Seemingly out of nowhere, Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem saw a meteoric rise on Steam charts moments after leaving Early Access. Wolcen, which started life as a Kickstarted project named Umbra, has been in Early Access since March 2016. Over four years of development went into this isometric action RPG, which many thought would never see full release. Wolcen went from averaging less than 5,000 concurrent players to breaking into Steam’s top ten with over 62,000 at launch. And that was on a Thursday; numbers are likely going to get higher today and over the weekend. It was such a massive surge, in fact, the game’s developer spent the night expanding server capacity to cope with demand. Those who jumped in online were faced with a number of server-related problems that kept many from playing. Wolcen can be played offline, but as loot-driven ARPGs often do, it is best played with friends.
This success also came with massive exposure on Twitch, as variety and ARPG streamers alike jumped on, causing viewer numbers to reach nearly 108,000 concurrent at their peak. The 1.0 release includes a fully-voiced, three-act story campaign with a post-campaign endgame mode and two difficulty options. “These last few weeks, we received support and interest we’ve never seen for our game before,” the developer wrote in a launch blog post. “It added a lot of pressure on our shoulders to see such big names and so many people taking an interest in our game, but it also made us very proud of what we have accomplished.” You can check out Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem on Steam yourself.
