It took Wayfinder over a week to get to a playable state and the game is actually stable now (sort of). Wayfinder rolled out into early access on 17 August and it was not pretty. While server hiccups are normal for online MMO-like games, Wayfinder likely had one of the worst launches we have seen in gaming.
Not only did the game take 2-3 hours to log in due to the long queues but even when you got into the game, the constant crashes and server disconnection errors meant you barely got ten minutes to enjoy the game.
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The issue continued for days into the game’s launch. Even a week later, users complained about the long queue times that were roughly 20-30k users. These queues would take hours of waiting.
Aside from that long wait time, there were other hiccups involved too. For example, on PS5 if your controller went off during the queue, it would kick you out of it. Some users also reported that when getting to the front of the queue, the game would just hang and eventually freeze.
That all seems like water under the bridge now thanks to the increased server capacity added to Wayfinder in recent days. On Thursday I attempted to log in hoping the queue would be empty in the early hours of the morning. To my surprise, it was only sitting on about 300 people.
I thought I was just lucky but as the days followed, this queue number was consistent. Over the past weekend, it was even quicker with less than one hundred users in the line. The wait time went from five minutes last week to a few seconds yesterday.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1171690/Wayfinder/
Sure, Wayfinder is still struggling with a few server issues while in-game. You would often get kicked after a dungeon, the game world would also freeze and boot you out. However, the fact that Wayfinder is now playable is an achievement on its own.
After spending a few days with the game and upgrading my Founder’s Pack to the second-highest tier (the final tier is just blind robbery), I have enjoyed it. The game follows a familiar Darksiders combat approach and has a cool gear system.
While things start off slow, the game opens up new customization tools to slowly make your character and weapon more powerful. High-level bosses and drop Echo abilities that add depth to the combat. Not to mention that the game’s weapon crafting system isn’t as much of a grind as I expected for a soon-to-be-free-to-play game.
I especially enjoy how Wayfinder can go from a hack-and-slash brawler to a shooting game by simply equipping a gun instead of an axe. It completely changes the way you play the game.
Wayfinder is still in very early access. Some mechanics are completely missing and some don’t work at all. However, now that most of the server issues are resolved, I am looking forward to where it goes from here. You can grab the game on PS5 and PS4 here and Steam here. Don’t be scared, you’ll get to play it this time.
