Throne And Liberty launches with large concurrent player counts (but not as large as New World or Lost Ark)

Throne and Liberty, the free-to-play fantasy MMORPG from Korean developer NCSOFT and published by Amazon Games, is off to a big start on Steam, although not as big as Amazon’s two previous MMOs.

During an early access period where players could pay to play five days early, the number of concurrent players of Throne and Liberty peaked at approximately 56,000. On October 1, when the game launched to free-to-play players, those numbers rose rapidly. Throne of Liberty reached 326,377 concurrent players on launch day and was for a time the fourth most played game on Steam.

As often seems to be the case when launching a new MMO, Throne and Liberty were plagued by server issues and login queues during opening hours, with NCSOFT quickly spinning up new servers to meet demand. Shortly after launch, there were also a number of other issues that NCSOFT said it was trying to fix, including some players being unable to create new characters or missing characters for those who played during early access.

Throne and Liberty’s Steam launch numbers are nothing to sneeze at, but are well behind the launches of Amazon’s previous two MMOs, New World and Lost Ark. Developed internally by Amazon, New World broke Steam records when it launched in 2021, seeing over 913,000 copies sold. concurrent players despite its $40 price tag. Lost Ark, another free-to-play Korean MMO localized and published by Amazon, did even better at its 2022 launch, with 1.3 million concurrent players. It’s worth noting that unlike Lost Ark or New World, Throne and Liberty is also available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, meaning concurrent Steam players won’t get the full picture.

Amazon detailed all the changes it would make to Throne and Liberty compared to the Korean version ahead of launch, with the aim of adapting the game’s business model to better meet the expectations of Western players. Those changes include lowering the price of the game’s battle pass and leveling pass, as well as additional rewards and the removal of an optional subscription called the Blessing of Solisium. Amazon said it would “evaluate” how to change the subscription plan to “meet the needs of our players.”

Throne and Liberty wouldn’t even be the only MMORPG that Amazon would publish in 2024. The juggernaut also planned to publish the Western version of Bandai Namco’s anime MMO Blue Protocol. The Western release of Blue Protocol was canceled in August and the Japanese servers were set to go offline in January.

Even if Amazon has a reputation for creating and publishing MMOs (it’s currently working on a Lord of the Rings MMO and reworking New World for consoles), the company wants to expand into other genres. As part of Gamescom 2024, it was announced that Amazon would be publishing the co-op dungeon crawler King of Meat.