Throne and Liberty is a free-to-play fantasy MMORPG produced by Korean developer NCSOFT and published by Amazon Games. It’s off to a good start on Steam, although not as big as Amazon’s two previous MMOs.
During early access, where players could pay to play the game five days in advance, the number of simultaneous online players for Throne and Liberty reached a peak of approximately 56,000. When the game launched to free-to-play players on October 1, those numbers quickly climbed. “Free Throne” reached 326,377 simultaneous online players on the day of release, becoming the fourth largest game on Steam at one time.
As is often the case with new MMO launches, server issues and login queues plagued us during Throne and Liberty’s opening hours, and NCSOFT quickly launched new servers to meet demand. NCSOFT said there were a number of other issues that surfaced shortly after launch that they are working to resolve, including some players being unable to create new characters, or characters being missing for those who played during Early Access.
The launch numbers of Throne and Liberty on Steam are not to be underestimated, but they lag far behind Amazon’s two previous MMOs, New World and Lost Ark. It broke Steam records upon release, with over 913,000 downloads. Despite the $40 price tag, simultaneous online players can still watch it online at the same time. Another Korean free-to-play MMO, “Lost Ark”, which is localized and published by Amazon, performed even better during its launch in 2022, with 1.3 million online players at the same time. It’s worth noting that unlike Lost Ark or New Worlds, Thrones and Freedom is also playable on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, meaning concurrent players on Steam can’t paint the full picture.
Ahead of launch, Amazon detailed all the changes it will make to Thrones and Liberty compared to the Korean versions, with the goal of adjusting the games’ business models to better meet the expectations of Western players. The changes include lowering the price of the game’s Battle Pass and Upgrade Pass, as well as additional rewards and the elimination of an optional subscription called “Solisium’s Blessing.” Amazon said it would “evaluate” how subscriptions need to change to “meet player needs.”
Thrones and Freedom won’t even be the only MMORPG Amazon releases in 2024. The Western version of Blue Protocol was canceled in August, and the Japanese servers will be taken offline in January.
While Amazon has a reputation for creating and publishing MMOs (it’s currently developing the Lord of the Rings MMO and reimagining A New World for consoles), the company is still looking to expand into other genres. As part of Gamescom 2024, Amazon announced that it will release the cooperative dungeon crawler game Meat King.
