Wolcen: Just before Lords of Mayhem launched from Early Access last week, the percentage of positive reviews on Steam jumped to 91%. After four years of troubled development, including a drastic reduction of innovative features, the French studio behind this Diablo-like action RPG seemed to have finally found a path players liked. But the week after Wolcen's launch can only be described as a disaster: just part of the reason why Wolcen's Steam review ratio has dropped to a mere 56%. Of the 19,827 reviews Wolcen has received since launch, 9,782 have been negative.

After playing for a few hours last week, I wasn't too impressed with the state of Wolcen's launch, but things have only gotten worse for many players. The developers were forced to take the servers offline. Throughout most of the weekend, Worthen's multiplayer server remained offline. With no way to transfer characters between online and offline modes, it was impossible for people like me to play without starting over; even after the server was restored on February 16, players continued to encounter connectivity issues that made playing with friends unstable.

However, this was only the beginning of Wolcen's problems; one of the most popular threads on Subreddit spelled out a game-breaking bug involving the final stages of Wolcen's city building. After completing the storyline, players embark on a long journey to rebuild their cities. They pour money and resources into upgrading new facilities, which in turn unlocks tougher game modes and ways to upgrade their characters. However, according to hundreds of comments on Reddit, if players try to upgrade items using The Forge or access the dark market, a bug may be triggered and Wolcen will not launch properly the next time they try to play The company says."

"This dumpster fire continues to spread," says one angry commenter.

The developers have identified the problem and supposedly have a fix, but cannot currently patch Wolcen more than once a week because they have to "coordinate" with their network partners to prevent further problems. With so many bugs in Wolcen, this is not encouraging news.

Ironically, duplicating a problem seen in Diablo 2 decades ago, item and gold doubling is now one of the most common abuses in Wolcen; in the short time since Wolcen's launch, players have discovered ways to earn unlimited gold and infinite item stacks. Both types of dumps can be easily repeated, and simply splitting a stack of items in the inventory menu causes different glitches. For example, splitting a stack of two gems doubles the value of the second gem. The player can then rejoin the stacks and split them again until he has a gem that sells for millions of gold.

Similarly, Wolcen's abilities and Path of Exile-inspired passive skill trees can be easily manipulated to create character builds that go far beyond the power that should be available; VG247 has a Bleeding Edge Crit build which is my personal favorite build. With it, a character can instantly melt an absolutely formidable endgame enemy in mere seconds. There are even builds that make you straight up invincible.

Of course, being an ARPG, trying to break the game with clever character builds is half the fun, but many players are upset because Worthen simply feels unbalanced. One Redditor wrote, "I love how this ability is out of whack in every way." "A shield talent that does absurd damage; use it with Bleeding Edge. Switch all your mage skills up to level 60 to Bleeding Edge and you'll instantly get more damage."

Indeed, there is a long list of over 24 abilities and passive skills compiled by players that simply do not work. On the other hand, some players have compiled lists of bugs that have existed in Wolcen since the early alpha version over four years ago. They seem to include everything from basic stats to how magic damage is calculated. Says redditor worldssmartestpickle. 'There is something very wrong with the stats in this game.'

While some players in the community are having a good time, it's easy to see why so many are frustrated: one of Steam's top reviews says the game is "currently buggy." I played through to act 2, only to be sent back to the beginning of the game at level 25 and forced to restart." Lost all waypoints and quests. Many people say it is stable."

Though there are bugs.

While all the bugs will eventually be fixed, action RPGs are still games that ask players to dedicate dozens of hours to building a finely tuned killing machine. But the underlying math behind the combat is so unreliable that it makes no sense for your efforts to be ruined unless you follow one of the many completely broken build guides.

"The game is in a 'SHAMBLES' state," complained one player." Even if you completely ignore the server stability issues (which you shouldn't), the game is so full of game-breaking bugs that it makes 'Fallout 76' look like 'Breath of the Wild'."

That's hyperbole, but I can relate to that sentiment. Considering that Worthen spent four years collecting player feedback in Early Access, it's baffling that they could launch with so many bugs and broken features. And it's unclear how the developers intend to fix the game as the initial wave of goodwill continues to evaporate. This week's patch (release date TBD) should fix some of the more frustrating issues and dubs, but it's hard to be certain that new exploits and bugs are lurking just waiting to be discovered. If you have not yet purchased Wolcen, I strongly recommend that you stay out of it until a few updates have been made.