Despite launch day issues and hour-long queues, most would call the western launch of Lost Ark a booming success. Those playing might want to stick to the title’s free content, however, as premium account benefits are randomly disappearing earlier than they should.
Dubbed a free-to-play MMO, Lost Ark makes money by selling premium time. This comes in the form of Crystalline Aura, which is purchased using Blue Crystals. These can, in turn, be purchased for in-game currency or premium currency. By activating Crystalline Aura, players will be privy to a host of benefits, including a 50% discount off Ocean Liners, reduced Stronghold crafting and research by 10%, two additional Bifrost slots, and plenty more.
These Crystalline Auras last for 30 days once activated. However, many players are now taking to the game’s official forum in outrage, claiming that their Auras are disappearing long before the 30 days are up. Some are reporting that their Crystalline Auras had disappeared after only a few days, while others say that they are spontaneously deactivating then reactivating a day or two later. Many affected players are on the EU Central server.
Amazon replied to player complaints nine days ago, claiming that they are looking into the issue. No progress has been made on that front.
“For these entitlements, two different servers need to talk to each other, the game server and the commerce server,” Amazon wrote in a general post regarding current issues with Lost Ark. “Right now there is an issue where the commerce server, due to the massive load that it is experiencing from how many people are playing Lost Ark, fails to properly communicate with the game server. For Crystalline Aura specifically, we know that this is a paid premium account benefit that has a timer associated with it.”
Lost Ark was fully released in its free-to-play format on February 11. The game managed to break 500,000 concurrent players on Steam during early access. Within 24 hours of release, Lost Ark managed to break the all-time concurrent player records of CS-GO and Dota 2 with a staggering 1,324,761 players.
