Both Gamigo and Kakao Games are handling this handover of the ArcheAge IP very poorly in the communications department. Both companies first of all knew the publishing contract for the NA/EU region was expiring on December 1st. There was a point where both companies knew the status of that negotiation (Kakao Games effectively knew they were going to publish it themselves and likely notified Gamigo of that decision).
The last new ArchePass was in July 2021 (Lotty Pass).
Then in August, they re-ran all ArchePasses.
Basically, Gamigo already had knowledge by this point that they weren’t going to be retaining the publishing rights, and likely withheld that information to milk the game for as long as possible. These contracts always have clauses for the IP owner (Kakao acquired a majority stake in XLGAMES in 2020) an avenue to obtain the account data from the licensee in these cases (where the decision is made to self-publish). This is what was announced on November 11th, 2021 by both parties.
While Gamigo has put up a FAQ, there’s still a lot of unanswered questions being posed (with the snapshot of account data coming up rapidly on the 18th). Kakao Games has been unable to provide even the simplest of answers themselves (saying more info will become available in the coming weeks). The only small tidbit is there will be two servers per region for each version of the game (legacy ArcheAge and ArcheAge Unchained) based on the server naming contest Kakao Games is running.
There’s obviously some challenges in this area because the actual announcement date was made so late. Both companies should have started this process several months ago and worked towards a common goal of putting the priorities of their respective customer base first. We the players are literally an afterthought with such a short lead time (some players are still likely unaware this is all taking place; especially the ones who prepay for an entire month, and logoff for that long). Those folks who took a vacation during this time frame will also be SOL. No, this is not how you respectfully deal with your customer base (but this isn’t anything new).
Gamigo’s contract does not end until December 1st. The anonymized account data will transfer to Kakao on the 18th at which point, they’ll be able to get a general idea of server balance. Gamigo stated they will be deleting the data once this transfer process is completed (kind of like good luck with what we are sending you). What’s not clear is whether or not that data will also include the latest metrics (which is really how you want to determine activity). AAU has 3 servers per region (1 of them are the last fresh start server). It’s unknown if Kakao will be merging all 3 into 1 server (and leaving the other server to start a seasonal or new fresh start), if they are merging the fresh start into one of the other servers, or if it will be some mess of both (causing issues with friends, families, and guilds).
I’m figuring the latter option is not going to happen unless the anonymized data process ends up creating an unforeseen mess. Regardless, it’s rather concerning that even character names are being anonymized in the account transfer process (they’ll need to be renamed). And we have no word on how that will be handled (will it be like duplicate names during a merger where you can renamed it from the character select screen).
As for housing decor, I worked over this weekend to purchase additional furniture chests (via the Diligence shop), and expanded them to store the extra decor I acquired over the past year since the prior server merger. I’m taking no chances since I remember other players had issues with decor that are normally destroyed during a demolition (I just have my walls to take down but I want to do a final flyover to take one last video of my property layout). That entire process was handled manually by Gamigo staff as a courtesy for that server mergers; the problem is that anything that was previously unbound, ended up being returned back bound. I already know Gamigo isn’t going to expend that energy again for this account data transfer (similarly, they also manually provided tax certificates for each placed property, and won’t be doing that either).
Basically at this point, I’ll be surprised if there aren’t any major problems. And with so many unanswered questions that likely will not be answered by the 18th, I really expect Kakao Games will end up having a shit show on their hands. If their launcher is going to be like the one for Elyon, the complaints are going to go through the roof (the Elyon launcher doesn’t even have an option to save your login information the way the Glyph launcher does). And there are players on legacy who multi-client (it doesn’t use any anti-cheat system either). At this juncture, it’s out of the players control (we just need to pack up and take care of things we can before the 18th).
