If you predicted that Atlas’ launch would be a hot mess, then give yourself a hearty pat on the back (and, really, join the crowd). Studio Wildcard’s pirate MMO has had the kind of launch that you would see if the maiden voyage of a ship resulted in an immediate crash into the pier. When Newsweek is asking if your game is DOA, then perhaps it’s time to regroup and try again later?
Atlas portal hosting service G-Portal posted an apology letter to its users on Christmas for the “massive problems” that people were having with servers. “Atlas is in a much earlier state of development than we at G-Portal anticipated (led to believe) and were unable to foresee the issues it would cause,” the company posted.
That all said, Studio Wildcard has great incentive to keep plugging leaks and seeing if it can make this vessel seaworthy while in transit. Steam Charts note that nearly 53,000 people were playing concurrently in the past 24 hours, which is a fairly respectable number for an early access MMO that nobody heard about a month ago.
The studio said that it will be discussing future plans later today, but in the meantime it pushed out a patch that fixes various game issues and bugs that have been plaguing players.
One thing it can’t fix? World War III. Apparently it’s China versus everyone else in the land of pirates and salt water. Very salty water.
Atlas is still a top-selling game on Steam and continues to run a slight 17% discount until January 2nd. One player noted that Valve gave him a refund for the game even though had had put in more than two hours into the title.
