Lost Ark Players Plead for Amazon to Open Oceania Servers

High ping leads to many problems

Lost Ark has swept across the world, with players desperate for a good MMO. With gorgeous graphics and good gameplay, many players have joined in the hunt for lost arks. However, it isn’t sunshine and rainbows for everyone. Players in the Oceania region (in Australia and New Zealand, mostly) have been clamoring for a region-specific server. While they can farm Lost Ark gold well enough, it starts to be annoying in PvP due to latency. 

The Lost Ark Players Problem

Lost Ark is available in the following regions: NA, EU, SA, and OCE. That’s well and good, but the real problem is the locations of the physical servers. The only regions to have them are NA, SA, and EU. As a result, OCE players have to connect to either one of those servers to play the game.

What’s the problem then? When they connect to either of those three servers, they get high ping. If you don’t know what ping is, here’s a short answer. Ping is how long it takes for information to go back and forth from your PC to the server.

One of the most obvious markers of high ping is a laggy game. You click to attack but it only animates 5 seconds later. You’ve moved to avoid an attack, but it still registers as a hit. Your skill activates, but the enemy seems to have teleported to another place, avoiding the attack entirely.

Low ping is necessary for the game to be smooth and responsive. You’ll want it as low as it possibly could be. That way, you can be sure that the enemies are in their place, and you can dodge attacks and have your attacks hit the target. Especially in ARPG type games that rely on fast reaction times, latency can kill. 

Understandably, OCE players want their own server. With 200ms ping, if they try battling a player who has <100ms ping, it will end in their defeat more often than not, and usually through no fault of their own. They can’t be competitive in PvP this way. PvE is more lenient about it but can still be fatal and the player have to use more consumables than usual. 

The Reason

The main reason given for this is that Smilegate doesn’t have publishing rights to the game in this region. It’s strange because the game is available in the region. An OCE server would greatly help the player base and might give them more players.

The real short stick goes to SEA players, since not only do they not have a server for the game, but it’s also unavailable in the area. SEA players simply can’t play without a VPN and a Lost Ark account registered to a different region. Even with those two things, they still get >200ms ping, which, as we’ve established, is like playing in hard mode.

We don’t know what’s behind all this, as Smilegate does have games for SEA/OCE and they’re even based in Korea. Lost Ark does have a Korean version, but, oddly, the international version doesn’t include Asia in its coverage, so all those players can’t farm Lost Ark gold.

Is There a Solution?

Until Amazon or Smilegate RPG figures out how to get the rights to publish in these regions, we’re likely to be stuck in this situation. A representative from Amazon has replied that there are no plans to have OCE-specific servers. There is a sliver of hope, though, in that the reply has the operative word ‘currently’. That gives it hope that there’s a chance for that to change.

There’s also the possibility that another publisher would give the right to publish in these areas, but this might have a lower chance of happening.

For now, the players will have to make do with the high ping.

Conclusions

Lost Ark is a fun and engaging game, but as it stands some players can’t bear to play it. The high ping is bad enough and on top of that, there’s no real solution to it yet. There’s a tiny bit of hope, though whether it’ll lead to a good outcome or not is something we can’t predict.

Still, it’ll be good to enjoy playing the game and farming Lost Ark gold.