Virtual Realms

Correct. Just like in ARK official servers are by necessity the most restrictive type of game play available. This causes problems that are easily eliminated when you have the capability of tailoring a server to your own tastes, and can monitor the individual server easily to eliminate any abuse your chosen looser rules set might otherwise allow. I'm fairly certain we will see the same player demographics in Atlas that we have seen in ARK. Where the VAST majority of players are on unofficial servers, and official servers are the domain of the extremely competitive or those seeking to leverage the access to the network of official players to their advantage (market/trading). I doubt you will ever find a path forward for either game that will draw more players to the official servers than the unofficial ones due to the inherently more restrictive gameplay necessary on official servers. Hopefully the way you have phrased this means that you realize that "the way the developers wanted it to be experienced" is any way you like. That's why you have the option to play official or custom tuned unofficial servers... and why mod support is so actively encouraged. Again, official gameplay is only a relatively small portion of the game experience available, and this is by design. Incidentally, while a subscription model may be a bit problematic I'll admit that it is also true that the healthiest unofficial communities I have seen in either game are those that spring up around servers administered by YouTube channels or Twitch Streamers. Both of which require a small monthly fee to join. So I can definitely see an argument being made for a subscription model of some type, but then again I can also see a case being made for eliminating the tremendous expense of maintaining official servers at all and relying on players to host their own... as other successful titles have done.

I get where you are coming from, but so far Atlas has one other thing in common with ARK. Official server gameplay has a lot of issues that crop up, however private server gameplay is surprisingly stable and rarely has any serious issues. Of course Atlas is still very rough around the edges compared to ARK, but the same symptomatology seems to be in effect. Folks on private servers are having a vastly smoother (and more enjoyable) game experience than those on official servers. That's why when I see someone in ARK talking about constant game breaking bugs, 99 times out of 100 it's someone that only players on official servers. LOL, and directly supporting the point you made above, that person also usually has several thousand hours of game time in. So again, yeah, I get where you are coming from.

Yeah I'm kind of expecting things to end up similar to ARK in this regard. Hyper-competitive gameplay with most people joining large groups on the official servers, and smaller (also friendlier) groups operating on private servers... although some of these private servers have the potential to get a pretty large population on them.

I'm not sure what their current situation is for forum moderation, but yes turning in a ticket is the correct course of action. Typically threads like this are closed for naming and shaming, so most likely your request to close it will be honored. https://www.playatlas.com/index.php?/support-tickets/