Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem, a newly released ARPG with sizable scope and ambition, has been causing quite a bit of stir on Steam with people either loving or absolutely hating the experience.
Wolcen is an action roleplaying game with a brutal hack-and-slash combat system and a 3-act story much in the tradition of the classic Diablo series. The game has tons of character customization (up to level 90), crafting system and game-changing item modification, allowing players to break the rules and enhance their own playstyle.
The title has a reasonably big budget and is built on the CRYENGINE, the same software used to make games such as Ryse: Son of Rome, Kingdom Come: Deliverance, Prey, and Evolve.
When it first came out on Steam, people seemed to like the experience and many gaming YouTubers provided positive reviews of the initial build. However, the game currently sits at a very polarizing “Mixed” rating within Steam with tons of negativity coming from people playing at home.
Looks like the main issue comes with the many bugs running rampant inside the ARPG and especially its server failure preventing people from playing with their friends.
Players report messed up character progression, systems that don’t at all work as intended and even dangerous character deletion bug, causing some unfortunate Wolcen players to completely lose all their progress.
Regarding server issues - such are to be expected, especially for a medium-tier title such as Lords of Mayhem. Service SteamSpy estimates there are between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Wolcen owners out there. With so many players logging in, it is no wonder why the multiplayer functionality will break here and there - the same happened with the release of Diablo 3, a juggernaut in the genre with a budget and supporting staff much bigger than the one available to Wolcen.
Bugs aside, the content of the game itself seems to be solid and lots of people are enjoying it. It is now up to the devs from the WOLCEN Studio to patch up their title and address critical bugs in a timely fashion if they want to keep their fans for the endgame.
