Hytale’s early access launch has rumbled on this week without too many mass casualties so far – welcome news for a game that just six months ago was dead in the water and still expected to be “rough and unfinished” with a potentially “bumpy” release.
In its launch memo to players, Hypixel Studio clarified that the current phase of the game includes exploration mode, tools for creative mode, modding support, combat, gateways, crafting, and of course, multiplayer support for all modes, which is why we’re paying attention to it here. In other words, you can already build your custom MMO. However, the adventure mode, deep progression, dungeons and bosses, expanded story, minigames, the restoration of the original world, and basic social features like guilds and friends lists aren’t in yet.
“In the first few months, we intend to deliver updates quickly and frequently, as there is still a large backlog of obvious construction sites we need to tackle before we can move into larger, more bespoke updates and patch cadences,” Hypixel writes. “The work on the official minigames will begin in the coming months, enabling us to create new systems and features that expand gameplay and provide wider access to 3rd-party servers. As a side note, we already have prototypes of social features, such as friend lists and proximity voice chat, in development.”
Incidentally, if you’re a player hoping to make some serious cash, you should stay on the hunt for the really nasty bugs: Hypixel is offering as much as $25,000 for various types of serious exploits. Unfortunately, the Discord over the last few days has seen no shortage of reports of more mundane issues with the game, ranging from connection problems and server issues to instability and crashing. As the game isn’t on Steam and won’t be for some time, it’s not clear how many people truly flocked to the game and how grumpy they are, save by taking the temperature in Discord (and as to that, we’d call it more frustrated than angry).
“We want to spend our time in Early Access working with the community and improving the game, rather than overindexing on negative reviews from players that aren’t as well-informed yet about what we are doing,” Hypixel’s Patrick Derbic wrote back in December in a statement that he later reworded “to clarify the misinterpretation [the devs had] seen on social media and in some news articles that suggested [Hypixel is] avoiding Steam because of negative reviews, which is false.” The new version reads thus: “We simply want the first steps of our journey to be influenced by informed players rather than large-scale first impressions from those unfamiliar with the game’s development background.”
