Rings of Elysium, or
ROE, as its being passed around the gaming world, is the new free-to-play Battle Royale shooter from mega tech company,
Tencent Games, who are best known for in the West as the publishers of
PUBG Mobile, but have countless ties to many Chinese Region specific games.
The game was released as free-to-play Early Access to North America and Japan regions on September 19th (20th in JP) and has seen an average of 26K Players over the course of these nearly two weeks, reaching a peak of over 50K as well (
via Steamcharts). The game has been in an Open Beta/Early Access in Taiwan since February 2018, but the two regions that are missing most are EU and CN. When these regions unlock, it will certainly boost the player base well over its current peak and of course with hopes of improving client and server side performance before that, Tencent hopes to keep their playerbase as well. No real word on if the game will be released in China via another platform, so that could have a bearing on its steamchart numbers in the future, more information on that at a later date as its found out.
Ring of Elysium pits up to 100 players (via Solo, Duo, or Squads of Four) to battle it out on a snowy tundra. The key differences in this game from other BR titles, are that players place their spawn marker on a map prior to "dropping in," so the players in the current round see where everybody is spawning. The other main difference is there are three "classes" players can choose from: one offers a Glider which allows players to hang-glide from high points, another allows players to mountain climb and/or use zip lines, and the last one gives players a snowboard for movement around the slopes, SSX tricky style.
Only time will tell to see if this one can keep up with the juggernauts that are
PUBG and
Fortnite.
Ring of Elysiuim is available now for certain regions. Stay tuned for more region unlocks, and more updates to the game!