The Albion Online developers have put up a news post going over the release of the game up until now to celebrate it's first official birthday.
I remember the release well, it was—not good. Lots of server issues, queuing for ages, but eventually things calmed down and the game has been going quite well since then.
In regards to how they're actually doing in terms of players, they claim that each new update has seen a steady increase in the population of the game, which is a healthy sign that it's going to be around for a good few years to come. This is great for Linux gamers, since there's hardly anything like this MMO on Linux.
They've been doing pretty great with major content updates, although a lot of it has been heavily PvP (player versus player) orientated.
Looks like they've continued to take on feedback, which is why this bit caught my attention towards the end:
Robin Henkys, in his role as Game Director, sees ample opportunity for the world of Albion to grow and develop in the coming years: "Now that the community has somewhat consolidated and we have a clear idea of which players are sticking with Albion and why, it becomes easier to develop directly for these players. You'll definitely see a push towards more and better open world play next - we‘re currently planning a massive overhaul of open-world PvE*, for example. Apart from that we‘re planning to steadily improve the game on all fronts: better accessibility for new players, improvements to existing features as well as new features for existing players."
*Emphasis ours
This has been my biggest complaint about the game, that the PvE (player versus environment—AI enemies) hasn't really been very good at all and if you're not a hardcore PvP player, it tends to be a bit of a turn-off. Pretty exciting to know they're working on something big for it!
See their post here.
Total mess. I enjoyed the beta though. Might try it again if they truly fixed PvE, but I think it's already too established as PvP. As in, that's the only way you can make any kind of decent progression. I hate to be pessimistic, but I suspect that it'll be way too little, far too late.
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