Tower of Fantasy apologizes for long launch day server queues with freebies for all

As was likely expected for a free-to-play online game launch, Tower of Fantasy's servers are struggling to handle day one interest with 10+ hour long server queues. We've already gone hands on with it and dubbed it a "messy Genshin Impact," though it does bring customizable characters and a slightly more shared world than Genshin. Even so, no surprise that all the current Genshin lovers are jumping in to see if it's a competitor worth fussing over before they head back to Teyvat.

Tower of Fantasy launched last night in North American time, making today the first full day that the whole world has the opportunity to jump in. It hasn't launched on Steam just yet, available on mobile or by download from its site, so we don't have the convenient shorthand for just how many players that might be. Developers Hotta Studio claimed four million pre-registrations as of Sunday, though of course that's no prediction of actual day one players. The developers have noticed the complaints about server queue times and gone with the stock-standard gacha game compensation plan: free in-game cash.

"At present, the problems related to queuing, disconnection, and inability to register and login have all been fixed," they said on Thursday. "Other problems will be fixed within the next 48 hours."

I have indeed been able to register my account today through the launcher and start the download, but can't confirm those server wait times firsthand just yet. Guides writer Sean Martin had a bit of luck taking his wait time down from several hours to around 20 minutes by swapping to a less populous server, so if you aren't dead-set on one, do have an eye for the shorter line.

Hotta Studio is handing over 300 Dark Crystals as a make-good on login and disconnection issues and another 300 Dark Crystals for account registration and login failures. That's one of the cash shop currencies, of course—the one that can be earned either by playing or by paying real money for it by proxy through the premium currency Tanium.

You can actually snag both of those gifts, even if you haven't played yet, by registering an account before midnight UTC+0 today, August 11. That works out to 8 pm EST.

Lastly, as appreciation for all the early interest in the game, Hotta is giving 10 Gold Nucleus to all players registered before next Wednesday, August 17. That one's the medium rarity currency (between Black and Red Nucleus) used for purchasing gacha pulls.

No telling just yet if the freebies will carry new players past the first busy days of a new free online game, especially one that may or may not rise above Genshin clone status, but ah heck, I guess I'm downloading it to find out too, aren't I?