The Survival MMO ARK Survival Evolved is currently very popular on Steam and receiving many positive reviews. The announced new DLC Genesis has even been postponed.
What is ARK? ARK Survival Evolved is an MMO that was released in Early Access on Steam in May 2015. You enter a wild world full of dinosaurs and other dangers. The focus is on your survival, which proves to be very difficult.
You start naked and without tools, gradually learning new technologies. You begin with simple tools and end up with futuristic equipment.
Highlights include building your own shelter and taming and riding dinosaurs. PvP also plays a role in ARK.
How is ARK doing in 2020? 2019 was a very successful year for the MMO, which even surprised the developers. It repeatedly reaches the top 10 of the Steamcharts. This trend continues into 2020.
This is quite a surprise, as the first part of the DLC Genesis was originally announced for December. However, it was postponed to January and now to 25th February 2020.
However, there is no sign of mourning or even a shitstorm due to the postponement. It seems that many are simply enjoying the already available version of ARK.
ARK Shows Strongly on Steam
How many people play ARK? According to Steamcharts, an average of 46,085 people played ARK Survival Evolved in the last 30 days. At peak times, even 70,449 played simultaneously.
This puts the MMO at about the same level as July 2019, when the DLC Genesis was announced. At that time, a season pass was released that seemingly encouraged many players to return or make new purchases.
However, it must be said that ARK has been very consistent and strong in player numbers since its release. Additionally, users of consoles PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch are not included.
What do the Steam reviews say? In addition to the high player numbers, the reviews on Steam are also impressive. From November 1st to January 22nd at 6:00 PM, 32,298 reviews were submitted. 29,442 (91%) of them were positive.
Almost all areas of the game are praised, whether graphics, content, or gameplay. For example, the user Sirius summarizes:
ARK: Survival Evolved is truly an exceptionally good and very fair and customer-friendly game for its scope. The gameplay works great and integrates the dinosaurs meaningfully and motivatingly into the survival action-adventure genre. The graphics are – even after four years – still impressive and the scope is simply insane.
In my opinion, ARK is one of the best survival games currently on the market. With its unique setting and successful gameplay, it competes easily – in my opinion – with genre veterans like State of Decay, 7 Days To Die, Rust, No Man’s Sky, The Forest, or Raft, all of which I also had a lot of fun with.
What is being criticized? The official servers of the game are criticized for apparently running significantly worse than privately hosted ones. There are also said to be old bugs in the game that have not been fixed for years.
ARK also suffers somewhat from the reputation of being “unfinished” because it was originally released with missing content, performance issues, and significant localization gaps. However, this is no longer the case in 2020.
DLC Genesis Is Waiting
What is happening with the new expansion? Originally, the players of ARK did not expect a new expansion, but instead ARK 2 as a completely new game. In July, the MMO surprised everyone with the announcement of Genesis.
The new expansion was supposed to be released in two parts:
- The first half of Genesis in December 2019
- The second half in the second half of 2020
This plan has now changed:
- The first update is set to be released on February 25, 2020
- The second part is now announced for Winter 2020
What will Genesis bring? The new expansion is set to bring the following content:
- A new volcano region
- A new story
- At least 3 new creatures, including a giant turtle on which you can build a fortress
- The first character in ARK that can speak
Currently, it is not known how far the developments on ARK 2 are and whether it will even be released.
The studio is also working on the pirate MMO Atlas. Here too, the launch was very rocky, but now this MMO is gaining more and more players.
Atlas was only released for Xbox in October 2019, along with a crossplay feature:
