Not all donuts succeed with the hole. Atlas, the last work of the well-known Wildcard study, it is certainly proof of that. Following the moderate success with Ark: Survival Evolved, the software house has decided to announce in the course of The Game Awards 2018 his new pirate-style MMO. The development studio seemed to be really excited about this generational leap, going from the era of the dinosaurs to the era of piracy, but it is a pity that the step taken was perhaps longer than the leg.
Retracing the steps from the announcement to the launch of theEarly Access of the PC version of Atlas su Steam, you realize how much the design of Studio Wildcard did not live up to the expectation created around the title. At the beginning of December 2018, the software house announced to release Atlas in early access on December 13th. Something then went wrong, and a short time later the company apologized to users and postponed Early Access to December 19, ensuring players could immerse themselves in a world of 40.000 players connected simultaneously.
These announcements have given users hope, who, quietly digesting the delay, have anxiously awaited the release of the title. After all, the trailers released until December 19th showed us a mix of interesting dynamics. This pirate MMO has given hope for a new, or at least similar, Sea of Thieves, perhaps by solving the obvious problems that the Microsoft exclusive suffers from. Obviously, the same authors of the game also loaded even more expectations, promising a different MMO experience, not comparable to those already seen on the market.
In Atlas, the players will start from a very small island, the starting point to enlarge their territory, which can cover the entire known world. Obviously the focus of the game revolves around battles between players, which take place both on land and obviously in the middle of the sea. Each island and each ravine will be important points of exploration for us within which we will be able to find tombs, treasures and some small surprises.
All very interesting, until, however, the title was not released in Early Access on Steam. Immediately downloaded by many users, they found themselves faced with a game full of bugs. Players have complained about almost everything, from the general performance of the title, to the constant lag, and to the many sudden disconnections. But the really embarrassing thing is that so many have complained of a really excessive similarity with Ark: Survival Evolved. After this avalanche of complaints, the developers have posted a message of heartfelt apology in the official forums of the title, clarifying that the chaos created is due to the number of players who connected at the same time as the launch.
A "success" underestimated by the company, which evidently did not set up all the servers necessary to handle such a large number of people, causing continuous crashes. Precisely for this reason, the developers ran for cover by making substantial changes immediately, trying to make them work. Precisely for this reason, together with the apologies, a new patch has been released, which aims to solve the various bugs due to the servers, trying to stabilize the clients. The new patch, 7.4 the gameplay has also been affected, improving some dynamics and lowering the difficulty of the title, which immediately seemed to be very frustrating for players.
These "small" changes will not serve to dispel the mood that surrounds today Atlas, even if the developers have made it clear that to see the final version of the title we will have to wait a couple of more years. While in we expect to see major changes before release within the program Xbox Game Preview, expected later this year.
But how did we get to this point? How is that even possible Studio Wildcard has run into this terrible mistake? Does it really seem that in the last period the software houses are not taking their customers into consideration due to deadlines? To me, it looks as if after the release of titles like Fortnite, the software houses have started a sort of "gold rush", trying to package low leverage products, which however trigger high billing dynamics, a bit like success for epic Games. Could this be a cause of the continual leaking of uncalibrated and completely unkempt titles? The word is yours!
