This is a review of DLC. Therefore, the rating reflects how well it works with the game it was made for, not as a standalone. A DLC 10 is not the same as a game's 10. Just so we're clear.
Ark's contention with its players has been mostly well deserved, but not entirely. In particular, Ark has long been one of the poster boys for the dangers of supporting Early Access on Steam, and to some degree they've earned it. The game wallowed in Early Access for years without showing any sign of losing the unbelievable amount of bugs, and before releasing did the ultimate sin of Early Access games by releasing paid DLC before its official release was even scheduled. People were obviously furious, and the reputation of Wild Card hasn't been any better since. They've released what amounts to a large-scale mod in Atlas as a full-priced game, when they finally released the official build of Ark most of the bugs were still firmly in place (and still are, for that matter), and their game has been a nightmare from an optimization standpoint. All-in-all, Wild Card have proved themselves to be irresponsible, and, on the merits of general developer expectation, tasteless. There are, however, some caveats to be said. For one, the buggyness of the game is apparently something inherit, more so the result of developer ignorance than laziness. In certain cases, such as dinosaurs's heads clipping through walls to do damage, it seems to be a lesser evil situation as, if you've ever tried to maneuver around on the back of one of these large and powerful beasts, you'd find that a lot of its janky-ness is for better play feel rather than getting stuck on this piece of scenery or that. It isn't an all out forgiving of what they've done, but a measured understanding. Going into Ark is making an agreement that you are going to play something of a mess because the novelty of the thing is so high.
What Wild Card have done, on the flip side of things, is allow the community to contribute some to the game in a way not many developers do. This comes with the obvious polar end of things where Wild Card has notoriously ignored user complaints about some of the game's issues (which, I argue, is due more to the above inheritness of the issues at hand than outright maliciousness, but let's not digress any further). What Wild Card has done correctly is integrated community maps into the fold of psuedo-official maps, supporting official serves with the maps running and offering them as a download off of their Steam page. The first of these was The Center, a map I never cared for but one many have liked to ascend to some sort of best of the bunch status. It's main competitors are The Island, the original map that feels tuned to a very particular type of play, and to the second community map to find itself accepted by the buggy overlords: Ragnarock.
Ragnarock has been described in a few different ways: the perfect map, the all-in-one, and, my favorite, the retirement map. Ragnarock did a few things that would come to define what a lot of community maps would do later. It combined elements from multiple maps into one in a way that none of the Wild Card maps ever seem interested in doing. It created multiple pockets for resources in a way that you could find most of them in multiple places, allowing you to stick to your quarter or so of the map if you so desired, and let the other chunks have their own people, allowing for more interesting borders. It has one of - if not the - most diverse amount of biomes, structures, and attention to detail. In particular is that second bit, as Ragnarock has some of the most robust structures you can find on any of the many available maps.
Ragnarock's status as a retirement map comes from a few reasons. For one, it is most popularly considered the largest by a considerable margin (there is some minor debate about this fact as several of the maps, such as Aberration, contain an extreme amount of verticality, making the official measurement difficult; the absolute fact is that Ragnarock is by far the widest). The map also has virtually no bosses to speak of. There are mini bosses here and there, such as the Death Worm and, obviously, the Titanosaur or Gigantasaur, but there are no summonable bosses on the map. Therefore, there is no real end to the map, and it can carry on as a sort of living space for whoever wants to play on it. The varying locales also help it gain the title, as most of every type of place you could want to visit is here. And with the addition of wyverns, the map has enough to play with that you really don't need much else. It is, most succinctly, an easy map to play around on without the stresses of looking for resources, making multiple outposts, or fighting over certain base placement as it is either on a choke point or a valuable resource that you can get very few other places (the northern surface oil on The Island comes to mind, being one of the easiest places to get the resource so long as you have the means, which are plenty attainable in the first third of a run).
Ragnarock's continued love years after its release, however, is most definitely due to its considered and measured design. The map oozes with personality and craftsmanship, with finely sculpted mountains, vein-like rivers, and rolling green hills. It has rare wild plants, such as wild rock carrots, that are usually not found outside of seed form for your own farm. Ragnarock wants you to sit awhile and take in the sights, and benefits greatly from traversal on foot. Finding surprises as small as the dinosaur bones from A New Hope in the desert to as big as the swamp castle with its infested first floor full of spiders and bats. The river palace, in particular, resting between two water falls near the center of the map, next to the southern most wyvern spawns, has always amazed me every time I visit, and I always mean to build a base there but never do. And the reason I don't is because of how beautiful the wilder parts of the map are. Being able to sculpt those desert steppes, or to turn that bridge across the mountains into a makeshift outpost for visiting the spinosaurus ravine, is a thrill I have only really felt on Valguero, and not to such a degree. There are oodles to explore on Ragnarock, enough to fill over a hundred hours on it alone.
Ragnarock does have its issues, however. The fact it has no end means that any run on the map always peters out rather than feeling concluded, leaving a somewhat tired taste in your mouth. The abundant resources, likewise, make climbing the tech tree just a little too easy, depending on how dense the server you are playing on is (or if you are playing solo or with a couple of friends). Simply put, your big end game push is likely to get wyverns, a luxury that feels somewhat windless when the utility of such a strong creature is so minimal. You could ascend or upload your tames and self to another map, using Ragnarock as a stop-gap or as a starting place, and I would say that's about its best use. You could also use it as your last resting place, where you take all the other tames from all the other maps and place them to live out comfortably, your home ranch. But that isn't overtly appealing, in and of itself.
Ragnarock is a great map, one with a lot of heart and a lot of fun places to explore, but it is one that is left without the bite that other maps have, because it cannot be conquered. It lies limply, ready for your casual or objective-less run and complies as you need it, but when you are playing a game about struggle, about resourcefulness in surviving a wild and hostile world, this feels like a curse more than a blessing. It may not look like a curse, it may look like the chill escapade you may have envisioned when you bought the game all those years ago, but that ideal image is that of someone who has forgotten what games are about, and that is challenge and adversity. It's great, don't let me tell you otherwise, but its greatness is in its subtly, not in its participation in the game. It feels like it is here to be admired, not necessarily played. It will always be the map I show newcomers because it allows you to really feel the wild air without being suffocated by it, but it's a map much like your childhood home. It's there for you to move on.
8.0
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