Server Evolutions (Mergers) + Another Fresh Start Coming To ArcheAge Unchained

First of all, let me preface this entry as something that would normally fall into the “first world problems” category in this day and age of a global pandemic. However, there are companies operating where their poor decision making and incompetence should not go unnoticed. It’s been awhile since I posted about the incompetence of ArcheAge under the Gamigo banner (mainly because it would end up being a weekly thing that would wear out its welcome). All of my prior postings about Unchained from prior to launch, can be found under the ArcheAge tag (and additionally, the Incompetence one).

First some background. Back on January 14th), Gamigo finally opened up server transfers and name changes for Unchained only (this system was still undergoing testing and fixes for regular ArcheAge). Transfers were initially a high demand request after the initial launch because of the hours long login queues across the initial launch servers. Khrolan (Merv Lee Kwai who was the executive producer for ArcheAge at Trion and is now the SVP for product development at Gamigo) originally stated they would try to implement server transfers as an option to alleviate this logjam. That never happened because generally, there was a bug with the system that had transfers turned off for even “legacy” ArcheAge.

The usual cycle of population thinning that happens with legacy ArcheAge, occurred with Unchained where those queues disappeared naturally and players just settled into their siloed servers which many including myself, railed on as them opening too many because they focused way too much on faction balance (a misleading metric from the start because many of us created one west and one east character at the beginning). On free to play, I primarily played east and eventually deleted my east character on Unchained to just focus on west (primarily my property endeavors).

It didn’t help when they launched the Steam version (opening a new server for each region). The final insult was launching a paid DLC (after their original revenue plans fell into a black hole), and decided to piggyback a fresh start server on top of it. With the announcement by XLGAMES regarding ArcheAge 2, this existing version (legacy and Unchained), is pretty much relegated to “milk the cow” status so that it’s revenues can be used to fund AA2. Anyone who expects otherwise, is fooling themselves. That title is a few years off but once it is ready, Kakao (which is now a majority stake owner of XLGAMES), will be hard marketing AA2 while trying to wind down any dev work into AA (and who knows, maybe Gamigo might lose their publishing rights by that time where Kakao just publishes and then eventually sunsets the original AA for NA/EU).

During Trion’s time (before their deserved insolvency), they zeroed in on the whales in this game and know how to milk them with this cycle of fresh starts and then mergers in legacy ArcheAge; it’s a business model that works there because you need a Patron sub to be able to own property (and the entire system built on top of it). APEX helps fuel the recurring revenue cycle since some players utilize APEX for their Patron (farming gold to pay for APEX on the auction house). What I never recalled them doing (when transfers did work prior to one of the major updates) was promoting transfers, and then quickly following that up with mergers. That is where Gamigo’s latest incompetence/scumbaggery comes into play.

Name changes cost 1400 credits while character transfers cost 2700 credits for each character. According to their FAQ, server mergers were already planned for free to play ArcheAge (merging the two lowest population servers) but they weren’t yet sure about Unchained (if it would just be the two lowest population servers). And just for reminder again, once population begins to dwindle across all servers, the fresh starts are eventually merged into the legacy pool, and a new fresh start eventually happens. Players then have to start a new Patron sub (with the most hardcore continuing to maintain the Patron on legacy accounts) on fresh start along with the new packs and APEX on those new servers. Rinse and repeat for future cycles of mergers and fresh starts. So keep this thought in mind for the following paragraphs.

Gamigo announced on February 17th, they would be evolving (aka merging) servers for both versions of ArcheAge (free to play) and Unchained. The details are here. The remainder of this entry focuses on Unchained since it is the version I play.

As it turned out, they made this announcement of merging all existing Unchained servers down to 2 with ONLY a TWO WEEK window for players to prepare. The servers are now down for “evolution” (fancy world for mergers) maintenance and will come back online on March 6th with the land rush slated for March 13th. In the past (during the Trion days), the lead up to these mergers would be rather lengthy (giving everyone enough of a heads up). This announcement is anything but that and came right on the heels of the server transfer announcement (it’s a scumbag move).

The transfer process itself was not smooth and issue free for some players (to make a long story short, some have had their characters stuck in limbo while others having trouble even initiating it; these folks were told to wait until the server mergers were announced). Those issues were eventually fixed but it’s still just additional fodder for the incompetent management of this game. And the excuse isn’t because of Gamigo (as mentioned in prior postings, a large portion of the team that handled ArcheAge at Trion, were retained by Gamigo after they absorbed Trion’s assets).

Additionally, some folks transferred to get onto their regions most populated server (Alexander in EU and Tyrenos in NA) and as you can guess, some transferred for nothing because their server is part of the same cluster that is being evolved into the new server. Gamigo effectively and knowingly offered a paid transfer service for Unchained only (since again, they are still working on issues for the legacy version), knowing full well they would be shortly announcing server mergers. If this weren’t a simple cash grab, they could have announced the mergers (and which ones would be merging together), and then allow players to make decision). But nope, they KNEW there would be this movement to the most populated servers, and then decide to merge other clusters into that already populated server, where it might incentivize players (after the mergers), to eventually try to transfer off of (once post merger transfers are enabled again).

Myself, I’m on Wynn (which was probably the 2nd highest pop server at launch) and it is being evolved into a new server along with Denistrous, Runert, and Tyrenos. Wynn’s population has clearly declined in recent months and became really noticeable after the transfers. Upon announcement of the merger news, I created a character and looked at the west land/resident situation on each of those servers; safe to say it’s going to be a mess in some zones (this is not like launch where you had finite resources and no full kits to slam down; over the past year, Unchained has been given most of the high tax exempt designs including the 44×44 beanstalk; with no limit to how much of your full kit demos that can be put down, it’s going to be whomever has the best macro or in the case of some folks, the best land hacking tools (and Wynn west has an entire guild of those folks since launch).

According to players on Alexander (EU) and Tyrenos (NA), they felt their existing population (especially after the transfers) is more than enough and that land there is already packed. After looking at Tyrenos west myself (and presume east is similar), I’m guessing the reality is that even with the transfers, the amount of active accounts are still way below what they were at launch and it’s just that each character on an account, has a lot more property (that’s the case with me). The decision makers don’t give a damn though (they never have since they were with Trion) as it’s all about money.

The following video puts the entire situation up to this point pretty well (he was screwed by Gamigo early on with their commission system for ArcheAge Unchained and has been highlighting the companies nature; there’s a reason why some folks call them Scamigo).

But it doesn’t end there. On March 3rd, Gamigo announced fresh starts would be coming to ArcheAge Unchained on March 25th. That will of course be accompanied by new packs and probably the introduction of another advanced Archepass (we now have two non-expiring advanced tracks along with the shorter “seasonal” ones with nary a gap in between to even get anywhere on the advanced tracks). The company stopped meaningful community engagement shortly after launch and has been making haphazard decisions non-stop over the course of 2020. They don’t give a damn except taking your money and this latest move is no different. The merger and ensuing land rush has not even been completed yet, and they drop this fresh start announcement the day prior to the start of the actual merger maintenance.

People are free to do what they want with their money, BUT I still would advise anyone not to fund this type of piss poor business practices since it only encourages them to continue to exploit their customers. Trion did themselves in this way by not properly parsing their player base and instead, just chose short term gain versus long term customer satisfaction. Gamigo’s firesale acquisition of Trion’s assets was a boon to their bottomline (the revenues irrespective of the revenue sharing agreement with XL from ArcheAge, was a huge boost for them; and the executive team there only sees that part and wants to milk the game while they can). They don’t care about what players like myself think. The fact they rely so heavily on volunteer Community Ambassadors to help answer a lot of questions in their official Discord (ignoring their own official forums except to post news) versus actual paid community managers (who are likely saddled wearing multiple hats since that is how corporations now milk their own employees), says a lot. At least Trion had a decent sized community team for ArcheAge. Gamigo had a small one pre-launch (in retrospect, a simple marketing tool), but those folks seem to be gone now.

Myself, I’ve documented my purchase of this version including my original “fool me once, fool me twice” mantra and sitting on the fence until the last moment (implying that I knew this would eventually happen). And I did purchase a double bonus amount of credits during the only time they held it (so that I could at least gain some entertainment value as I managed to snap up additional properties in order to decorate them). While it’s still a pittance amount compared to the amount of money they would’ve been able to extract from me had I did the same in legacy (which is why I made the cognitive decision NOT to do that in legacy ArcheAge during those times I played it while primarily a Devilian player before Trion drove that into the ground), I still knew this guilty pleasure was funding Gamigo. That’s over now. I haven’t bought the Garden of the Gods DLC and don’t intend to purchase anything else. I have enough credits from the bonus to last me awhile since they pretty much recycle marketplace decor and cosmetics).

This first server merge in Unchained is clearly now not the last. Gamigo is going to continue to do this with Unchained with annual fresh starts and mergers so long as they have the publishing rights in NA/EU (even though it doesn’t work as well as it does with legacy because decision makers like Khrolan, miscalculated on the business model angle for Unchained with purely cosmetics driving recurring revenues; you need actual designers who give a damn about creating interesting character cosmetics instead of just recoloring and recycling existing ones).

As for this second fresh start in Unchained, the thing to watch for is if they will require a completely new account (thus no access to your original paid license and any credits purchased). For the first fresh start (that accompanied the Garden of the Gods update; which was a paid DLC for Unchained), you could use your existing account (they added the ability for a 3rd character slot). If for this second fresh start they require a new account (and have a package deal for the base game, the Garden of the Gods DLC, and whatever content they are charging for), that will be a dead giveaway of them trying to juice the numbers.

UPDATE: Here’s an example of them posting a 50% credit bonus while the Unchained servers are down for merging. It’s a short window (until the 7th) to try to incentivize purchases. This company is way more shameless than Trion ever was (and they were extremely bad).