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The End of Ark SE


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1 hour ago, lindybellerue said:

Is ARK 1 going to remain when ARK 2 starts? Or will ARK 1 become obsolete or even deleted? All this talk of the "end of ARK" with Genesis 2 makes me suspicious about the viability of ARK 1 continuing after ARK 2 launches.

I don't know how long WildCard will keep ARK 1 going for, but I believe they won't turn off the ARK 1 servers when ARK 2 launches.  I think Genesis 2, more than anything, heralds a real ending to the ARK 1 storyline.  If not an ending, well at least a resolution on some unexplained story/lore points.

If ARK 1 is to be deleted, it will be planned and discussed, and the community will know far in advance, I feel.  But think:  Even when official servers are shuttered, who's to say that people won't still be running unofficials?  WildCard might hit a point where they stop providing updates for ARK 1 and consider it ""complete"", but that doesn't mean unofficials will go offline even when all official servers are gone.

Just some food for thought.

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Think of it from a business standpoint.

Businesses only do things as long as there's a current or impending profit. Unless they start selling skins or other in-game purchases, there's not much reason to maintain (or at least continue to bugfix or perform any other real work) on Ark 1. According to what they have released. It's done. The story is over. No more expansions, therefor no more revenue from it. Maybe they have other plans.

I suspect most, if not all, of the Legacy servers will be taken and used for Gen 2. I would think some Ark 1 servers will be taken for Ark 2. Just wild guesses on my part.

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Here it goes again. I am one of the first players who started on primitive . As the kept closing servers down I would move to the server that was kept open. When they closed all primitive I lost everything. Had to start as a newbie. All the time I spent on ARK was lost . I was talked into starting over. Lol wow I am not buying ARK 2 the devs do not care. ESO is as old as ARK and not kicking their older players. It’s called DLCs and updates also offer stuff to buy. I’m over it. When my server closes my tribe is hanging it up. I have 4 gig babies waiting for me. Forget it. I’m not going to waist my time.

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6 hours ago, Joebl0w13 said:

Think of it from a business standpoint.

Businesses only do things as long as there's a current or impending profit. Unless they start selling skins or other in-game purchases, there's not much reason to maintain (or at least continue to bugfix or perform any other real work) on Ark 1. According to what they have released. It's done. The story is over. No more expansions, therefor no more revenue from it. Maybe they have other plans.

I suspect most, if not all, of the Legacy servers will be taken and used for Gen 2. I would think some Ark 1 servers will be taken for Ark 2. Just wild guesses on my part.

Exactly. And from a business point, one reason you might not shut down the whole official network is to cater to the die hard fans who just don't want to go to ark 2, but might at some point down the road. Shutting down every ark 1 server all in one blow would likely generate a lot of animosity, and hurt profits in an indirect way, so it'd likely be a phased shut down, with some straggling ghost of a network lasting for years. Or maybe ark 2 will flop and ark 1 will be the only thing keeping wild card relevant, and if they had 30% of the old network still hanging on that'd be a place to build up from.

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8 hours ago, Joebl0w13 said:

I suspect most, if not all, of the Legacy servers will be taken and used for Gen 2. I would think some Ark 1 servers will be taken for Ark 2. Just wild guesses on my part.

I have been thinking the same thing because we have not gotten a server cull list and TBH it makes sense for them to end it now because its the last thing to cull the old servers for. I play legacy and I have been prepping myself mentally for it to happen. 

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you have the capability to run your own servers and they will of course provide you with any data from the official servers if they are ever brought down. unofficial servers will persist pretty much until their respective platform does something to break the game irrevocably.  for those worried about your investments, keep in mind you have probably gotten an insane return on investment on this game and they ultimately are going to cater to the people who want to do more than log in refresh your timers and feed crap then log off for another week or so, which is what most official pve servers turn into.  it's virtual real estate that you didn't really pay any upkeep on other than time, which you volunteered.

if they ditch their current official format just set up your own server with your friends.  honestly i've been playing since november of 2015 on an unofficial server almost exclusively other than a few few ill advised forays onto official.  although i did like the arkocalypse servers.

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  • 9 months later...

For anyone that have been playing since beta you’ll remember that when they announced beta was over they opened several new servers and converted the old beta servers to legacy. At that time they announced that for those that wished to stay on legacy you’d be able to as long as you wished but that they’d not be supporting legacy servers any longer. Long story short that wasn’t true as many had to start hopping servers as they started closing down servers and I’d not be surprised if they did that again. Hopefully though they will keep PS and Nintendo servers going since Ark 2 will not be offered anytime soon. But being wildcard won’t hold my breath.

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7 hours ago, Bulldogfrag said:

Hopefully though they will keep PS and Nintendo servers going since Ark 2 will not be offered anytime soon. But being wildcard won’t hold my breath.

While I'm not saying they will do this. You have to think about it from a business standpoint. Servers cost money. People sitting on old platforms are not generating new revenue.

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Every time I have experienced a multiplayer game go dead, its the same story. Looks good, game has 1000's of players, slowly it starts dying at non peak hours, then the cheaters come in.....it kills off the player base quick, however the devs do nothing about it and as 1000's of players whittle down to just a few hundred over the course of a month or so. You are greeted to total anarchy as a new player.
Games become seconds long with cross map kills, someone is invisible and get 100's of kills, and not a single thing is done about it because either no one is left to worry about it, or no one can be bothered about it because they are working on something else. 

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On 3/4/2022 at 4:08 AM, Bulldogfrag said:

Long story short that wasn’t true as many had to start hopping servers as they started closing down servers and I’d not be surprised if they did that again. Hopefully though they will keep PS and Nintendo servers going since Ark 2 will not be offered anytime soon. But being wildcard won’t hold my breath.

You wouldn't keep paying for a server that never gets used, why would WC?

And it's not just "being wildcard, every game with Official servers does this. They only keep as many servers running as makes sense for the size of their active player base. It's been true for as long as there have been online games.

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8 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

You wouldn't keep paying for a server that never gets used, why would WC?

And it's not just "being wildcard, every game with Official servers does this. They only keep as many servers running as makes sense for the size of their active player base. It's been true for as long as there have been online games.

As long ARK is sold they should at least guarantee a minimum ammount of time. Also, give us options to host our own game without the need of external servers. Many of us have hardware able to host private sessions with friends.
Paying for servers is a consequence of the busines model they choose.

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On 3/5/2022 at 1:09 PM, MMaas said:

As long ARK is sold they should at least guarantee a minimum ammount of time.

Agreed. But no matter what that mount of time is there will still be people who complain it isn't enough, which is why WC will have to make that decision based on what makes financial sense. Since Official servers aren't actually necessary to play ARK it would be reasonable to continue selling copies even after the Official server are shut down. Having said that, I suspect they'll continue running at least a few official servers running just so they can say that they still have them. This will be necessary because they will want to minimize criticisms about being unfriendly to consumers/gamers, since they want to cultivate as much positive popular opinion as possible to support ARK2.

How long will it take before they shut down the last ARK servers? A year? Three years? I don't know, heck WC doesn't even know yet. They will make that decision when the time comes based on a) the number of people actively playing ARK on their servers and b) whether they still think ARK supports their bigger goal of keeping ARK2 going as long as possible.

On 3/5/2022 at 1:09 PM, MMaas said:

Also, give us options to host our own game without the need of external servers.

This is a confusing statement because we already have that option, it's been part of the game all along.

On 3/5/2022 at 1:09 PM, MMaas said:

Paying for servers is a consequence of the busines model they choose.

Yes, but not in perpetuity.

The Official servers are not paid for by monthly subscriptions or microtransactions like other games, and what that means is that Official servers don't generate revenue. They are an expanse, an advertising expense. Spending money on advertising stops making sense once you stop selling a product, of if you sell so few copies that they don't bring in enough money to pay for the advertising anymore.

When you consider that only about 30% of the player base is using official servers at any given time, with about 70% of all ARK players being in unofficial or dedicated private servers (and that doesn't even count the people who only play single-player or non-dedicated server sessions with their friends) it should be obvious that as sales of ARK continue to drop they will eventually do away with Official servers.

Should they maintain official servers for some time into the future? Yes. But that doesn't mean forever, it won't even mean for as long a period of time as some people will want.

 

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On 3/5/2022 at 10:51 PM, protozz said:

mmaas here is a link u can run dedicated server u dont have to rent them info on how. https://www.technewstoday.com/how-to-make-an-ark-server/

Thanks for the information. As far as I understand you'll still need additional hardware (personal owned or rental) and it is Steam only. My issue is that there is no possibility to let friends join your play session.

3 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

This is a confusing statement because we already have that option, it's been part of the game all along.

As far as I know there is only the splitscreen on a console. Even with 2 consoles at home we cannot join each other on sepperate screens. All we found sofar was that you could host a game on a console but not while playing it yourself. In other words: You need to "sacrifice" one piece of hardware as server instead of having friends joining your session.

@protozz @Pipinghot Thanks for your response but I have the feeling that you are replying from PC perspective only. It is clear that ARK never was designed for consoles, or at best very poor ported. Still, it is sold to consoles as we speak and most console players do pay for online gaming. This is not directly to WC so the responsibility of keeping the game playable is shared with MS and Sony as well.

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3 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

Yes, but not in perpetuity.

The Official servers are not paid for by monthly subscriptions or microtransactions like other games, and what that means is that Official servers don't generate revenue. They are an expanse, an advertising expense. Spending money on advertising stops making sense once you stop selling a product, of if you sell so few copies that they don't bring in enough money to pay for the advertising anymore.

When you consider that only about 30% of the player base is using official servers at any given time, with about 70% of all ARK players being in unofficial or dedicated private servers (and that doesn't even count the people who only play single-player or non-dedicated server sessions with their friends) it should be obvious that as sales of ARK continue to drop they will eventually do away with Official servers.

Should they maintain official servers for some time into the future? Yes. But that doesn't mean forever, it won't even mean for as long a period of time as some people will want.

 

This part of you reaction seems reasonable enough from PC perspective.

 BUT:

  • On consoles you do pay monthly or annualy for online gaming. And as we speak, the consoles are giving ARK away wich means ARK is advertisement for those subscriptions. The continuation should be the lifespan of the generation on wich the game is obtained or as long as the subscription is paid for.
  • The fact that 70% of the playerbase is avoiding official is more an argument against WC policy how servers are maintained as an excuse to drop them. The biggest issue here is that this number is different for consoles.
  • There is paid DLC (as well as a very minor ammount of cosmetic MTX) so there is recent revenue.

WC choose to sell the game on consoles so it would be reasonable to expect full support for the current generation unless they would make a very clear statement about the lifespan of the game. Making it kind of free to play by giving the game away does not change that.
To me it seems the managent of WC lack a long term strategy (even a short term given the ratio development time/life span) or are not able to oversee the consequences of their choices.
Either way, they dropped the ball on proper communication. Again.

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20 hours ago, MMaas said:

This part of you reaction seems reasonable enough from PC perspective.

 BUT:

  • On consoles you do pay monthly or annualy for online gaming. And as we speak, the consoles are giving ARK away wich means ARK is advertisement for those subscriptions. The continuation should be the lifespan of the generation on wich the game is obtained or as long as the subscription is paid for.

Unless I'm mistaken, you don't pay a subscription fee to play ARK, you pay a fee for access to the library of games that are made available for your console platform, which includes lots of games, some of which come and go based on the decisions, policies and contract agreements of the console network, and sometimes the individual game provider.

 If you're getting ARK for free on a console network that you're already paying for, then there should be no assumption that ARK will be available for as long as (some) people want it to be. Anything that you get for free, in life in general, which includes gaming, should be understood to be temporary and believing anything else is nothing more than wishful thinking.

Now if I'm mistaken, and you're paying for a subscription specifically for ARK well then that's a different conversation. But I'm pretty sure that what you're describing is like subscribing to EA Play or other services for PC games - you get the games that EA decides to include in EA Play and if a game goes away then that's just how it is, you can either cancel your subscription or chose to play different games.

It would be great if WC continues to make ARK available in that package deal for "the lifespan of the generation on wich the game is obtained" but to assume that you're entitled to the game being available for that long, that you didn't pay for individually is, again, a bit of wishful thinking.

20 hours ago, MMaas said:
  • The fact that 70% of the playerbase is avoiding official is more an argument against WC policy how servers are maintained as an excuse to drop them.

That's a little bit true, but only a little bit. ARK was deliberately designed from the very beginning to be playable in many different ways, official, unofficial, single-player, private server, non-dedicated server, small clusters, large cluster, and so on. It was also deliberately designed to be highly mod-able and configurable so that people could enjoy the game in many different ways. They always intended that many or most players would be playing the game in modes other than official servers, that was part of the plan from the beginning. The day the game was released in Early Access there were already mods available, which means that WC understood and intended that people would play ARK in a variety of ways.

Each of those game modes is effectively independent. The decision to shut down servers essentially has nothing to do with how many people are playing single-player, unofficial and private-dedicated servers, it's based entirely on how many people are willing to play on, and be active on, the official servers. There's probably room for debate about what constitutes an "active server", but no matter what result that debate would arrive at the reality is that many official servers have dropped below that activity threshold at various times and that's when those servers get shut down. It's a little bit disingenuous to call that an excuse when every game that has ever hosted servers has had to make that exact same decision. Even the big name in the industry, WoW, has had periods of consolidation when they combined the populations of servers and shut some servers down. Having a low population or having an inactive population is not an excuse, it's a valid reason, and all hosted games have to make that decision at some point. No game has ever promised, nor should they, that their servers will be up for as long as every last person wants them to be up. There must be a reasonable number of active players on a server to justify keeping it running.

20 hours ago, MMaas said:

The biggest issue here is that this number is different for consoles.

  • There is paid DLC (as well as a very minor ammount of cosmetic MTX) so there is recent revenue.

Which probably means that the console server will be up for longer, or in larger numbers, than the PC servers. The business decisions for console and PC aren't going to be identical, they're going to be based on the real world results for each of those different environments.

20 hours ago, MMaas said:

WC choose to sell the game on consoles so it would be reasonable to expect full support for the current generation unless they would make a very clear statement about the lifespan of the game.

Agreed, as long as you put a meaningful definition on "current generation". One year wouldn't be long enough, 5 years would probably be too long to expect. People should have a reasonable opportunity to see all the content in the game, but there will always be some people who think they should be allowed to take as long as they want, and that's just not a realistic expectation.

20 hours ago, MMaas said:

Making it kind of free to play by giving the game away does not change that.

Yeah, it does. When you get a game as part of the package deal for subscribing to a network then the rules are different. This is the same as any other subscription model. If you subscribe to Netflix specifically because you want to watch unlimited reruns of some show that you like, and eventually that show is removed from Netflix because the contract has expired, then no amount of wishful thinking is going to obligate Netflix to make that show available for you. It's up to you to decide whether you want to cancel your subscription, keep it anyway, or go buy the DVD's or downloadable version of that show so you can personally own your own copy.

When you subscribe to a provider that has lots of different games (or movies, or books) then the simple reality is that some of them are going to go away. If you're not finished watching the series, or playing the game, it's still going to go away anyway. Either you buy your own personal copy or you understand that the service provider will add/remove games as they see fit.

20 hours ago, MMaas said:

To me it seems the managent of WC lack a long term strategy (even a short term given the ratio development time/life span) or are not able to oversee the consequences of their choices.

Possibly, but not meaningful in the context of this conversation. I mean, as far as I'm concerned ARK has been a successful game in spite of WIldCard rather than because of them. They came up with an idea that was so good is has made them over a billion dollars (with a "B") in spite of them being a bad company. You're not going to see me defending WC's corporate culture, they've done plenty of things that I've criticized as much as anyone else, but that doesn't automatically make the the bad guy in every situation. If you get a game for free as part of your subscription then it's only sensible to understand that the game may not be available for as long as you want it to be.

20 hours ago, MMaas said:

Either way, they dropped the ball on proper communication. Again.

Yeah, probably. Then again even when they do communicate properly there are plenty of people who don't pay attention to it and are still surprised.

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On 3/4/2022 at 11:35 AM, Joebl0w13 said:

While I'm not saying they will do this. You have to think about it from a business standpoint. Servers cost money. People sitting on old platforms are not generating new revenue.

And while from a business stand point while it does cost money so does losing half your player base from 2 platforms due to poor customer service. What I’m saying is better to keep some interest going in the game than to lose all to something else till your able to release on those platforms. It’s called marketing if your curious 

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5 minutes ago, Bulldogfrag said:

And while from a business stand point while it does cost money so does losing half your player base from 2 platforms due to poor customer service. What I’m saying is better to keep some interest going in the game than to lose all to something else till your able to release on those platforms. It’s called marketing if your curious 

They seem to know what they are doing. People aren't leaving this game in numbers and the people that might leave, they've already paid for the game.

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5 hours ago, Kyba91 said:

I heard that Ark will be stop... is that true ?

There has been no official announcement stating Ark 1 is ending. This is the last year Ark 1 is getting events. That said, of course the game will end at some point.

5 hours ago, Kyba91 said:

Aslo I heard that Ark 2 will be only a solo game...

Nope. WildCard said it will be a multi-player sandbox game. 

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5 hours ago, Kyba91 said:

Hi !

I heard that Ark will be stop... is that true ? Now i'm scare to loose my time on it (playing on official server xbox)

Aslo I heard that Ark 2 will be only a solo game... 

Anyone know something about that??

Thanks for anwsers.

Less heard rumors more read announcements here,twitter or discord

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1 hour ago, Thekuervito said:

Less heard rumors more read announcements here,twitter or discord

always notice the post count with absurd questions.  Lots of times it's just them trying to get post count up to access the trade forums.  

 

Official servers will start to die off soon as events are over.  There will probably be one big last splash of players during the last Winter event, after that official servers will be like ghost towns.   WC will then start to pull dead servers offline and switch them to Ark 2 alpha/beta testing servers.

 

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  • 5 weeks later...
  • Joebl0w13 changed the title to The End of Ark SE
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