Throne

I agree, this is absolutely what we need at this point....FO76 was such a "disappointment" considering the fact that it wasn't really anything related to an MMO. The above video is fairly informative at the beginning, but get's really unreasonable in his critiques of ARK. He really lacks perspective, and this is likely a generational issue. Being able to compare MMO's back to their infancy gives many CotP members a bit of an edge when it comes to appreciation of good work.

Here is a great article on the game.... https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/12/11/kenshi-review/#more-622391

From the sister studio of Wildcard, makers of ARK: Survival Evolved... ATLAS: The ultimate survival MMO of unprecedented scale with 40,000+ simultaneous players in the same world. Join an endless adventure of piracy & sailing, exploration & combat, roleplaying & progression, settlement & civilization-building, in one of the largest game worlds ever! Explore, Build, Conquer! https://store.steampowered.com/app/834910/ATLAS/ Early access, Thursday, December 13th (Update: delayed release to December 19th)

It is generally a rarity that finds a single player game a feature of CotP articles, however, over recent months this game has entered my personal top five games of all-time and has passed my hourly steam totals for Mount & Blade, Fallout 4 and Skyrim in the process. What the....yeah, I know. So many titles over the years have claimed that it allows its players to "win" the game "their way" in an "open sandbox" environment. Well, we cannot get the time back that we spent realizing that those developers were still significantly limited in the scope of what any individual's personal definition of in-game "freedom" actually means. For me, M&B and SWG came close. Unfortunately, both those games (or their EMU reboot) are either approaching or have surpassed the ten year mark of their seemingly eternal impending latest release. Enter Kenshi. Freedom is a fun word in Kenshi...yes, you have the freedom to stay solo, group up with a squad, make a vegetable farm, join a faction, enslave a faction, slay the champion, be the richest hermit, recruit an army of robots or build the great city....blah blah, boring. Now, the freedom to fail in the most unique form possible...that is the true gem in this game. I will give you just the one example: My squad is epic, I will tame the badlands and establish a civilized trading outpost...plan = awesome. Headed for the abandoned fishing outpost. Acid rain, not fun...put up tent, survived. Reached fishing village, it is not a fishing village. Really freaky "skin" people pour out of all the village buildings. We put up a good fight but were overwhelmed. One by one, my squad members were....stolen. Knocked out, picked up and taken to some of the village huts. What is going on here? Then the screams. Agonizing screams from my captured squad members. No idea. I am the last one to go down. KO'd, picked up, taken to a nearby hut.... I died from blood loss.....after I was put into a grinder that peeled my skin off. https://store.steampowered.com/app/233860/Kenshi/ WHAT IS KENSHI? Kenshi is a single player sandbox PC game set in a vast and atmospheric ‘Sword-Punk’ style open world. With a mix of RPG elements, squad-based control and city-building features, gameplay is completely free-roaming and open: enjoy the freedom and potential to do whatever you want. Set in an unrelenting world of bloodthirsty cannibals, starving bandits, brutal slavers and wild beasts, survival alone is a grueling struggle… You are not the chosen one. You’re not great and powerful. You don’t have more ‘hitpoints’ than everyone else. You are not the center of the universe, and you are not special. Unless you work for it. Character Customization Edit your characters, build up their strengths and watch them endure and grow. Train Your Skills in Robotics, Thievery, Engineering, Medicine, Weapon Smithing and more! Squad-Based Control Play with one character or control a whole team; an army, even. Combat is Real-Time Strategy style with a choice of ranged and melee fighting styles Build Your Base Create and run your own city, manage an empire or simply wander the lands as a lone drifter. Research upgrades such as industry tech, weaponry crafting and trade goods Wounds Affect Gameplay Complex medical system where injured characters limp, crawl, bleed to death or pass out from starvation. Stem blood loss to avoid predators and replace lost limbs with robotic prosthetics Open-ended Gameplay An original sandbox world. Lay siege as a warlord or make your riches as a trader… There are endless game style possibilities and the world will never stop moving Train hard There is no level-scaling, the world does not level up along with you. At the start of the game almost everyone will be stronger than you and you’ll have to use your cunning to survive Survive Escape capture from deadly slavers & cannibal prisons, rescue your squad mates from grisly death and get them all home alive Start A Faction Keep to yourself, form an alliance or oppose other factions and territories of the world… good or bad https://lofigames.com/road-map/

The ARK: Extinction map has been added to Drayvn's Server Cluster. The Goal: Link multiple maps on one server so that players can truly enjoy everything the game offers. You can live on the Island and still explore the dungeons on Extinction while using the dragon you got from scorched and the spelunking tools you got from Aberration. Note: This is a private server cluster created by Drayvn and is open to COTP members who are able to conduct themselves in a mature manner. Note II: These servers are not modded in order to provide some difficulty to those who can handle it. Maps currently in cluster: The Island Scorched Earth Aberration Extinction Server Names: Pheah Islands Pheah Scorched Pheah Aberration Pheah Extinction Forum Group Link:

Current ARK Official Server Network Servers Version: v287.110 Current Version: v287.110 Managarmr Improved Managarmr's ice breath accuracy Buffed Managarmr stamina regen slightly Managarmr babies can now be trained to behave better Managarmr babies will no longer lose patience 100% of the time when following Velonasaur Velonasaur will no longer hit the area underneath large dinosaurs Velonasaur head whip should no longer harvest bodies Fixed issue with spines not always appearing on non authoritative clients Velonasaur head whip no longer shoots through walls Fixed Velonasaur spines shooting through shields Velonasaur now grounds flyers slightly faster Corrupt Dinos Corrupted Wyverns will despawn if they get too far from a completed Element Vein or Orbital Supply Drop Fade out added to Corrupt dinos when teleporting Corrupt Dinos will de-prioritize flier targets, or targets based on fliers Corrupt Dinos now deal more damage to Tek Shields Titans Titans despawn timer checks only regard players within the arena Potential fix for increasing timer after long cooldown scenarios Increased starvation time for Titans (~30m to just over an hour) Consuming Kibble will no longer increase food for Titans Desert Titan Prevented flocks from being able to hit through buildings/terrain Flocks will now dismount riders during the boss fight Forest Titan Fix for Forest Titan hitting things through ground terrain Forest Titan arena wyverns now take damage from Forest Titans Trees will now be cleaned up after Forest Titan is despawned Crashes Fix for crash caused by garbage collected replicated properties Fix server crash when running DumpDinoStats cheat as a spectator Fixed server crash related to Forest Titan and damage numbers Mek Fix for Mek occasionally consuming 1x element when not refueling Improved accuracy of the Mek sword swing when the server is running at less than 10 fps Prevented the Q button from allowing spyglass use while riding the Mek Enforcers Reduced damage taken from corrupted dinos by 60% Connection Reduced disconnects Localization Updated localization strings from CrowdIn CryoPod Cryo freezing is now reported in tribe log Snow Owl Snow Owl is now much better at actually hitting things with their melee attacks Gasbags Gasbags is now much better at actually hitting things with their melee attacks Allowed rider to fish from Gasbags Element Vein Fixed replication issue with secondary Element Vein colors Orbital Supply Drops Supply Crate shields take damage from projectiles/other damage sources again Delivery Crate Engrams no longer count towards delivery crate weight Scout When controlling a Scout, any voice chat comes from the Scout rather than the player controlling the Scout. Maps Non-crater forest Redwoods will no longer take damage and fall Gacha Fixed for Gacha sadness not resetting in SP Fixed for dummy items getting left in Gacha inventory Robots Set Gnashed attack to not affect robots (allo bleed attack) Extinction Disabled flyers in Forest Titan artifact cave

Fallout 76 is live right now. It wasn’t supposed to go live until midnight last night but it’s arrived early so a few of us started our journey through Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic MMORPG yesterday. So far, it is playing more like a Fallout 4 co-op with a new ((much larger) map than the pvp mayhem some were expecting. I did run into a few brave souls who wanted to tangle early on, but not much came of it as there are protocols that keep open pvp from being too deadly until after you reach level 5. I crashed twice in 10 hours, and my 4 yr old system held up nicely on ultra graphics (I7 - RX 480 - 32GB Ram). The base building is unique and interesting. Pieces snap much more smoothly than I remember in FO4. If you find a unique plan (blueprint) like a crafting station or furniture, you can help your team out by building it for them on their camp (base) and they'll get to keep it, even if they move their base around. The S.P.E.C.I.A.L system has been revamped with cards you can use to customize your characters perks and abilities, e.g. Guild Wars. I didn't see it as a minus or plus, just something new to figure out and maximize for the way I play the game. The difficulty was typical of Fallout games, where it can be a challenge for moderate gamers and daunting for casual gamers new to the Fallout franchise. Good times are always best shared, and this game is no exception....running around with a team is much more enjoyable, however the game does not diminish whatsoever when it comes to making progress solo. So far, it has my endorsement. Join us in discord https://discord.gg/ar8NGD or on the forums

CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz or AMD FX-8320. Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 2GB or AMD Radeon R9 380. RAM: 8GB. Windows: Win 7, 8, 8.1, and 10 64 BIT. DirectX: Dx 11. HDD space: 50 GB.

FYI, we will definitely be playing the PC version to start out.....Bethesda says they have no current plans for cross-platform at release.

As of right now, CotP will officially be full PC at release....however, if someone else wants to get a group going on Xbox or PS4, I'm all for it. Bethesda has already said they have no plans for cross platform at release.

Fallout 76's full release date was announced at Bethesda's E3 conference, and it's coming this year on November 14th, 2018 on PC Now, please feel free to rewind your gaming memory to June, 2015... ARK: Survival Evolved's early release showed up on Steam, and surprised the heck out of most CotP members, including myself. Despite the server stability and networking issues, the game was quite a hit with CotP members and certainly made a lasting impact on this community. While Fallout 76 is not sneaking up on anyone who doesn't live under a rock, I am personally hoping for another CotP adventure filled with good times akin to our experience in the early days of ARK's early release. I hope to meet plenty of CotP gamers who I haven't had the opportunity to game with in the past, and potentially add a few new names to my eternal (short) list of people I generally pretend to like. Similar to ARK, I also expect we will have enough participation to garner some internal competition....(hopefully a change from the standard Throne's team vs Damis' team we generally end up in). We do not have any plans for an official CotP group in the current BETA, however, as always, we will rely on our established team of early testers to give us a head start on how the game plays and where the early focus needs to be. The group forum is up and open to whomever would like to join in on the discussions and plans. General information:

Keeper's assigned and approved, draft order set.....ready for draft day.