If you're completely in the dark about Ark: Survival Ascended, Shockbyte is here to bring you up to speed about everything you need to know regarding Studio Wildcard's most wildcard of a decision to re-release Ark 1 with a new coat of paint in the Unreal Engine. For those who haven't heard yet, Ark Survival Ascended is a completely remastered version of the original Ark Survival Evolved being redeveloped by Studio Wildcard alongside Ark 2.
This Ark Remastered version will be almost exactly the same as the original Ark: Survival Evolved, but completely recreated from the ground-up in the Unreal Engine 5 to optimize the game, and heavily update the graphics for it's players. With this though has already come hefty discussion from Studio Wildcard, including pricing, server allocation, player distribution, and a wide variety of new issues.
Ark Official Server Migration
In a bold move by the developers, they will be completely stripping Ark: Survival Evolved entirely of it's official server support as they transition all servers to Ark: Survival Ascended. This means if you had a base or dinos you were taming on an official server, you'd better purchase Ark: Survival Ascended or you can't play on the server anymore. We're yet to hear more details on it, or how fast the process will be, but Ark will be officially unsupported at one point, relying entirely on players for any multiplayer servers to continue.
Player-owned servers will continue to support the Ark: Survival Evolved multiplayer ecosystem even after official servers have moved to Ark: Survival Ascended but will rely on players to choose reliable server hosts with 100% uptime and high quality connections. If you plan on staying with Ark: Survival Evolved after the switch, know that you can always trust Shockbyte with any of your server hosting needs as we are eager to continue to support the multiplayer community.
Ark Survival Ascended Bundled with Ark 2
Originally plans were released by Studio Wildcard to release the two games as one, as a celebration for the longtime fans and as a reward for Ark Survival Evolved players who had toughed through some of the buggiest, least visually appealing content Ark 1 had to offer. Since then though plans have changed due to the scope of the project, and Ark Survival Ascended will be released separately from Ark 2, with a $60 price tag to match.
Appropriately fans have been outraged at this, and coupled with the soon-to-come server migration, fans will have no other choice than to buy the new game, or to host their own servers. While the Survival Of the Fittest game mode will be available on-release of the new game, players will also be required to repurchase each of the DLCs, even if they owned them originally on Ark: Survival Evolved.
Lack of Gameplay for Ark 2 and Ascended
One of the biggest issues fans of Ark: Survival Evolved have been facing is that trailers for both Ark: Survival Ascended and Ark 2 are yet to contain actual gameplay, crushing any remaining hopeful feelings left in veterans hearts when considering the possibility of purchasing another $60 Ark: Survival Evolved copy just because of it's modern updates. Players should be wary as well! Ark 2 is currently planned to release in 2024, making for Ark: Survival Ascended's entire lifecycle to only last less than a single year at the projected rate.
The only major changes players will be missing hosting their own Ark: Survival Evolved servers will be any new structures added to the game, minor visual and gameplay updates, and potential changes made to holiday events for the single year of Ark: Survival Ascended's official server dominance. On Ark: Survival Evolved players will still be able to enable and disable their holiday events appropriately through control of their personal servers, so hopefully your holiday spirit won't take a hit without buying the $60 update to the game.
Biggest Additions of Ark Survival Ascended
There are some benefits that Studio Wildcard wants to heavily advertise with the release of Ark: Survival Ascended, with a few being:
- Cross-Platform Multiplayer
- "Cross-Progression"
- and Cross-Platform Modding Supported by their partner Overwolf.
While many of these features, including many features within Ark: Survival Ascended are symbolic of modern AAA gaming, it's still a hefty price to ask players to repay a $60 price tag. Fortunately Ark: Survival Evolved's steam charts show a whopping 50k players on average, meaning even player server-hosts will most likely find success in a post-official server support era. Ark's Survival of the Fittest game mode with it's current 65 average players isn't about to impact the main player base much.
Ark veterans are NOT happy
If you've looked around for even a little, you can see gamers in the Ark community are extremely upset at Studio Wildcard's decisions regarding this move with Ark: Survival Ascended. Longtime Ark players have been riddled with buggy gameplay, horrible visuals, connectivity issues, and a plethora of other issues since Ark: Survival Evolved was released in 2015. The decision to finally update the game to modern standards by recharging the full-price tag has got gamers up-in-arms across the internet.
Fortunately for those who wish to boycott Studio Wildcard's rerelease of the game, and simply wait for Ark 2 to be released, Ark: Survival Evolved will still be a fully functioning game despite it's lack of further development and support once Ark: Survival Ascended launches. Server hosting providers such as Shockbyte are eager to provide high quality server hosting services of Ark: Survival Evolved, including modded servers, far into the future after Ark: Survival Ascended's release.
About Shockbyte
Shockbyte is a game server host for Ark, Rust, Minecraft, and more.
Do you want to start your own Ark: Survival Evolved dedicated server? Click here to view our Ark server hosting plans.
