Thousands of players have spent years perfecting and trading their creatures to the rest of the Ark community, from solid colors and top stats to workaday mounts for new players. Official servers fostered this community, and relegating it to private servers will effectively kill it.

     To leave behind all the players without the latest console, those who can’t afford 80 USD on a new game and DLC bundle, or who are unwilling to leave behind years of work is an unnecessarily cruel thing to do, and can easily be mitigated by keeping open Ark: Survival Evolved servers at least until the PlayStation release of Ark 2, if not longer. This action will keep the player base together and ultimately benefit WildCard by insuring their players are not left embittered with their Ark experience and will look forward to the release of the new game and future content.

     I propose that WildCard announces a two year sunsetting period for Ark: Survival Evolved servers with an evaluation at the end of that period to determine the viability of servers at that time. Players won’t be forced to abandon the game or start completely over, reaching a happy medium for what will surely be a monetary return for WildCard when the player base doesn’t wholly abandon them and instead returns for Ark 2.