cardboardking1

Hi, My friends recently got Ark from the epic games store. I have been playing ark since early beta, and I have always played from the Microsoft store on pc, or xbox. However, We are unable to join each other. We are both on win 10. Can players who got ark for free from the epic games store not play with people who payed for the game? Epic's free version is also weird. It has different server search filters. Instead of "official dedicated arks" its "official servers". and so on for the other server types. Idk if this has anything to do with it or not. But I would like to teach them how to play ark, but we cant play together...