StudioWildcard

A Message from the Founders Hello Survivors, Jesse and Jeremy here! We know things have been a bit quiet on Genesis news for the past few weeks, even though there is much more to show you, we’ve been deeply immersed in the pre-release development process. That being said, we’re writing today to tell you that the final release date for Genesis Part 1 is now February 25th, 2020 simultaneously on all platforms. This additional delay will no doubt come as a disappointment to everyone who is eagerly awaiting Genesis. We’re extremely sorry to push it back an extra month, but as we have been heads-down with the rest of the team polishing, balancing and putting the final pieces together, we really felt that the extra wait will be worth it both for the quality of the base game and the ambitious new expansion. The live ops team is taking advantage of the scheduling change by making sure we have a really fun Valentine’s event in store for you (something we originally planned to skip because it followed so closely behind the launch of the new expansion). Plus, we’ve just deployed an initial anti-meshing patch, and next week we will be rolling out a definitive anti-meshing logic overhaul that should fundamentally address those long-standing issues. As we look forward to a successful cross-platform launch of Genesis, all of this will make ARK substantially better for everyone who plays PvP and PvE. On behalf of the broader Wildcard team, we thank you so much for your passion, creativity, feedback, and support. We are extremely thrilled to bring ARK’s next chapter to you, and are looking forward to a hugely exciting 2020! Meanwhile, here are some tasty new screenshots from ARK: Genesis Part 1! Jesse and Jeremy Studio Wildcard Anti-Meshing Efforts Hey everybody! I’m WC_jellyknee, the lead Live Ops Engineer on the ARK team. I wanted to tell you about our efforts to prevent cheating in ARK in general, and our continuing efforts to defeat undermeshing specifically. We're excited to get this post out in order to address the issue of meshing with the community and, also, to share news on how we will be countering meshing more aggressively moving forward via technical solutions. I'm going to start off by quoting from a previous developer diary: You can read the rest of the developer diary here: Undermeshing has been a thorn in the side of both players as well as the enforcement team, and a serious concern for the development team. To help mitigate this, we have further upgraded our anti-undermeshing system in order to help the enforcement team track down problematic map areas, as well as tracking down people who are breaking the ARK Code of Conduct. This underlying system has been in place for a while now, gathering useful data, and we have been testing it to make sure that it works reliably. We wanted to make sure that it minimizes the amount of false positives - we don't want it to flag locations where players can get to during normal play Now that this system has been proven to be effective, we've now built another layer on top of it to take advantage of this data. I don't want to give specific numbers here because it can only help bad actors try to find new exploits, but I'll explain how this system works: 1) If we detect a player undermeshing for a certain amount of time, it will teleport them to a valid position that they were previously at. It will then monitor that player for an amount of time. 2) If the system finds that player undermeshing again within that time, or if it's not able to teleport the player to a previous position, then the player's character will die. Any items being carried will remain at that location. 3) The system is aware of what the character is doing, and will take certain actions into account to help prevent player frustration. The system, whilst in a state we’re confident will have an impact on limiting meshing, is in a state of ongoing development. We will continually make improvements and updates, along with rolling out more definitive undermeshing-resolving changes in the next week. While we continue to introduce new content and experiences to fans of ARK we will remain focused on ensuring that everyone has a fair playing experience on the Official Network. By default, the anti meshing system will be on for the Official Network For Unofficials, these launch parameters can be used: -noundermeshchecking // Will turn it off the anti meshing system entirely -noundermeshkilling // Will turn it off the anti meshing player kills (but still allow teleporting) Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110 Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark View full article

Update Concerning NA-PVP-Official-ScorchedEarth421 Unfortunately, we have some unfortunate news to share with survivors on NA-PVP-Official-ScorchedEarth421. Recently, the machine housing these servers experienced a critical hardware failure. This means that the most recent save data on this machine was lost. Our most recent backups will allow us to restore these servers to Tuesday, 12/24. Any progress that was made after that date has unfortunately been lost. We apologize for this inconvenience. We are looking into ways to do more frequent backups for the future.

Legacy Server Removal Earlier this year we reached out to find out what type of servers you're interested in and what legacy players enjoyed about their experience. As we move closer to the release of Genesis and another year of ARK content, we have been monitoring the Official Network server population and Legacy servers. Due to the current legacy server population, we will be closing all PvP legacy servers on January 28th. We've read the feedback from legacy players and know that you've invested time and created memories on these servers. Immediately following the closure of legacy servers, we will be providing the save files from those servers for you to download. Below is a complete list of servers that will be removed following January 28th. We appreciate the time our legacy players have spent with us and look forward to an exciting year of content. Winter Wonderland 4 We know how important events are to the community and we've enjoyed seeing the community content, screenshots, and shared experiences from Winter Wonderland 4. The event ends at 10 AM PST Wednesday (January 8th). Complete your chibi collection before the event ends! Sponsored Mod Applications Sponsored Mod Program applications are once again OPEN! If you are interested in sponsorship for your projects, please fill out the application here: Sponsored Mod Applications EVO Event Survivors on all platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 10th of Jan at 1 PM EST until Monday the 13th of Jan at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes: 2x Harvesting Rates 2x Taming Rates 2x EXP Rates Until next time! Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110 Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark View full article

PS4 Connection Issues We are looking into reports of connection issues with the latest PS4 update. We'll keep you updated as we work towards a fix!

We've just pushed a new Linux binary onto the Steam Depot, so if you get that update you should be good to go. Most of our Official Network should be online now, just getting the final batch of these Asia servers online. Thanks for your patience folks!

You should start to see more servers coming online guys, we're still working through the deployment.

Yup, servers are redeploying, they'll be back online shortly. Make sure to restart your steam clients, as this is a new major version so you'll have to download the patch to be able to see the servers

Hey Survivors! With this latest major version change, we've been able to upgrade key aspects of our Official Network. However for this upgrade to be complete, we'll have to cluster-off the PC Official Asia servers due to a network incompatibility (regional firewalls). On Monday, the 11th of November at 10 AM PST downloads into or uploads out of Asia Servers will be region restricted. What This Means For You Players on PC Asia Servers will only be able to upload to or download from other PC Asia Servers, this includes characters, creatures, and items. Every other region will continue to be clustered to their normal servers, as usual. If you're not on an PC Asia Official Server, your download/upload rules are unchanged. Players are still able to play on whichever server they wish to, this change will only prevent the transfer of characters/items/downloads from PC Asia servers to PC Non-Asia servers. The change won't go into effect until the start of next week, so you'll have the weekend to make any necessary preparations. Thank you for your patience and understanding; we'll keep you posted should there be any changes to the schedule. All the best, Studio Wildcard

ExtraLife 2019 Our 24 hour Extra Life stream is fast approaching and we welcome all of you across the ARK and ATLAS communities in joining us. Let’s see what we can raise for the kids through gaming and giving with our fundraising event starting November 2nd at 9 am PST! Live from our Seattle Studio to bring you entertainment, over 10k in giveaways from sponsors such as AMD, Alienware, MSI, Elgato, along with Collector’s Edition boxes, game keys, Discord, Nitrado vouchers, codes and more! So please tune in, whether you’re a streamer, a donator or just keen to be along for the ride, we’d love to have you! In the spirit of the event, we will be enabling boosted rates for all players on our Official Networks. These rates increase incrementally as each fundraising milestone is reached: 0.5x increase on all rates across our ARK Networks for every $5000 reached up to a maximum of 8x. If you’re feeling heroic, and want to support the event with your own stream and donation goals, sign up here(link) and let’s raise some money! Content Creators Extra Life Information We’ve also launched a Discord server for our Extra Life event: ExtraLife Discord Server Remember to read the guidelines in the #welcome channel to get you set up to come along for the ride. In addition to spicy challenges, contests, and in-game events, here’s what you can expect to see during the show: Key Events 9.30 am - Extra Life Interview 10 am - Donation Incentives Breakdown 2 pm - Alienware Interview 3 pm - Games 5 pm - Discord Interview 7 am - Developer Interview 8 am - Wrap Up Please keep in mind that exact times may vary As an added incentive to raise money and awareness for a great cause, we’ll be revealing unseen content from the new Genesis DLC as we inch further towards our goal. Tune in on November 2nd to find out what’s in store! If it’s anything like last year’s Extinction DLC reveals, you’re in for a treat. Gather your tribes, alliances, and stimberries and join us on an epic 24hr adventure! View full article

Mysterious Mysteries: Introducing ???? How perplexing, who can guess what this might be? Fear Evolved 3 Update Credit (@ScutalTheLizard) The content from the community from Fear Evolved has been nothing less than amazing! Due to some early launch issues, we'll be extending the event to November 8th 10AM PDT. We realize how important these events are for our community and have been monitoring your feedback throughout the way! There is still an update planned to iron out some existing issues with creature spawns. The feedback we receive from this event will be invaluable as we roll into Turkey Trials and Winter Wonderland. ExtraLife Charity Stream The ExtraLife charity stream this year On November 2nd at 9AM PDT is going to be a hot one! In addition to OVER 5K IN GIVEAWAYS, we'll have fun challenges and contests including 'Hot Ones' themed events. Be sure to stop by for the 24 hours stream and tons of hilarity! On The Horizon PS4 Primitive+ The engineering team is attempting another patch to address the current issues with Primitive+. We hope to have more news for you tomorrow! Valguero Transfers Transfers into Valguero open up tomorrow! See the details on transfer timelines below: EVO Event There will be no EVO event rates while Fear Evolved event rates are active! Until next time! Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110 Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark View full article

ARK: Fear Evolved 3 Trailer An Important Message from Studio Wildcard Co-Founders Jesse and Jeremy ARK: Fear Evolved 3 Details We are excited to bring you the third annual Fear Evolved, bigger and better than before! The blood-moon, DodoWyvern, DodoRex have made a return to ARK from October 22nd to November 5th! Find tombstones to and gather what you need to craft spooky skins or hunt down the elusive DoDoWyvern - the choice is up to you. For those who have experienced Fear Evolved before, we've added some new tricks and treats to ensure Fear Evolved maintains its legacy as a community favorite. Event Rates 2X Breeding (mating interval, egg hatch speed, and maturation) 2X Player XP 2X Harvesting Wild Creature Event Colors Dino Light Orange Dino Light Red Dino Dark Orange Dino Dark Red DragonBase0 DragonBase1 Dino Dark Purple Dino Light Brown Dino Dark Brown Dino Light Green Dino Light Grey Dino Darker Grey Dino Light Blue Dino Dark Yellow DragonFire NearBlack NEW Event Items Jack O'Lantern Mask Hockey Mask Headless Neck stump Halloween-inspired Dino Colorization Candy Panic Emote Spooky Dance Emote Zombie Emote Prior Event Creatures DodoRex Zomdodo Dodo Wyvern Skeletal Giganotosaurus Skeletal Quetzal Skeletal Jerboa Bone Fire Wyvern Zombie Fire Wyvern Zombie Lightning Wyvern Zombie Poison Wyvern Skeletal Bronto Skeletal Stego Skeletal Trike Skeletal Raptor Skeletal Rex Skeletal Carnotaurus Prior Event Items Pumpkin Stolen Headstone Scarecrow Prior Event Skins DodoWyvern Mask Skin Clown Mask Skin Vampire Eyes Skin Werewolf Mask Skin Giganotosaurus Bone Costume Jerboa Bone Costume Quetzalcoatlus Bone Costume Wyvern Bone Costume DodoRex Mask Skin Carno Bone Costume Rex Bone Costume Raptor Bone Costume Bronto Bone Costume Trike Bone Costume Stego Bone Costume Witch Hat Skin Dino Witch Hat Skin We hope the community enjoys Fear Evolved 3 and we look forward to bringing you more exciting events like Turkey Trials and Winter Wonderland! Until next time! Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110 Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark View full article

Mysterious Mysteries: Introducing ???? How perplexing, who can guess what this might be? ExtraLife Charity Stream We are only weeks away from the ExtraLife charity stream on November 2nd 9AM PST! As usual, this community event will be 24 hours filled with sneak peeks of future content, competitions, laughter, and embarrassment. Most of all, all of the proceeds go towards a great cause! What the community tends to love are the boosted rates that come with this event. There will be official server rates bonuses as we reach our donation goals (0.5x increase for every $5,000 raised up to a max of 8x). In addition to boosted rates, we will have giveaways and prizes for the community! Even if you aren't available to donate money, we'd appreciate you coming by to hang out. What is ExtraLife? Last Years Stats 11th Ranked Team Globally Over 1,800 donations as a team 70 Team Members Largest Donation was $2500 89% Individual Donation increase from 2017 23% Overall Team Donation increase from 2017 ExtraLife Information: ExtraLife SurviveTheArk Team Fear Evolved 3 October 22nd to November 5th marks the return of Fear Evolved and we have some frightening treats in store! Stay tuned for a spooky trailer, important news, and more event details when the event begins tomorrow! If you missed the last post on Fear Evolved: On The Horizon PS4 Primitive+ The engineering team is still hard at work on a Primitive+ patch to resolve the latest issues from deployment. We apologize for the inconvenience and look forward to bringing you good news soon. EVO Event There will be no EVO event rates while Fear Evolved event rates are active! Until next time! Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110 Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark View full article

Mysterious Mysteries: Introducing ???? How perplexing, who can guess what this might be? Fear Evolved 3 From October 22nd to November 5th, the spookiest and most requested event will be active! We've been asking for your feedback on things you'd like to see in events and we have something exciting in store for everyone. For those who've seen the ghoulish graves and overgrown pumpkin patches; fear not, there will be a number of new items to collect! Stay tuned for chilling trailer reveal and more details on the event! NEW Event Items Jack O'Lantern Mask Hockey Mask Headless Neck stump Halloween-inspired Dino Colorization Candy Panic Emote Spooky Dance Emote Zombie Emote Prior Event Creatures DodoRex Zomdodo Dodo Wyvern Skeletal Giganotosaurus Skeletal Quetzal Skeletal Jerboa Bone Fire Wyvern Zombie Fire Wyvern Zombie Lightning Wyvern Zombie Poison Wyvern Skeletal Bronto Skeletal Stego Skeletal Trike Skeletal Raptor Skeletal Rex Skeletal Carnotaurus Prior Event Items Pumpkin Stolen Headstone Scarecrow Prior Event Skins DodoWyvern Mask Skin Clown Mask Skin Vampire Eyes Skin Werewolf Mask Skin Giganotosaurus Bone Costume Jerboa Bone Costume Quetzalcoatlus Bone Costume Wyvern Bone Costume DodoRex Mask Skin Carno Bone Costume Rex Bone Costume Raptor Bone Costume Bronto Bone Costume Trike Bone Costume Stego Bone Costume Witch Hat Skin Dino Witch Hat Skin On The Horizon PS4 Primitive+ There was an issue with the latest deployment that has prevented PS4 Primitive+ players from accessing their survivors. There is a patch being tested and we hope to share an ETA once we have more information. Valguero Transfers (Console) Transfers for console open up in 2 weeks! EVO Event Survivors on all platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 18th of Oct at 1 PM EST until Monday the 21st of Oct at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes: 2x Harvesting Rates 2x Taming Rates 2x EXP Rates Until next time! Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110 Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark View full article

Update Concerning NA-PVE-Official-Extinction458 On Thursday, October 10th, the machine running these servers experienced a critical hardware failure that corrupted the save files. What this means for you: This server will be rolled back approximately 31 hours. Our deepest apologies to our survivors on these servers.

Mysterious Mysteries: Introducing ???? What an interesting discovery, can anyone guess what this creature might be? On The Horizon Hacks/Exploits Abuse of game mechanics, such as meshing and duping, are being reported at a higher frequency. As always, we will continue to implement changes to address any methods we have been able to reproduce. Please continue to report any known methods via the ticket system. Enforcement With the increase of reports, the enforcement team has been tasked with a larger number of tickets. This backlog of requests prevented our enforcement team from acting quickly to incidents that were being reported. We've made a considerable dent in the backlog and hope to improve our response time to incidents that are reported. Events If there's something you'd really like to see in events (regular and holiday), check out the thread below and weigh in! Changes to the Code Of Conduct The Enforcement Team are back again with another important notice regarding the Code of Conduct: New Addition: If you have been hardware ID (HWID) banned, any attempt to access the Official Network with an alternate account is subject to another hardware ID ban You can read the Code of Conduct in its entirety by clicking here. EVO Event Survivors on all platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 11th of Oct at 1 PM EST until Monday the 14th of Oct at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes: 2x Harvesting Rates 2x Taming Rates 2x EXP Rates Until next time! Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110 Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark View full article

Update Concerning XBOX Server NA-PVP-XboxOfficial-Extinction-SmallTribes70 On Wednesday, October 2nd, the machine running these servers experienced a critical hardware failure that corrupted the save files. Unfortunately, the earliest backups that are not corrupted are from 3 weeks ago. What this means for you: This server will be rolled back approximately 3 weeks. Our deepest apologies to our survivors on these servers. This is a very rare occurrence and we will work to prevent these disruptions in the future!

Genesis Chronicles We're making the final preparations for a client and server side update that will bring Genesis Chronicles to survivors on PC, Xbox, and PS4! Leading up to the release of Genesis we will begin to include Genesis-related Explorer Notes on The Island, Scorched Earth, and Aberration. Survivors with the cosmetic HLN-A will find some explorer notes provide a glimpse of what to expect in the forthcoming Genesis expansion -- and how it all fits into the larger ARK story. If you want to unlock a new set of skins for your armor, be sure to collect them all! Mysterious Mysteries: Introducing ???? How perplexing, who can guess what this might be? On The Horizon Valguero Transfers for PC Transfers open up on Valguero for PC tomorrow. See the thread below for specific timing related to consoles. Beginner Servers Beginner servers will be wiped tomorrow according to the schedule outlined in a prior crunch. Check out the thread below for information on beginner servers and the current wipe schedule Mod Community Update October 5th is the last day to get your applications in for the Sponsored Mod Program. This is the last application period for the year, so don't miss it! Apply for Sponsorship For mod authors that are looking for tutorials, we would like to remind you all that there is a bounty board for modding tutorials. Submit or support your desired tutorials, and if it is a popular enough request, we will pay mod authors to make it! This is a good place to request tutorials for more specific topics or ones that are not likely to get covered on the official tutorial videos. Modding Tutorial Bounty Board EVO Event Survivors on all platforms will be receiving a special Evolution Event perk this weekend! It will be active from Friday the 4th of Oct at 1 PM EST until Monday the 7th of Oct at 3 PM EST. All Official Servers across each platform will be undergoing this evolutionary change which includes: 2x Harvesting Rates 2x Taming Rates 2x EXP Rates Until next time! Twitter: twitter.com/survivetheark Facebook: facebook.com/survivetheark Reddit: reddit.com/r/playark Instagram: instagram.com/survivetheark Twitch: twitch.tv/survivetheark Steam: steamcommunity.com/app/346110 Youtube: youtube.com/survivetheark View full article