Throne and Liberty is off to a very mighty start. The modern MMORPG from NCSoft and Amazon Games has already climbed to fourth place on Steam, behind only Dota 2, Counter-Strike 2 and that one banana game.
At the time of writing, Throne and Liberty had approximately 292,116 concurrent games, ranking in the top half of the top ten most popular games on Steam. Its early performance is all the more impressive in airy of mixed reviews, most of which focused on server issues and microtransactions.
Indeed, server issues appear to be Throne and Liberty’s biggest problem, with fans complaining about spending 45 minutes creating characters only to be disconnected. Moreover, it doesn’t seem possible to choose another server, leaving fans with little option but to hope that things will improve.
Still, Throne and Liberty seems to be doing well, following in the footsteps of other Amazon Games releases including Lost Ark and New World. Originally announced as a sequel to Lineage, Throne and Liberty is described as a free-to-play MMO with PvE and PvP modes set in a animated and fluid world. There were numerous delays during a development cycle lasting several years.
We wrote about Throne and Liberty during its beta: “Overall, I certainly enjoyed most of my time with Throne and Liberty. There are significant late-game things that I want to revisit and participate in, like large-scale PvP battles between guilds and raid dungeons. The story and quests don’t upend any long-standing MMO conventions. The inner voice that usually tells me to make sure that any task that can be done must be done very quietly allows me to skip the leisurely dialogue and tune in. But I never missed an opportunity to fight.
But while Amazon Games can get things started quickly, it has difficulty maintaining that momentum due to leisurely updates, balance issues, and other issues. New World released a huge number of copies, has been thoroughly rebuilt, and is trying to make a fresh start on consoles as New World: Aerturnum. We’ll see if Throne and Liberty will have better luck.
Kat Bailey is IGN’s news director and co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Got a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
