Unruly piratical sandbox MMO Atlas looks significantly weirder after the launch of its second “Mega Update”. Previously limited to its public test realm and now live, the patch doesn’t seem to really have a theme, beyond devs Grapeshot Games adding ‘cool stuff’, literally and figuratively. There’s the Polar Ice Dungeon with a boss fight against an abominable snowman, new islands around the equator and poles to explore, some very strange new animals plus torpedo launchers and more. You can see the full patch notes here, and a trailer below. The game is also half price until tomorrow.

(more…)

Oceanic trenches, new lands, a new land claim system aimed at supporting smaller groups, a rideable giant crab, a submarine, new quests, and more arrived in Atlas today with an update developers Grapeshot Games insist is no mere update but a “mega-update”. The piratical survival sandbox was the talk of the port and cock of the coast when it first entered early access in December but its popularity was fleeting partially cos it’s been much ropier than Ark: Survival Evolved, the game it’s heavily based on. That’s no surprise for a game early along an early access journey, of course, I’m just pointing this out in case you’ve been waiting for a sizeable update before setting sail.

(more…)

Last week brought news that beleaguered swashbuckling MMO Atlas had been hacked by a bunch of salty ne’er do wells. The keys to an admin account were stolen, allowing hackers to go on what amounted to a trans-dimensional naval joyride. Invincible armadas armed with inexhaustible supplies of cannonballs briefly ruled the waves, which was to be expected. But then planes fell from the sky. The oceans boiled with giant whales. I think there was a World War Two tank at one stage, scooting across the sea like an angry speedboat.

The developers, Grapeshot, pulled everything offline, hosed all the weirdness> off their servers and pressed the big reset button they keep hidden in the basement. Now everything is back to normal again. Except, get this, Atlas was far from normal to begin with.

(more…)

Pirates have once again proven themselves incapable of civil behaviour, as salty early access survival sandbox Atlas has been hit by ne’er-do-wells dropping terrible whales and other oddities all over the world – for the second time in a week. While Thursday’s whale of a time was down to a “compromised” admin account, according to developers Grapeshot Games, Sunday’s cetacearama was down to “a technical exploit” they say they’ve now closed. Once again, Grapeshot took all the official servers temporarily offline and rolled back the North American PvP servers to an earlier backup. Naughty pirates.

(more…)

Some scurrilous hornswaggler yesterday gained access to an Atlas admin account with dominion over the piratical survival sandbox’s North American PvP servers and used it to, in the words of developers Grapeshot Games, “cause some devastation.” This appears to have included summoning a great many sea beasties as well as, ah, driving around in World War 2 tanks and raining warplanes from the skies. To undo the devastation, Atlas rolled those servers back to a backup from some five-and-a-half-hours earlier. Skulduggery may be supported in Atlas, even encouraged, but only approved skulduggery: no ducking, no bombing, no heavy petting, no tanks.

(more…)

A lot of people first discover this Pulitzer Prize-winning* column via the Steam pages for their favourite games, and it’s always a pleasure to welcome in new readers to RPS’s most respected feature. So if you’re new, welcome! Please settle in and find out why Steam Charts is the industry’s most respected and revered games journalism.

(more…)

Today brings good news for Atlas players who respond to grind with an “Oh no!” rather than the customary “Yo ho!” Reducing tedious grind is a big target of the piratical sandbox survival game’s early access update v10, launched this afternoon, and that sounds welcome. Atlas proudly declares it’s from some of the makers of Ark: Survival Evolved, and its heritage is evident in the UI, the bugginess, the grind… and how popular it’s become despite all that. Like Ark, it dreams a big dream that few games rival, even if it is a mess. So I hope enjoy a slightly less tedious dream, you wild-eyed seadreamers.

(more…)

Ho ho ho! John still hasn’t returned after Christmas, missing presumed drowned in egg nog, so I’m filling in today. Valve have already blarbed about 2018’s best-selling games so we’re back on the weekly charts. Last week’s top ten was largely familiar, though catching the tail end of the Steam Winter Sale has introduced a few surprises.

(more…)

After some delays and an embarrassing false start last night that left many of Twitch’s biggest streamers and their audiences staring at a blank server list for hours, Atlas is live in early access. The ambitious player-run (rum?) fantasy pirate MMO from the makers of Ark: Survival Evolved is out at a slashed launch price for the holidays. Looking like a low-tech, mega-scale take on Ark, the developers (now flying the Grapeshot Games flag) hope to cram 40,000 or more players into a single huge shared world.

There will be separate PvP and PvE servers, and both will have NPCs to give quests, crew ships and monsters to fight, but the long-term plan seems to be for players to establish their own empires, built from the first bricks upwards. Check out the launch trailer below.

(more…)

There’s a pirate MMO on the horizon, and its sea-farers look ambitious. Atlas is being made by Ark: Survival Evolved devs Studio Wildcard, and sets sail on early access today. It plops 40,000 players into the same fantasy world, where they compete to govern territory and can fire at any ship on the sea.

I spoke to project director/lead programmer Jeremy Stieglitz and creative director Jesse Rapczak over Skype. We chatted about singing to stave off boredom on voyages, player politicking, ship combat as a team sports game – and a plan to save every player before they die of old age.

(more…)