MMORPG Throne and Liberty had a relatively good start in South Korea, but the results could have been better. At the moment there is no exact information about the number of players and the results of starting sales. And, most likely, we will not know this data until the financial report for the 4th quarter of 2023. But preliminary results can already be found from various sources.
According to South Korean media reports, more than 56,000 players connected to the game in the first 20 minutes after release. Within an hour, 20 of the 21 starting servers temporarily closed the registration of new players in order to reduce the load on the initial locations. Over time, registration was opened on almost all servers except four: DaVinci, Lunar, Nix and Stonegard. In the case of the latest server, an interesting situation has developed: it is played by several hundred players from the CIS (from 200 to 400 people) and the ETO alliance, which, according to available information, has more than 600 Chinese players. As a result, there is only one Korean guild in the TOP 10 – TheChaos.
Thanks to statistics from the gametrics website, it became known that on December 9 and 10, more than 40,000 players played in computer clubs. This indicator allowed it to take 19th place in the weekly ranking within three days. Among the MMORPGs, there are 4 games higher: MapleStory (7th place), Lost Ark (8th place), World of WarCraft (12th place) and Aion (13th place). In the daily rating, Throne and Liberty takes 13th place, so the game will be able to rise in the weekly rating as early as December 11-18.
But these figures could be much higher, because we are talking about a large MMORPG from the most famous Korean gaming company. One of the reasons lies in the weak advertising campaign of Throne and Liberty. Even before the launch, NCSOFT announced that it did not plan to allocate a large budget for advertising the new game. Everything was limited to advertising on gaming sites, gaming clubs and a trip to G-Star 2023.
Part of the advertising costs had to be borne by Amazon, which became the publisher of the game in the West. But due to the postponement of the release date of the global version to 2024, these plans were not destined to come true. In addition, weak marketing is associated with NCSOFT’s financial problems and uncertainty about the commercial success of the game.
Users have received mixed reactions to the game: some regret giving up auto-battle, some found a bug with a tree floating in the air, some experience the game lagging, some admire flying on an air whale, and some are just glad that they can play a classic MMORPG with a huge open world. There is no mass negativity regarding the monetization system, since the developers kept their word and abandoned gacha mechanics, collections that increase character characteristics, and any unbalanced goods in the premium store.
At the moment, there are still problems in the game, but the developers are quickly eliminating them during daily technical work. They also listen to players’ opinions on how to improve the game. For example, we made changes to the way the marking system works on the map and improved the visibility of key NPCs.
