Throne and Liberty is off to a very strong start. The new MMORPG by NCSoft and Amazon Games has already rushed to number four on Steam, behind only Dota 2, Counter-Strike 2, and that one banana game. At the time of this article, Throne and Liberty sits at around 292,116 concurrents, putting in the top half of the list of Steam’s ten most popular games. Its early performance is all the more impressive in light of mixed reviews, most of which have focused on its server issues and microtransactions.Indeed, server issues seem to be the biggest problem facing Throne and Liberty, with fans complaining about spending 45 minutes creating a character only to get disconnected. What’s more, it doesn’t appear possible to choose a different server, leaving fans little recourse except to hope that things 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 billed as a Lineage sequel, Throne and Liberty is described as a free-to-play MMO with PvE and PvP set in a dynamic and seamless world. It suffered numerous delays over the course of a development cycle spanning 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 big, late-game things that I want to come back and participate in, like large-scale PVP battles between guilds and raid dungeons. The story and quests won’t upend any long-standing MMO conventions. The inner voice that usually commands me to make sure every task that can be done must be done very quietly let me skip through slow dialogue and turn a blind eye to many menial side tasks. I never skipped an opportunity to fight, though.”But while Amazon Games have a way of getting off to a fast start, they have struggled to maintain that momentum amid slow updates, balance problems, and other issues. New World launched to huge numbers, wound up getting heavily retooled, and is trying to get a fresh start on console as New World: Aerturnum. We’ll see if Throne and Liberty has better luck.Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
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