Ahoy Matey!

If dinosaurs were the prevalent theme in ARK, Atlas is all about celebrating pirates in the grand manner. Players will start out playing lowbie pirates who can either go it alone or with friends to begin building their pirate empire. The huge open world will feature gameplay like naval combat, ship building and town governing, which sounds like what other pirate games have done this past year. The twist to that is of course, Atlas will house over thousands of players together on the server, which is a huge upgrade from ARK. From the previews we like seeing that the guns, ships and swords all look and feel like things pirates would use, so if that presses your buttons, this might be the game for you.

Living Breathing World

What made ARK fun to play was the AI environments and creatures that added so much more depth to the world. Dinosaurs provided the threat and the advantage too, if you tamed them and used them against other players on PvP servers. Atlas will undoubtedly keep this portion of the gameplay, considering what we’ve seen in the trailer so far. There’s multi-headed hydras, the kraken in the sea, a sharks, and of course, dragons. It’s a hot-pot of mythical creatures apparently, but also provides more ways to play and conquer the lands for the bold players that seek out this threat.

Naval Warfare That Sounds Interesting

Ships are a pirate’s best friend. It’s their livelihood, and in Atlas it will probably be just that. You start out with a crappy little raft and your progression involves building it up and upgrading it over time. Soon, you’ll be captaining your own warships and galleon, sloops, frigates and brigs on the open seas against both enemy players and monsters. The cool thing is, the end-game ships will have a good arsenal – cannons and other weapons – that need to be manned. If playing with friends, they can manually take control of these things which sounds awesome. If solo, the best part is you can hire AI NPCs to crew your ships too. All you’ll need to do is feed them and pay them. All in all, the pirate sim style of gameplay sounds interesting when it involves interactive naval warfare as well.

The Early Access Model

Atlas launches December 13th on Steam Early Access, and follows the footsteps of ARK: Survival Evolved. One thing to note is that the game will be cheaper in Early Access, and once launched the price will increase. Many will consider this to be weird, but that’s Studio Wildcard’s modus operandi when it comes to game releases it seems. One can only hope that it doesn’t suffer the same optimization issues that ARK did at launch, and still charge and produce expansions while the core game still needs work.

The post Why Atlas Is 2019’s MMO Survival Game To Watch appeared first on Mmos World.

Dragon Age (#TheDreadWolfRises)

After all the speculation last week about Bioware hinting at a new Dragon Age reveal, we finally saw it last night. A short clip with familiar music player, and the voice of non other than the Solas the Dread Wolf, emerges to tease players about what’s next. That short clip was all it took to send Dragon Age fans around the world into a frenzy. It’s been too long since Dragon Age Inquisition. Preliminary reports suggest we won’t see the final game until 2021, so let’s hope it will be worth the wait.

"I suspect you have questions…" #TheDreadWolfRises pic.twitter.com/oT7L6LOFKA

— BioWare (@bioware) December 7, 2018

Atlas MMO

Another big reveal came from Studio Wildcard, the creators of the massively popular survival MMO ARK:Survival Evolved. Apparently, expansions and DLCs weren’t enough to keep them busy, so they’ve gone ahead and announced Atlas. Atlas is a brand new open world sandbox survival game like ARK, but twelve hundred times bigger. Even better, forget the dinosaurs – it’s pirate themed and features customizable ships, islands and features the same massive battles and building that we love about these games. Atlas releases on Steam Early Access on December 13th.

Joker From Persona 5 Joins Smash Brothers

For Nintendo fans, we also got a glimpse of the first DLC character for Smash Bros, and it’s a good one. Nintendo are fully embracing crossovers and we’re shocked and impressed with this one. Persona 5’s Joker will be the first of five DLC characters that players can purchase now that the game is live. Additionally, players can just get the full pass to receive all 5 without having to buy them individually. Very clever, Nintendo. It makes us wonder what other crossover characters the game has in store for players.

Fortnite Revealed ‘The Block’ Creation Suite For In-game Fun

Remember that open-air movie space that you could find on the map? Say good bye to it. Revealed last night, Epic is adding a new player creation suite called The Block. Here, players can go crazy with their creativity and build anything they want. The best part is, the greatest of creations will get voted up by the community, and the best of the best will be featured in-game in the battle royale map. It’s a nice way to bring a community that loves to build things come together in a fun way.

New Far Cry, Obsidian RPG and Anthem Trailer

Rounding up the best of the RPG space is the showcase of a brand new Far Cry game. Far Cry: New Dawn takes place 17 years after the war and is set in Hope County. It looks and feels like a post-apocalyptic fun setting (with a little too much color for my taste) but still interesting nonetheless. Elsewhere, Obsidian and the makers of Fallout also announced a brand new FPS sci-fi RPG called The Outer Worlds. The game will be a narrative driven experience and it looks like a mash between Destiny and Fallout. Last but not least, Anthem also showed a new trailer, introducing a new antagonist – and don’t forget, the closed alpha test begins this weekend!

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