The western debut of the MMORPG has put major strain on its servers.

Last week, MMORPG Lost Ark launched on PC via Steam. Lost Ark has actually been running since 2019, but was only available to play in South Korea. Thanks to a publishing deal between the game’s developer, Smilegate, and Amazon Games, they were able to arrange for a release in western territories, including Europe and the United States.

📢 It has just been announced that a completely new region of servers for European players is in the works.

Also, to celebrate the launch of Lost Ark, all players will be able to get multiple in-game rewards. Including a mount, a skin, and consumables.https://t.co/TgoINKVfd5 pic.twitter.com/hhuO7TFApX

— Lost Arkive ⚔️ (@LostArkive) February 13, 2022

When the game launched, it swiftly became one of the most played games on the entire Steam platform. At time of writing, its concurrent player record sits at 1,325,305, making it the second-most played game on Steam, beating out the previous number two holder, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and sitting behind PUBG: Battlegrounds.

Lost Ark is offering players who paid to play early additional items if they switch to quieter servers as the game is struggling with long server queues even before the game is officially released later today. https://t.co/i382UiK3Qe pic.twitter.com/XcNTkJN9zf

— IGN (@IGN) February 11, 2022

The influx of new players has absolutely choked the game’s servers, necessitating the creation of an entire new server region for Europe-based players. Smilegate has explained that this new region, which will likely introduce around 19 new servers to play on, is primarily intended for new users that haven’t committed to a region yet, as existing players won’t be able to carry over their progress if they switch servers. The servers will be implemented as soon as the devs are able, though they cautioned that until then, they won’t really have a solution for long queue times.