‘Lost Ark’ is still growing in popularity after its official release on 11th February.
The game became the number one most played Steam game on the platform just a few days after servers went live. With so many features and regions to try out and explore, the player count continues to rise as days go on.
Unfortunately, the Korean ARPG’s success is not without problems. Smilegate’s hit game has been plagued with server lags and congestion, particularly in the EU data center.
However, the most prominent issue that all servers are experiencing is the Lost ARK gold spam bot.
Gold Spam Bots in ‘Lost Ark’
The popular MMO ARPG has seen a lot of problems arise ever since its official release to Western gamers. The most prominent bugbear that annoys every gamer with Lost ARK accounts is the constant spamming of bots. Adventurers have noticed multiple instances of bots relentlessly chatting links or websites that offer “cheaper” and “bundled” gold currency. These links are continuously sent to the area chat until another bot appears to spam a new set of links.
Though this issue presents mostly itself as a constant irritant to players, the chat bots have also hindered effective communication between gamers. Area chats have been the main mode of communication between adventurers where they exchange tips, directions to world event spawns, and various other casual conversations. These relevant topics are being hidden by text spams once bots flood the area chats with their incessant attacks of gold websites or links.
A Common and Constant Bugbear in Any MMO
Chat bots are very common in many games, especially for MMOs that are free-to-play like ‘Lost Ark’. These bots are designed to advertise websites or links that will either sell the relevant currencies, items, or accounts connected to the game. Though these spams do not present any real or severe threats to the players, it affects the quality of life in the adventurer’s gaming experience.
Chats are very important to many games, especially MMOs since they are the most common way of communicating with other players. Chat channels are used to ask questions or tips regarding the game or to set up parties or public events. The existence of chat bots hinders the effectiveness of this method of communication since they flood and hide the actual conversations between players.
Smilegate and Amazon’s Answer
As of the moment, both gaming studios are working together to search for a fix. Smilegate RPG have stated that they will continuously monitor the situation and remove any reported or documented gold spammers while they work on a solution. In the meantime, adventurers are encouraged to create a new chat tab via the plus icon to create a new tab that will include or exclude channels that may include bots.
Other Issues Plaguing Lost Ark
Aside from the existing issue of chat bots spamming gold links, Smilegate’s ARPG is also experiencing various problems involving farming bots and server queues. Multiple players have already reported that they have spotted large numbers of suspicious characters, suspected of being bots, farming starter zones in the game. This issue presents a problem that may worsen if left unchecked.
Though mob farming is not an important aspect of the game, there are certain key monsters that adventurers will have to eliminate in order to progress with their quests or with the game’s main storyline. Farming bots present are a problem in the sense that they camp and kill key or named monsters so quickly that actual players cannot hit the mobs to complete their missions.
The surge of grinding bots will also have an impact on the game’s server queues. With thousands of players trying to log in to ‘Lost Ark’, many people have already foreseen the issue that will arise regarding server congestion. Other data centers have experienced some sort of server issues, but EU Central was affected the most. Players have reported being unable to access the game and waiting in queue for more than five hours. Even during the times when there is the least number of active players, four out of the twenty servers would be full while the rest would be busy.
EU players have noted that they are taking server congestion more severely than their NA counterparts who have little problems playing the game. Gamers from EU have been complaining since the official release that they can barely play the game. Most of the adventurers from this region have asked for an additional data center or servers.
Smilegate and Amazon have yet to address the issue of farming bots since this particular problem is not yet that severe. However, since the ‘Lost Ark’ has been around for several years now, players can assume that the Korean gaming studio is looking into the problem. Meanwhile, Amazon has announced that it is opening a new data center, EU West, to alleviate the stress on EU Central. Unfortunately, the gaming studios have expressed that data or server transfers will not be possible yet.
Many players are worried that the current issues that ‘Lost Ark’ is facing are mirroring the same way how New World started to spiral down. However, gamers should note that ‘Lost Ark’ has been around since 2019, and the game still remains popular in the regions it is originally available. The Korean gaming studio has enough years and experience to make the right decisions and solutions for issues like the Lost ARK gold hat bots.
