I tried playing it with a friend, but decided to refund before I passed the 2 hour mark. I tried last night and this morning to get on, but I never got past the server browser in 115 minutes of trying.
Yeah. There's a deal with Nitrado that lets them host private servers which actually function, and there's currently a streamer server that lets the celebs keep the hype machine going. You can rent your own server to play on for 40 euro a month (there's a 10 euro version as well, but it's apparently severely hampered and you can't get a clean upgrade). Seems to be the only way to have a private server at the moment.
Some folks are managing to log onto the main servers now, but they're having issues with lag and the difficulty involved with getting out of the starting areas. Also the entire world seems to think that it's a starter zone for the sake of capping the level at 8. Those getting past that point are dealing with how construction is even more expensive than ARK (a single wooden plank requires
480 pieces of wood to craft), plus animals are weird and combat is weirder.
Devs don't seem to care much at all about the Steam side of things, which is possibly just as well considering we're now at 5,400 reviews with 80% negative. And the Steam forum is a raging dumpster fire. Rough launch, eh?
EDIT:
Why Early Access?
“ATLAS is one of the most ambitious online worlds of all time and while everything we have listed in the feature section will be there around Early Access launch, we are going to need the feedback, insight, and creativity of the game players to build on that foundation and balance the game optimally over a period of time.”
What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“Everything in the features section will be there around Early Access Launch and the game will be an unparalleled massively multiplayer experience from Day One.”
EDIT2: Right, so, people are having difficulty getting into the game because there are only a few areas out of the 15x15 world that are classed as "freeports" where new characters can start, right? They're the starting zones for getting into the game, but they're still capped by the 150 player max limit before you're not allowed to enter that square (this will also block you from spawning into that area, not just physically moving from one area to another). Moreover, anything over 50 players in a square seems to result in significant lag and delays, along with "rubberbanding" back to your initial spawn point and being unable to even escape from that square to clear things up for everyone else. Sometimes you even spawn in and are incapable of interacting with anything, such as gathering the raw materials you need to build your first raft and get out of there.
So since there were so many launch problems, a lot of people just logged out and decided to wait. Well, logging out doesn't remove your character from the game, it just drops them on the floor in a sleeping position. Those characters are still ingame and are not only counted towards the limit, but also count towards processing stresses because of all their stats and details.
And since most of them are sleeping in the freeport zones, which are "safe" areas that disable PvP, you can't kill or otherwise remove the sleeping characters.
There have also been one or two issues with individual servers in the grid... So the server controlling a specific 1x1 square on the grid will go down, and all the characters in that area will have no recourse as they can't spawn anywhere except for where they left the game. You also can't delete your old character and start a new one somewhere else, because it can't retrieve the character from dead server limbo for long enough to wipe it. And you can't have more than one character per server per user.
But hey... The $5 release discount is actually extended through January 2nd, rather than just the first 24 hours! That's a positive!
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Topic: MMOs? (Read 16853 times)