Lost Ark has completely exploded in popularity in the west, becoming the second most-played game on Steam of all time. This, however, has come with growing pains, especially in Europe, where every server faces massive queue times.
To combat this, Smilegate have announced the addition of a whole new Lost Ark EU region to expand the amount of servers and reduce queue times. Let’s take a look.
New Lost Ark EU Region
In an announcement on February 13, Amazon and Smilegate revealed that they are working on a whole new EU region for Lost Ark players. The goal of this region is to reduce queue times for European servers, which at peak times see over 20,000 people in queue per server.
In fact, over the first week of launch, we saw more than 250,000 concurrently in queue in Europe.
New servers are the obvious answer to mitigate this and allow people to play. However, Smileaget has revealed that due to technical issues, adding more servers to the existing European region is not possible. Instead, an entirely new region will be added.
So far, details on this new region are sparse. All we know is that it’s coming and that it’s being worked on 24/7.
What Does A New Lost Ark Region Mean For Existing Players?
The addition of a new region is quite unexpected. It will completely divide European players into two distinct regions, meaning that players on the original EU servers will have no way to play with players on the new European region.
Additionally, in-game items like mounts, pets, crystals, gold, etc. are all region bound, so if you choose to move to this new region, you’ll no longer have access to any of those things. Smilegate are likely to offer some incentives for existing players to move, although their current outlook is that the new region is “ideal for players who have not yet created their character or haven’t otherwise committed to stay on their existing server.”
New Terpeion Mount, Midsummer Night’s Dream Instrument Skin, And Free Loot
In addition to the region news, everyone is also going to be receiving some free stuff! This includes:
- Vehicle Selection Chest (choice of either mount)
- Terpeion
- Terpeion of the Shadow
- Midsummer Night’s Dream Instrument Skin Selection Chest
- Healing Battle Item Chest x10
- Offensive Battle Item Chest x10
- Legendary Rapport Selection Chest x3
- Weekly Trade potions Pack x3
- Phoenix Plume x20
This will become available after the new region is up and running, all the way up until the end of March 1. As such, we can expect the region to be released pretty quickly.
That’s all so far for the new Lost Ark EU region, we’ll make sure to keep this page updated as and when new information is available.