No Server Wipe Ahead of August 8th Launch

When ARK: Survival Evolved launches on August 8th, current official servers will not be wiped, but will be rebranded as "Legacy" servers. For players looking for an all new ground-up experience, new PvP Server Cluster network will be launched that will run separately from the PvP Legacy Server Cluster. At launch, new server code and infrastructure will be rolling out to address a number of critical issues on new and legacy servers over time.

Our current set of Official Servers will be rebranded as “Legacy” and indicated as such on all platforms. We will also be taking steps to remove some of our ‘ghost town’ servers, where the player population has remained near-zero for an extended duration of time. We’ll take a look at the statistics and will be repurposing 10% of the lowest count servers across all platforms. Once we know which servers these are; we'll preserve the save files and upload them, so if you so wish to use them, you can. Players will also have time to move through Cross-ARK to a different secure Legacy server. Every three months we will be taking a review of the Legacy Officials to see what the numbers are like and may consider repurposing more ‘ghost towns’, however, the goal will be to preserve any place with human activity.

Console Update

Console ARK players will receive the Ragnarok free DLC on August 8th as well, a time chosen that has allowed the map to be in a significantly better spot overall than it was when launched for PC.

The Abstraction update for PlayStation 4 is in the works and the team is hoping to deploy it on Friday, July 21st but that may change.

Beginning August 8th, PC hosted dedicated servers for console will be enabled. There are no plans for the ARK team to rent or host them, but they have put the necessary technical features in place. Initially, these servers will be made available through Nitrado, though other hosts will be added in time.

These servers will be available on both Xbox One and PlayStation 4 and if you haven’t realised, here’s why this is so awesome:

• No need for a second console to host private servers!
• Complete access to all of ARKs custom server config settings, which will let players change the rules on their custom ARKs
• The option to create cross ARK Clusters for the ultimate ARK Experience -- allowing travel across four Maps
• Create a backup of server save files, allowing players to try something new without the fear of losing data
• The servers will result in higher performance due to better optimisation
• Player servers will now be able to support a larger pool of players, up to 100 concurrent users!
• At a later date, these will also be Play Anywhere compatible!

Read the full State of the Game letter on the ARK: Survival Evolved site.