Throne and Freedom: Amazon's New MMO Launches on Steam

Amazon's new MMO Throne and Liberty has had a promising start, but the toughest time is still ahead for the game – at least if you take a look at Amazon's previous attempts at the genre.

More than 325,000 people participated in the events on the Thrones and Liberty servers when it was released. Although impressive in its own right, compared to other Amazon MMOs New World and Lost Ark, this entry is rather slow. Lost Ark attracted 1.3 million concurrent players at the start of 2022, while New World attracted 914,000.

However, if you compare the numbers to the current results on Steam, things don't look too bad for Throne and Liberty. Only long-time favorites like Counter Strike 2, PUBG: Battlegrounds, Dota 2, Black Myth: Wukong, and of course the fruit tapping game Banana can inspire more people right now.

Throne and Liberty Mixed Ratings players don't seem to be excited about this game. On Steam, the game barely managed to achieve an even rating in its reviews. Performance and graphics are very good, probably due to the use of the current Unreal Engine.

However, there are also some technical shortcomings. Players are complaining of login issues and lag, which has now become almost standard practice for MMOs at launch. However, users don't notice the game's mechanics and story or don't notice them at all. It has been criticized that this is standard MMO fare. Quests follow a “kill 20 monsters” or “collect 20 plants” pattern and the game generally lacks “soul”.

>>Best of the Cologne Games Festival: Gamescom 2024 highlights

Especially with MMOs, it's not necessarily the short-term success after launch that matters, but rather the number of players in the long-term. Lost Ark and especially New World were unable to maintain their strong start for long. The latter is now trying to relaunch it as New World: Aeternum. So it remains to be seen how Throne and Liberty's player base will evolve in the future.