Those of you eyeing the countdown clock for the early access launch of Atlas are in for a disappointment. During its announcement, developer Studio Wildcard revealed a six-day countdown for its release of Atlas, its first MMO, at the official website. It would have ended tomorrow, but instead the clock has been reset to add eight more days. The company confirmed that the game will now be available to play on December 19.
“After thinking carefully over the past several days, we’ve decided to delay the ATLAS launch until December 19th to give the team more time to run through this massive game’s extensive content,” wrote Atlas on the game’s Steam page. “It’s a vast virtual world out there across the ATLAS, and the team’s going to use that extra time to review every portion of it thoroughly. We’re sorry about the delay, and we know how much everyone is looking forward to establishing their empires!”
No, More Waiting!
We were excited for Atlas during its unveiling at The Game Awards 2018 last week. Coming from Ark: Survival Evolved developer Studio Wildcard, Atlas will take pirates to the MMO scene. And it’s not just about naval warfare and treasure hunts. Those are both included, sure, but there is also a strong presence of the mythic and supernatural. As seen in its trailer, hydras and golems scour the land, and they take some serious firepower to bring down.
However, I personally stand by any delay coming from Wildcard. Considering Ark‘s rather shaky history of poor optimization and server issues, any amount of hold can’t be bad. I think we can all agree that the last thing we need is for ships and monsters to comically rubber-band back and forth across land and sea. It took a damn long time for Ark to run on anything lower-tier than a liquid nitrogen-cooled supercomputer. And it’s still not perfect, by any means.
Regardless, Atlas will be available for early access via Steam on December 19.
