Following a last minute delay, Lost Ark finally launched for western audiences last night. The Korean MMO – developed by Tripod Studios and Smilegate – casts a wide appeal to its audience, offering a blend between a traditional MMO experience found in World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy 14, and the fast-paced action of Diablo or Path of Exile. After releasing for Korea, Japan, and Russia in December 2019, Lost Ark was published (with the help of Amazon) for the North American, South American, and European markets – and the MMO's promising gameplay piqued the interest of many streamers, including Asmongold.
The Twitch streamer who made his career playing World of Warcraft took a break of several months, and his fans looked forward to his return with respectful, yet also fervent excitement. Lost Ark's launch perfectly coincided with Asmongold coming back to streaming on his main channel, and coupled together – these two factors helped propel Asmongold's viewership to a new peak.
Asmongold recorded over 430k viewers last night before he ever played a single minute just by waiting for the servers to launch, and humorously enough, his viewership dramatically dropped after Lost Ark finally released – most likely due to the overlap of his fans wanting to try the game out for themselves.
When Asmongold left streaming in September, he was averaging a viewership of 60k to 70k per stream, with peaks of 200k to 270k during major World of Warcraft releases such as the launch of Shadowlands or Classic. With his gaming organization OTK growing in his absence, and with the gaming community hopeful for a good, new MMO to come out following the shortcomings of Amazon's New World, plenty of eyes were set on Asmongold playing through the western premiere of Lost Ark.
His audience is hardly restricted to just North America and Europe, however, as many Korean players joined his stream last night out of a desire to see several top streamers react to Lost Ark – not unlike the fascination that Japanese players had when Asmongold tried Final Fantasy 14 for the first time.
There is little doubt that Asmongold's own unapologetic charm and ability to make even the most mundane content engaging translates well across language and cultural barriers, and many of his fans would claim that those traits are precisely the reason why they were drawn to his streams in the first place. While he has always been fond of streaming for his own sake – and therefore subject to taking a break from time to time – it is safe to say that Asmongold's latest return has been his strongest yet.
Lost Ark is available now on PC.