Over 300,000 eager players rushed to play Last Epoch when it launched last week, and the servers quickly collapsed under the load. The widespread connection issues that followed led to a series of negative Steam reviews, downgrading the rating from “mostly positive” to “mixed.”
The worst of these problems now appear to be over, but early reactions are still permanently visible on the game's Steam page. In An entry Looking back on yesterday's launch, game director Judd Cobler seems confident that the team can change the mood.
“While we continue to receive high praise for the game itself, Steam reviews and sentiment took a severe hit due to the initial turmoil on online services at launch,” Cobler wrote. “We are committed to regaining that trust by improving our backend infrastructure for this level of load and delivering a great online gaming experience.”
“We are committed to regaining that trust by improving our backend infrastructure for this level of load and delivering a great online gaming experience.”
Judd Cobler, director of Last Epoch
Cobler assured fans that “Last Epoch is here to stay” and that they can “expect updates.” [us] A patch is being released this week that aims to fix bugs and make “quality of life improvements.” “In addition to weekly patches, the team will actively monitor services and apply hotfixes as necessary,” he said.
Last Epoch's first major update, Patch 1.1, will address community feedback – which Cobler says is a “strong focus” for the team – and add “climactic” boss fights to the endgame. Future patches will also give players more options with Monoliths, the game's high-level dungeons with increasing difficulty, item variety, boss encounters, class switching, and campaign quests.
You can actually see the negative reviews on Steam's graph decreasing as Last Epoch's servers have stabilized over the last few days. I still see a handful of people giving it a thumbs down because of the disconnects they experienced, but many reviews praise the game for its intricate skill trees and satisfying combat. PC Gamer's Fraser Brown argued that Last Epoch was exactly what he wanted from Diablo 4, although our reviewer Jody Macgregor was less enthusiastic in awarding it a 60% score. Regardless, Last Epoch certainly counts as one of the four breakout games we've already seen on PC in 2024.
With currently around 186,000 concurrent players, I would consider it a successful launch despite the initial turmoil. Last Epoch consistently ranks among the five most played games on Steam and doesn't seem to be forgotten any time soon.
