Or the same exploded data, or the PC MMO category, the second MMO issued by Amazon is coming.
On February 11, developed by SmileGate RPG, a company owned by South Korea's SmileGate, Amazon's dark wind "lost ark" European and American clothing was officially launched on the Steam platform.
As the second MMO released by Amazon, "The Lost Ark" almost replicated the grand situation of the "New World" service, the number of Steam online people soared to 530,000, and the "current number" even surpassed the two giants of the V Society: GO and DOTA2, and successfully reached the top during the day this year.
Not only that, after having the bitter lessons of "New World", Amazon has matured a lot in the release of "Lost Ark". In addition to letting the G fat Steam bandwidth reach its peak again, there was no large-scale explosion, coupled with the game itself, the game's praise so far is as high as 96%.
At this time, there may be friends who are curious, obviously the 11th is officially released, why did the player enter the game on the 9th, and more than 530,000?
According to Amazon, "The Lost Ark" actually opened the preload on the Steam platform on February 7, and any paying player who purchased a $14.99, 24.99, 49.99, and $99.99 Foundation's Pack can enter the game in advance at 9 p.m. Pacific Time on the 8th.
It is worth noting that "The Lost Ark" itself is a free ontology, and contains in-app purchase of the end game product, that is to say, only through the method of pre-experience of paid users, the "Lost Ark" Steam service has at least had more than 10 million US dollars in revenue, which shows that European and American players are very fond of this game.
So, why is this game so popular with players? Can Amazon run this MMO?
Hanbok has taken the lead and globalization has steadily expanded
Lost Ark is not a "new" game, according to public information, the game was officially launched in 2011, using the Unreal Engine 3 engine, after 7 years of hard work, it was finally beta tested in South Korea in 2018, and officially released in South Korea on December 4, 2019.
The 7-year long run finally came to fruition, which shows that SmileGate has full confidence in this game, not only that, according to foreign media reports, SmileGate's budget on this game exceeds 100 billion won (about 85 million US dollars), and the research and development cost is very close to the 3A 100 million US dollar baseline.
The results of "The Lost Ark" after its launch in South Korea did not disappoint SmileGate, and its excellent plot performance, rich combat mechanics and gameplay made it sure to break through from the local MMO, earning more than 30 billion won (160 million yuan) in two months.
In the eyes of GameLook and many players, The Lost Ark essentially learned from the 2012 worldwide release of Diablo 3 and tried to make a dark MMO product similar to the development idea of the Road to Exile product that was successful in the same period.
Moreover, there is also news that after the game was launched, a large number of players quickly poured into it, and soon the server reached a full load, and a large number of Korean players lined up for hours just to enter the game.
The excellent quality of the game itself, coupled with the enthusiastic response of the market, made "The Lost Ark" the biggest winner of the 2019 Korean Game Awards, cutting six awards including the President's Award in one fell swoop.
Not only that, under the market trend of the gradual contraction of the global MMO terminal game market, "The Lost Ark" can still buck the trend. In the past two years, relying on stable operation, "Lost Ark" still has a high popularity, surpassing many well-known online games such as "Overwatch" and "DNF", and becoming the most popular MMO game in the Korean market after "League of Legends".
After gaining a foothold in the Korean market, "The Lost Ark" also decided to go abroad to face the world, and has planned to launch games in Russia, Japan, Europe and the United States, Latin America, and Taiwan, among which some regions such as Taiwan have been officially launched. In the Chinese mainland market, the game's agency rights were actually obtained by Tencent in 2016, but due to a series of reasons such as version numbers, there has been no new progress in national services.
Joining hands with Amazon to bring the game to Steam is actually an important step for The Lost Ark to realize the ultimate dream of globalization.
The business model is more conservative, and the dark wind is popular
If you only look at the appearance, "The Lost Ark" can be said to be a "pure flavor" Korean dark style MMO, the character modeling is also the standard Korean "greasy sister" painting style, and there is no shortage of gorgeous "light pollution" particle special effects in the game.
Of course, after entering the European and American markets, some roles will inevitably be zzzq
But if you go deep into the gameplay level, the experience of "Lost Ark" is actually more similar to "Diablo 3", while the social experience is MMO such as "World of Warcraft", which emphasizes PvE and the story experience.
The game's plot takes place on a continent called Arkesia, and players can explore this huge world step by step and discover treasure. Although "The Lost Ark" inevitably falls behind in the worldview setting, it has made great efforts in the way it is presented, producing a large number of high-quality cinematic cinematic cutscenes, seamlessly connecting the dungeon battles with the plot, bringing players a full sense of immersion.
Moreover, every time a large version is updated, the game will update a large amount of content gameplay and a super long plot flow, so it is often ridiculed by players, and it is not too much to regard "The Lost Ark" as a single-player game.
In terms of gameplay framework, "The Lost Ark" is basically the traditional MMO set, character development, multiplayer group, guild system, home construction, etc., but the game has an ulterior motive design on the action system.
At the combat level, the game adopts a top-down perspective, and there are more monsters in the dungeon, especially the material copy, coupled with the cool skills of the characters, the sense of blow is very strong, and the overall combat experience is very close to the thrill of mowing grass in Diablo 3 and peerless games. Not only that, but the game is not sloppy in terms of group base, and the variety of mechanics and high difficulty make it challenging.
In addition, the business model of "The Lost Ark" is also a clear stream among many Korean-style MMO. In a word, most of the props in the game, character cultivation and combat effectiveness improvement can be solved through the "liver", and the sales in the mall are mainly decorative props and pets, of course, although there are random elements in the game, but the "krypton" is not high.
For example, in many MMO, weapon and equipment enhancement is generally the main way for players to improve their combat effectiveness, and it is also one of the important kryptonite points of the game. Although there is also a reinforcement system in The Lost Ark, the player's equipment will not be damaged by the enhancement, and the official design of the "bottom" mechanism, and the materials can be obtained through dungeons.
It is worth mentioning that after Amazon took over the Steam version of "The Lost Ark", it also fine-tuned the commercial model, such as changing the mount props in the game to permanent, staying in the mystery store longer, etc., which reduced the player's "work" situation in the game.
Overall, "The Lost Ark" is actually like an ARPG game draped in MMO skin, with a well-crafted story performance coupled with a grass-mowing-like combat system that allows players to get a refreshing experience like a stand-alone ARPG, which is also the core fun point of the game.
Amazon has explosive manufacturing power, but long-term operation is still an exam
In September last year, Amazon's first self-developed MMO "New World" was officially released, and a few days later, the game's online number of people on the Steam platform peaked to exceed the 700,000 mark.
On February 9 this year, Amazon's second MMO "The Lost Ark" Steam online population peaked at 550,000, but considering that the free version of the game was officially opened on the 11th, it may only be a matter of time before the number of online users exceeded 700,000.
Although the history of the two cannot be said to be completely consistent, it is enough to make the industry lament Amazon's publishing ability, and it is more mature than Amazon's game distribution before.
On the one hand, Amazon has created momentum through its Twitch live broadcast platform, held events and promoted a large number of well-known anchors to "bring goods", and achieved very remarkable results.
According to TwitchTracker data, "The Lost Ark" has been tepid on the Twitch platform before, with the highest number of viewers only about 60,000 or 70,000, and with the release of the Steam version of Amazon's agent, the peak number of viewers soared to 1.27 million.
On the other hand, MMO has a strong social attribute, players tend to flock to the group, and Amazon also follows the trend, through active support, motivate community content, to mobilize the enthusiasm of players, further enrich the game ecology.
For example, during the launch of the game, Amazon launched a "creator" program, which aims to allow all kinds of players to participate in the construction of the game community ecology, and creators will be able to get various rewards such as social media promotion and giveaway codes provided by Amazon.
Perhaps these are also the reasons why Amazon's second MMO can gain a large number of players on the first day, of course, after this, Amazon will face another big test, long-term operation.
If you have seen the friends of GameLook's previous reports, I believe that there is still an impression of the fate of Amazon's MMO "New World". More than a month after the official release, due to the lack of game content, limited attractiveness of gameplay and other factors, the number of online people eventually declined, losing 75% of players, and now it has fallen below the 100,000 mark, which inevitably seems to be a bit of a tiger.
However, the Lost Ark should be much better than New World. After all, the game has been running smoothly in South Korea for more than two years, and Hanbok has a good control over the operation rhythm of the game, and Amazon only needs to do localization and adaptation work should not make too much mistake.
Moreover, the Steam version of "Lost Ark" is not directly synchronized with Hanbok, and is in a state of "chasing the version" and "catching up with the progress", which also means that the game will not lack content in a short period of time.
But the potential problems are not nothing, as mentioned above, in the past version of "The Lost Ark" did not attach great importance to PvP content, but European and American players seem to attach great importance to PvP content, the first day of the service Hanbok planning interview was asked a lot of questions about the PvP mode, and he also said that if the player response is good, he will increase efforts to update PvP content.
Overall, Amazon has made another start, can it maintain this momentum in the future? See.