The AMA was held on November 30th.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MMORPG/comments/r5x95a/ama_archeage_archeage_unchained_with_kakao_games/
Neither Kakao Games or the lead designer from XLGAMES had anything substantive to offer with most of the detailed questions. What they did answer initially was that the fresh start server would not be delayed, would not be progression gated (as was being requested by many who are interested in playing the fresh start), and that it would also have the same launch event rewards. Basically as of yesterday, Kakao was ready to launch this fresh start on the completely wrong foot. The lead CM even answered a question where someone stated this game being mishandled several times by both Trion and Gamigo, and what would Kakao Games do to try to assuage players that this would not be the same under them. The response was that Kakao wouldn’t try to say anything to convince players otherwise; that what they do would be the arbiter.
Well they initially WEREN’T listening to reasonable feedback regarding the fresh start (delaying it to start it off on the right footing). The most flabbergasting part is that Kakao was planning to activate the same launch event rewards for the fresh start. That’s would have been a sure fire way to ensure this fresh start server dying pretty quickly.
Someone else asked about having one “permanent” server (one that never gets merged). The XL lead dev answered that question stating there are challenges when it comes to server “traffic” and “usage”, completely missing the point. The game is now at a point where all prior servers have now been merged down into a singular one in both regions for both versions. If fresh start servers don’t have any reasonable longevity (due to poor decisions), then of course you are going to have low population/retention issues on that fresh start server, requiring it to be merged a lot faster.
That is why I am an advocate for seasonal servers that never gets merged back to the legacy server. Players can either earn rewards for their progress that gets sent back to the legacy server, and occasionally they can transfer their character back to the legacy server. This eliminates this constant cycle of upheavals and land rushes. And for Unchained with its new subscription business model, that becomes an actual detriment to renewing.
After that AMA (and further negative feedback on their social media and Discord), Kakao Games made an about face and will be gating progression on the fresh start servers for Unchained. The planned fresh start servers for legacy has been put off with a date to be determined in 2022 (it literally does not make sense to launch fresh starts on legacy). UPDATE: I misread the poorly done chart; legacy FS will also start on the 2nd (the TBD 2022 are undetermined start dates for the progression gates). They will also be disabling the originally planned double event, placing limitations on player trading, auctions, mail, and storage (all an issue with the 30 day free trial). Additionally, they had originally planned to make conflict zones like Halcyona, Hellswamp, etc temporarily in peace for the first 30 days (effectively eliminating the low level PvP that fresh start players enjoy). That has also been eliminated. As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words. And these particular actions definitely wins Kakao some brownie points with an already jaded and skeptical player base. These changes were also a no-brainer because Kakao knows they have 90-180 days to make a good first impression to ensure there won’t be a drastic falloff after players free period ends.
With that said, I’ll still remain slightly skeptical because I’m still cynical enough to think this may have been planned as PR to make an initial favorable impression (sort of like all the pre-launch stuff that Gamigo originally did with the livestreams and engagement, which quickly changed post-launch, and then was non-existent after several months).
Finally, the launch times were announced today:
I’m expecting the usual launch issues (traffic and overloaded authentication servers) and potentially login queues for the fresh start servers.
