Speculation:
Considering that these specific websites persist, I’m thinking this could mean that something is in the works behinds the scenes, likely regarding an upcoming utility of the Atlas Passes. (as I think it would make sense during production to shut down websites that were no longer going to be used in a final season.)
I’m going to keep expectations at bay, but it’s plausible that Waking Titan will return in some fashion after Beyond launches. Likely with the community events, as datamining somewhat indicated when NEXT launched. In fact, if this were the case, A&S may not even be involved anymore. So the termination of these sites could also be indicative of migration to HG servers.
http://www.myriad-70.com/ has gone, too. It looks like you accessed it just as they were shutting it down.
For me, the only parts left are the ones that were officially taken over by Hello Games - i.e. the CSD recruitment site (http://csd.atlas-65.com/), and this one.
Looks to me as if Hello Games and Alice and Smith have no immediate future together. Don’t expect any more ARG.
I’m getting the same from results from Myriad. Don’t forget about Atlas Foundation. It’s still “up” but it’s behaving diferently. I haven’t checked it out for a while so I don’t know if it’s anything new.
Interesting. Accessibility seems to be varied by a bunch of variables. One seems to be IP-location. I used a VPN server in the Netherlands, and I got this:
One (the most likely) is that Hello Games and Alice and Smith have decided they won’t go forward with any further ARG content - so Alice and Smith are shutting the thing down. After all, it costs them money to keep the sites running.
OR
(Not likely at all) They’re clearing the decks for something completely new. Given that Beyond has already been announced, and is being actively promoted, I don’t really see what value another ARG session would add… but who knows?
imo what’s more likely is what I was blabbering about in the OP.
So a season of community events that utilize Atlas Pass designations and the CSD website. Inviting new players to sign up and receive updates: A more formulated system. Perhaps with some new story stuff.
At this point, I doubt Waking Titan will return as we remember it. Sean said it himself, there are so many new people playing that it’s best for them to cater to those people. New players won’t feel invested in an ARG, unless it were with entirely new content or pertained more-so to something they are familiar with; community events.
The trouble with that is that most of the people who got Atlas passes no longer play the game (if they ever did). And an awful lot of the people who do play the game don’t have Atlas passes.
I know Alice and Smith said there was supposed to be a function for the Atlas passes - but I think that fell by the wayside. Alice and Smith’s plans are very flexible - they change to meet the demands of the ARG. In any case, I don’t think Alice and Smith ever had any real influence over No Man’s Sky. The game and the ARG were always two different things.
Nor did they ever explain what happened to the thousands of passes analysis of the serial numbers suggested should have been sent out.
Either huge numbers of people, all of them within closely defined blocks of serial numbers, failed to report receiving their passes - or Alice and Smith didn’t send the passes out in the first place.
Whichever way you count it, the number of passes that were promised weren’t even nearly accounted for.
Domain names can be fairly cheap so my first thought was that the domain lease just hasn’t ran out and nobody has kept up with or deleted the site files so it’s just getting left in the dust. According to whois the myriad won’t expire for another year but was updated this year.
I still think it’s just Alice & Smith cleaning up after a successful campaign.
They’ve done their job. The customer doesn’t want any more involvement.
It looks to me very much like Beyond will be the end of major improvements to No Man’s Sky. I think the team may still contribute minor updates, but as a piece of work, I think that with Beyond, Sean Murray considers NMS finished.
The team are working on something else. A big, new, project. We haven’t been told what it is
Whois data is required to be kept updated and is done annually, so thats not surprising. Sites will just sit there until the domain expires or the server gets updated. If its the latter you’ll just get an error page. Sites tend to fade into the proverbial inter-night .
