Atlas has had a long journey since its stumbly early access rollout in 2018, back when it was still promising to be an “MMO on the grandest scale” with 40,000 players on the same globe simultaneously. It can’t do that even now, and in fact even if it could, it doesn’t have the players to try (its peak concurrency on PC in the last month is around 5000 players total, down from around 40,000 at soft launch). In June, we chronicled the game’s many missteps along the way, homing in specifically on weak communication and slow updates.
Most recently, Studio Wildcard’s Grapeshot Games dropped a (very) brief Q&A with the playerbase, though it doesn’t address the decline of the game’s population or hint at when an official launch might occur. The team does say that it’s considering more PvE ocean jobs, hasn’t given up on the promised player offspring feature, and isn’t focused on underwater ship combat. It also says there’s “no clear roadmap” for feature-complete small group maps because it’s “putting everything behind cleaning up the main game and adding new features to it.”
There’s a note about re-emphasizing PvP that might be worth your attention if you’re still playing the game, too:
“Since season 1, many hours have gone into creating PVP centric mechanics in ATLAS. Seasons 2 and 3 saw many changes that restricted the use of these mechanics. We’re interested in highlighting these unique mechanics, and are looking at different ways to bring them back into the mix and balance them further. As the current state of the game develops, so will the meta. Starting with the next patch, we’ll be unveiling a quick survey on the latest changes that all players can take, so that we can get a better understanding of the community’s sentiments.”
