https://www.trionworlds.com/archeage/en/2018/09/06/server-evolution-2018/
They’ve been calling it server evolutions (aka consolidations) because of one of the games core designs (land property), entails that every player is moved to a new server where those folks who own land, need to compete with everyone else to secure their plots again (there are no guarantees to getting the same location(s) again) in what is referred to as the “land rush”. Other aspects like guilds and nations are retained just as with a server merge.
To the games credit, existing structures are delivered as full kits where it can be placed back on the proper sized property and be fully rebuilt without any additional costs/taxes. However, this land rush aspect has always been a love/hate affair for players; for some who have gone through multiple consolidations (and where they could not secure their first preference locations), it sometimes signifies the last straw where they don’t want to go through the hassles of settling in again.
Thus it isn’t surprising that as each consolidation happens, the total player population continues to shrink. The servers went through a consolidation around an year ago (September 7-9) where the server I was on (Morpheus on NA), ended up being consolidated with Hanure and Nazar to form Thunderwing. I was still semi-playing at the time so I did notice how empty Morpheus had become just prior to the merge and how much more busier it felt right after (the Shadowguard Festival was happening so it was fairly easy to see).
After Devilian was shutdown, I essentially just logged in for 30 days to “take advantage” of the free pack offer (which included 30 days of Patron). What I didn’t do was grab some property since I wasn’t planning to stick around. So I setup a secret farm to see if anyone would discover it (no one did and I finally stopped logging in back in May since it became clear that the population was again on the decline).
Whenever the 5.0 update is done, expect this cycle to continue (fresh start followed by evolutions) since both XL and Trion seem to be on the same page when it comes to milking the NA/EU player base.
