Be prepared to lose your ASA Progress.

[HeavenlyXInglex]

So I have had a concern regarding ASA and if it will follow in ASE's footsteps. 

ASE players were faced with a difficult choice when it came out of Early Access, stay on legacy servers or restart again on new servers. 

 

After looking through the discord I found the following image. 

Line 6 is what brought me to the conclusion that ASA will do exactly the same. "We'll leave Early Access once we hit content 1.0 again".

 

So like the title says, be prepared for the day they create ASA legacy servers. 

Edited October 22, 2023 by HeavenlyXInglex

[Yggdrassil]

Legacy servers were originally due to dead servers and the fact that ark changed a lot early in its lifetime, the game now has a fixed direction, everyone knows how the entire story plays out and what content there will be. There would be no need to 'reset' or close servers at the games launch out of early access.

That statement means the game will be 'released' ie. not in EA when all content has been updated, however, its not clear if that means publicly released or if that means internally after development has been completed.

[Pipinghot]

2 hours ago, Yggdrassil said:

Legacy servers were originally due to dead servers and the fact that ark changed a lot early in its lifetime, the game now has a fixed direction, everyone knows how the entire story plays out and what content there will be. There would be no need to 'reset' or close servers at the games launch out of early access.

There will be dead servers during ASA too, that's not going to be any different, it will happen eventually.

ARK will change during it's lifetime in ASA too, that's not going to be any different. Notice: "There will be new content and game play in addition to the upgrade".

It's a lovely story to assume that WC won't wipe the servers when they move from Early Access to Production, but there are good reasons to believe that they'll do it all again. They didn't "need" to reset or close the servers before, but they did it anyway.

I hope you're right, but I wouldn't count on it, this is WildCard after all.

2 hours ago, Yggdrassil said:

That statement means the game will be 'released' ie. not in EA when all content has been updated, however, its not clear if that means publicly released or if that means internally after development has been completed.

It might mean that, or it might not. There's nothing in that graphic that tells us which maps will be released during EA and which maps will be released after the game officially moves from EA to production.

We're talking about a company that charged money for Scorched Earth, while the game was still in Early Access, something that was completely unheard of at the time. Nothing should be considered off limits where WildCard is concerned. For all we know they're going to release every single map during EA, then reset all of the server when the game leaves EA and becomes official, no one has anyway of knowing what they'll do.

 

 

[HeavenlyXInglex]

2 hours ago, Pipinghot said:

There will be dead servers during ASA too, that's not going to be any different, it will happen eventually.

ARK will change during it's lifetime in ASA too, that's not going to be any different. Notice: "There will be new content and game play in addition to the upgrade".

It's a lovely story to assume that WC won't wipe the servers when they move from Early Access to Production, but there are good reasons to believe that they'll do it all again. They didn't "need" to reset or close the servers before, but they did it anyway.

I hope you're right, but I wouldn't count on it, this is WildCard after all.

It might mean that, or it might not. There's nothing in that graphic that tells us which maps will be released during EA and which maps will be released after the game officially moves from EA to production.

We're talking about a company that charged money for Scorched Earth, while the game was still in Early Access, something that was completely unheard of at the time. Nothing should be considered off limits where WildCard is concerned. For all we know they're going to release every single map during EA, then reset all of the server when the game leaves EA and becomes official, no one has anyway of knowing what they'll do.

 

 

This is my point. It's WC we are talking about here. I wouldn't put it past them to reset the servers

[Luizza]

Most of the legacy servers that were shut down were ghost towns anyway. WC put on many more servers than were eventually needed 'cos of the initial hype around the game and people naturally moving on to other games (we had weeks of waiting for hours to get online as all the servers were constantly full so WC kept adding more). There were also problems on legacy with issues to do with duping and crazy bp / dino stats that were fixed throughout early access and the new servers were seen as a fresh start without those problems.

I was on legacy and we had a choice to move to a legacy server that was staying online or to move on to a new server, the vast majority chose to move to a new server. Those who chose to stay on legacy did not have their progress wiped and were given time, if I remember correctly it was at least a couple of weeks, to move their characters and dinos over - and those servers stayed online all the way through to the end when all officials were shut down.

Tbh it was expected at the time that all servers would be on a rolling shut down with new fresh servers coming regularly, it's more shocking that some ppl ended up having to reset timers for 5+ years, and newer active players had little chance to secure a prime location.

I wouldn't worry about it. It was pretty clear to those playing at the time which servers were going to be shut down and which were still alive. The fresh start was a lot of fun and legacy players on legacy servers carried on right to the end too.

 

[acat]

Of course a wipe is possible, but i dont really see it coming, the situation is fundamentally different to what it was in ase when it left early access imo.

Anyways, i would not mind a wipe, in fact id support yearly wipes for official servers. Keeps it interesting.

[St1ckyBandit]

1 hour ago, acat said:

Of course a wipe is possible, but i dont really see it coming, the situation is fundamentally different to what it was in ase when it left early access imo.

Anyways, i would not mind a wipe, in fact id support yearly wipes for official servers. Keeps it interesting.

This.

I've come around to the idea of periodic wipes after playing a lot of Dayz and Rust.

I realize Ark is a bit different but I still think official servers would be more fun with a wipe every few months. Snow balling on a fresh character is always a good time.

[Dreadcthulhu]

Personally, I think they should go with more rolling wipes; we all know everyone wants to play on a new map when it first drops, meaning lots of servers for that map are required, but other older maps end up being empty.  It would be better to periodically shut done low population servers, with say a months notice (and use the in game messaging, not just post on website/social media), and condense down less played maps, similar to how legacy condensed down, to free up servers for the hot new map.  Losing your base is annoying, but if you have your character, best gear, and tames moved over it is not a big deal.  Maybe even stuff like better dino upload mgt, like an "upload all tames" (at least for PVE) function could be added, to make moving easier, along with longer time allowed in upload, going to say 2 weeks instead of 24 hr when server migrations are happening.

Edited October 23, 2023 by Dreadcthulhu

[HeavenlyXInglex]

You are forgetting that they stopped support for those legacy servers. And I'm sure they didn't release the newer maps on legacy either. 

Periodic wipes isn't something I can get behind. Being a PvE player, after the first wipe I'd quit playing. Same applied to MW2 the original. After I prestiged and lost everything I stopped playing. 

[wildbill]

Duh. Your digital 1s and 0s have never been safe anywhere on the internet. 

Just think of them as all temporarily existing, and get over this idea that digital content has some sort of "life". 

Go in therapy now if you need to, but give up on this idea of collecting digital assets and them being safe.

[Joebl0w13]

6 hours ago, HeavenlyXInglex said:

And I'm sure they didn't release the newer maps on legacy either

They did.

[CervantesMor]

12 hours ago, HeavenlyXInglex said:

You are forgetting that they stopped support for those legacy servers. And I'm sure they didn't release the newer maps on legacy either. 

All maps have been added to Legacy, with two to four servers open for each map (and for each platform). Officially the "Support" was limited to critical bugs, but I can guarantee that in truth the "Support" was active even in "normal" cases regarding game-related problems, obviously the support did not arrive to unlock your Dino if it was stuck on two rocks(!)... but cases of concrete problems were still examined (and in my two cases they were resolved in about 3 days).

 

12 hours ago, HeavenlyXInglex said:

Periodic wipes isn't something I can get behind. Being a PvE player, after the first wipe I'd quit playing. Same applied to MW2 the original. After I prestiged and lost everything I stopped playing

it's exactly the same for me too, which is why after trying two non-enhanced private servers (which suddenly disappeared), then an Apoc (which I didn't know about the periodic wipe), I ended up choosing a Legacy just to avoid running into other sudden closures. ..

[HeavenlyXInglex]

2 hours ago, CervantesMor said:

All maps have been added to Legacy, with two to four servers open for each map (and for each platform). Officially the "Support" was limited to critical bugs, but I can guarantee that in truth the "Support" was active even in "normal" cases regarding game-related problems, obviously the support did not arrive to unlock your Dino if it was stuck on two rocks(!)... but cases of concrete problems were still examined (and in my two cases they were resolved in about 3 days).

I left legacy the day the 'new' servers came online so I'm just going off what was said. I'll happily admit when I'm wrong lol. 

I just don't want to see a repeat of history with ASA hence the post. 

[GrumpyBear]

Seeing as how crossplay won't be working on day one, it seems like an obvious opportunity for them to restart all servers at Day 1 once crossplay is ready to turn on.