fight for survival against saber-toothed dragons and other beasts while trying to find answers about their crash site.
Ahead of its launch on April 17th, Lost Ark reached the top spot on Steam’s all-time concurrent player list after much anticipation from fans. It now sits at over 10 million concurrent players.
3. What is the future of Lost Ark?
Lost Ark is a tower-defense survival game with roguelike elements. Players must protect their Ark from waves of Raiders while trying to amass enough food and supplies to survive long enough to find their way home.
The game features both single-player and multiplayer modes, as well as plenty of re-playability through the addition of new maps, weapons, and abilities.
Lost Ark is currently available for Steam Early Access on Windows PC, Mac OSX, Linux, iOS, and Android devices.
4. What can gamers expect from the new launch?
Lost Ark (Steam) was released on Jan. 28 and has been a very popular game on the platform. They currently ranked the game 39th on Steam’s all-time concurrent player list, with over 4 million players logged into the game. Lost Ark is a roguelike space shooter that puts players in the role of an interplanetary merchant ship under attack from a cosmic force.
Lost Ark’s popularity comes from its intense gameplay and its social features, which make it difficult to ignore — many of Lost Ark’s features are also available today on other platforms available for PC and mobile.
Games like Lost Ark have been experiencing a bump in popularity lately because of their potential for cross-platform compatibility and their competitive nature, which makes them both easy to pick up but also fun to play competitively against other people online.
5. Conclusion
After almost a week on Steam’s all-time concurrent player list, Lost Ark is gone. They have removed the game from the platform because of technical issues, according to an official statement by the developer.
They launched the game last Friday (April 11) with a release date of the same day. But technical issues forced the developer to delay it until this morning, causing it to hit a high of 1 million concurrent players and then fall back down to around 800,000.
Lost Ark is a turn-based strategy game in which players take on the roles of archaeologists and historians in order to explore ancient Egyptian tombs or find lost treasures within them. White originally developed for PC it flare Studios before being picked up by Overkill Software, which released it for Mac and Linux earlier this year.
The game’s release appears to have been met with some criticism from fans concerned Lost Ark could not compete with other strategy games on Steam, especially with its steep price tag and heavy reliance on micro-transactions.
Some fans have argued that there are far better strategy games on Steam since the launch of Battle tech’s Total War: Warhammer II about a month ago. Others have pointed out that many other developers such as Stardock, Paradox Interactive, and King Art Games also own their own game platforms on which they can make strategy games like Lost Ark at no extra cost to developers.