As New World is busy adding new servers, its Amazon-published sibling Lost Ark is closing them: In part of what should’ve been this morning’s update, Amazon said it was beginning the back-end tech changes to underpin the first round of server merges slated for later in September.
I say “what should’ve been” because the update didn’t actually go off as planned early this morning thanks to a “critical issue with the build” that appears to have delayed the launch, with no public ETA just yet.
However, when the update does finally roll out, it’ll include the merge infrastructure, as well as new display settings, multiple quality-of-life UI tweaks, chat improvements, friends-and-block-list improvements, buffs to proving grounds, tons of stronghold fixes, a reorg of material storage, guild buffs, an overall class balancing pass, and a huge list of bug stomping.
“This update is packed full of quality of life updates, major Stronghold updates, a balance patch and includes back-end tech changes that will allow the first round of server merges to take place later this month,” the studio says.
SteamCharts still shows Lost Ark with 154K concurrent players on average in the last month, with a peak of 264K down from a peak of 1.3M in February – all enough to frequently push it into the top 10 on Steam even now.
Maintenance will be extended for an additional 3 hours as we work to get the game running. The new estimated end time is 5 PM PT / 2 AM CEST. We apologize for the continued delays, and player compensation will be adjusted accordingly to help make up for this extended downtime. https://t.co/SQ9k2bS4fc
— Lost Ark (@playlostark) September 7, 2022
