Wayfinder’s off to a rocky start: Airship Syndicate’s sci-fi MMO-esque looter-shooter rolled out to early access yesterday, and it wasn’t the smoothest beginning – you need only peek at Steam to see what happened. Players reported crashing, servers down, login issues, and more, all leading to a heavily negative overall rating with several thousand reviews in. “Lots of ‘early’ but much less ‘access,'” one player quipped. If you ever wanted to know whether this is a real MMO, well, it has all the typical MMO launch day problems!
For its part, Airship tweeted five times last night about the issues with the servers, logins, and tutorials; it noted several server resets and ended the night with “reduced capacity servers in place while [the] teams assess the situation overnight.”
“This is not the start to Early Access that we had envisioned, or what our Founder’s deserve,” the studio wrote. “We’ll be posting a full update from the team tomorrow about what happened, where we are, and how we move forward. We appreciate your patience and support.”
There’s significantly more tucked away in the Discord, not under announcements or known issues but under server alerts (there’s nothing on Steam or the official site about the outages). The latest missive from the devs came at 2 a.m. EDT, so yes, they stayed up late working on this.
As players wait for fixes, they can get hyped for the game’s first season, which technically launched yesterday alongside the early access.
“A love letter to fast-paced RPGs and MMOs, Wayfinder enters Early Access today with Gloom Break: Founder’s Season One, the first of two seasons exclusive to founding players with an all-star voice cast including Jennifer Hale (Mass Effect, Metroid Prime), Steve Blum (Cowboy Bebop, God of War), JB Blanc (Darksiders, Apex Legends), Zeke Alton (Remnant II), and more. A new launch trailer highlights the game’s eclectic cast of playable Wayfinders, shedding light on their battle-scarred backstories and preparing founding players for the journey ahead. […] Airship Syndicate is dedicated to using Early Access to build a strong foundation for years to come when Wayfinder launches free-to-play next year. Players in Early Access will adventure through six locations, collect six Wayfinders, and hunt powerful bosses to craft 17 weapons at launch, with even more planned throughout the season. Players in Early Access are entitled to so much more than access to the game – exclusive rewards are available to players based on the Founder’s Pack purchased. Four Founder’s Pack tiers are available from Basic to Exalted: the higher the tier, the more exclusive the rewards.”
We got our hands on Wayfinder before launch, finding it a weirdly designed and even counterproductive preview build for what is otherwise a gorgeous, decent game.
We are leaving the reduced capacity servers in place while our teams assess the situation overnight.
This is not the start to Early Access that we had envisioned, or what our Founder's deserve.
We'll be posting a full update from the team tomorrow about what happened, where we… https://t.co/eLSqWFTdhf
— Wayfinder (@playwayfinder) August 18, 2023
