Kakao Games Europe is launching yet another fresh start server on February 9th; this time again for ArcheAge Unchained (back on September 15th, the first Unchained “seasonal” fresh start was launched; I provided my impressions of this boosted server).
Then back on December 15th, a fresh start server was opened for legacy ArcheAge. This was after results on a Discord poll, showed few were in favor of a fresh start server for legacy. Subsequently, an in-game survey was also performed (results for that were never publicly disclosed) but I doubt the results would’ve been any different.
To no ones surprise, this new legacy fresh start was barely populated at launch, and ended up being more than dead in just a short week (this is what happens when decision makers totally ignore the feedback they are getting).
I transferred my character off of NA Stormraw (the initial boosted “seasonal” Unchained fresh start) back to the EVO server Kraken once they finally fixed the transfer system (which was free up until early January) as did many others. The biggest impact to that fresh start was Kakao Games changing their minds part way through the server to change it to a permanent server (initially, the server was going to go away where you had to force transfer off if you wanted to keep your character). A lot of players were therefore playing with the initial specifications; once Kakao Games made the change (and stated they weren’t going back on it), the drop off accelerated.
So what exists now on Unchained is one EVO server, one original fresh start (from the time when Kakao Games first took over from Gamigo), and now this September 15-December 8 fresh start; the latter two are virtually empty now. And now there is going to be this new fresh start which likely will not have a fraction of the starting population which the September 15th one had.
Kakao Games Europe also doesn’t seem concerned at all there are now these “dead” servers. Basically, from what I can gather, this is all coming down from headquarters as a means to keep the remaining ArcheAge (both legacy and Unchained) player base, engaged until they are ready to launch ArcheAge 2. Investing resources into this older version is becoming more of a burden (extremely old engine with CryEngine 3 versus the totally new pipeline and coding required for Unreal Engine 5 that AA2 is utilizing).
I’m pretty sure they’ve seen the data on what happens when they do actual server mergers (evolutions) where they lose players. Right now, that is not in their best interests to lose subs on Unchained, or Patron and APEX sales on legacy. So they seem content on just opening fresh starts, and allowing players to transfer off (while leaving these dead servers in place; at their scale, additional blades for the actual world server isn’t that huge of a cost). I’m one of those actually waiting for that (mergers) to actually happen so that I can let the system full kit my buildings (which I know seems futile since I highly doubt they will continue operating this original version once AA2 launches; but it’s a “just in case” measure in the event they do keep the old version around, and I decide to revisit it).
With AA2 tentatively slated for sometime in 2024, Kakao Games Europe could cycle through a few more 3 month fresh starts (alternating between legacy and Unchained) where it brings them closer to that AA2 launch window (less dead space), where they can then just merge several now dead fresh start servers with the original evolution server to get everything back to one server (the smaller dead space might make it more acceptable to management at that time of losing players, while trying to pitch AA2).
That’s basically how I am viewing their current decision making with the game; complaining to the community managers over on their Discord is pretty much futile at this point since they are pretty much just the messengers that no one is really listening to. XLGAMES is also going to be focusing their resources into coding and optimizing for UE5 (it’s making less sense to have more than 2-3 devs working with old legacy coding and production processes for this CryEngine 3 based ArcheAge and ArcheAge Unchained).
