Fans of creature-collecting titles will have a new adventure when Palworld releases on Friday, January 19th, 2024. The game boasts a wide range of content on its Steam description outside of just being ‘Pokémon with Guns’. This creature collecting, open-world, dungeon-crawling, multiplayer experience has players catching all sorts of ‘Pals’.
With so many adventures on the horizon, players may be wondering if multiplayer is part of Palworld‘s core development. Can players host a co-op session? What’s the party size? And most importantly, if the game does support larger capacity servers, does it give players the option to host a private server? Thankfully, the developers at Pocketpair have released a short Q&A on their Discord as well as on Steam that answers these questions
Related: All Pokemon Type Locations in Pokemon Go
Are There Private Servers In Palworld?
Yes, Palworld will support both public and private servers.
Or, at least that’s what the developers are promising in their announcement post in the Pocketpair Discord and on Steam. This means that a group of friends can nominate a player to ‘host’ the server and the rest of them (up to 32 people max, at least at launch) will be able to join that private server and play as long as the host keeps the server active.
Private servers also come with the downside of relying on the host’s availability to play the game. After all, there’s almost nothing more disappointing than hopping onto a game to play with a group of friends, only to find that the server isn’t online and the host is unavailable for some reason. Despite this, a private server tends to be the preferable option, as opposed to joining a public server, with a dedicated server being the best possible option overall.
Now the specific details of these private servers, such as how the game state is saved or what actual control the host has over the server, are still unclear. However, if it works like private servers in other popular survival games such as Rust or 7 Days to Die will be a reliable system. It’s also worth mentioning that the developers at Pocketpair have also stated there will be public servers available alongside private ones, and hosting a co-op session with up to four friends is a whole different process than hosting a private server.
Remember that there’s a difference between a dedicated server and a private server. Dedicated servers offer a more stable experience and more control on average while private servers are a bit more accessible but a bit less reliable.
What Is Pocketpair’s Experience With Private Servers?
Pocketpair has has a game with both co-op multiplayer and private servers before, and that game was Craftopia. While there was a lot to like about this game and its ability to host private servers, there was a long period of time when the experience was less than optimal. These issues were addressed in future updates and patches, but not all of them were fixed, and these issues are still something people should be aware of before diving headfirst into Palworld.
Issues included broken access to ‘maps’ or ‘biomes’, rubber-banding and lag, low overall player capacity, and connection issues through the Steam overlay to name a few hurdles. This doesn’t necessarily indicate what the user experience for Palworld will be, but it is worth keeping in mind before going all in and dropping the $29.99 to purchase Palworld to host a private server on day one. This is why it’s great that the game will be on Xbox Game Pass, as it will be a good way to try the game and see how well the multiplayer works on launch.
