If you’re on certain Lost Ark servers, you might have noticed that the queues aren’t really going away, even in the middle of the night, and if you believe the playerbase, that’s because those queues are filled with bots.
According to dozens of posts on the game’s forums and Reddit over the past week, some servers, even low-pop servers, are being flooded by so many bots that the queues are surging, with sometimes over 13,000 people waiting in line, which obviously precludes legitimate players from logging in.
Amazon, for its part, says it’s working on server stability. “Fluctuating server capacity is one of the ways we are combatting the lag and instability unfortunately, however we are working towards putting some fixes in place to better stabilize the server in our next maintenance,” one rep told players. The company has repeatedly called the bot problem a top priority, and indeed over the weekend it blocked the use of VPNs in an attempt to combat the bots.
“We have put blockers in place to prevent users from connecting to Lost Ark through VPN services. This is one of the steps we are taking combat botters, as it will help prevent them from being able to circumvent some of the restrictions we have in place and make it more difficult for them to connect to the game. While we understand that some legitimate players may use VPNs for other reasons, please note that using a VPN is against the Amazon Games Terms of Service 465. You can find this in section 5.2 — ‘You may not use any technology or technique to obscure or disguise your location.’ While your account will not be banned if you used a VPN in the past, we may not allow future connections with these methods in order to prevent abuse.”
However, the VPN ban doesn’t seem to have put much of a dent in the bot problem as the professional RMT bots almost immediately figured out how to circumvent it, and of course as expected it’s chiefly affecting legitimate players.
