I feel its a big mistake shutting down the ARK program. It cant cost you anything to have it running. The ARKs makes the AO community thrive and connect to each other. The events they have been running for Partys, Anniversarys and Alien event have been truly appreciated by the community. The help the ARKs have provided with smaller bugs, such as the infamous “fgrid bug” has been truly valuable. So sorry to the you do this funcom.
/Maelynel Athen Paladins.
Thank you for the kind words.
I’m fully clueless since 24H that ARKs were shut down.
Few infos posted by ChrisT & Rooibos honestly didn’t help to enlight it at all. We hear you guys have contractual obligations so we can’t blame you directly (you’re even paid to receive the shitstorm in proxy of company which is never comfortable), but to say the least, that corporate decision was brutal, cloudy and painfull all at once. & the fact you guys may agree doesn’t change how it’s received by the community.
AO is THE game that made FC what it is, no offense to their other titles, & also the one that received the least care since over a decade - if not more. Most of the activity/content/guide was/is offered by players themselves (and i’d proudly count myself in) either via orgs, public bots or websites (AOU ftw !) & many other volunteer projects as GridStream & ARK. To me, that all make the “Anarchy” spirit beside of the “Online” tech, in the deep political sense that word brings - a more horizontal way of managing things, if you will : by players for players.
Therefore in all honesty, i really do not see when & how those playerbased projects would cost ANYTHING to the company, further i’d even sincerely assert that they SAVE/D a LOT of money/time/people/insert-whatever-else-asset to compensate that certain lack of love the game is subject to, current “maintenance mode” being the latest.
We’re in a new era since awhile, & it would have made total sense that AO became way more opensourced a long ago. Renewing models, textures, playfields as much as designing new quests, dungeons and bosses would have been done for long & nearly freely if the corporate was up-to-the-date enough. Docaholic’s work gave hope awhile. But instead of this, they decide that …
All i can say to conclude is witness how sad we all are & thank all ARKs for their time & dedication. @Fairwolf @Spacequest @Rainys plus all the others i cannot mention here. So long …
For at least the past 11 years, it has been abundantly evident that I won’t be buying or paying for any games produced by Funcom unless they drastically improve their communication, customer service, and game support. I wouldn’t even mind if they scaled back their game support to a bare minimum, as nothing can last indefinitely. However, the appalling part is their complete lack of transparent and honest communication, their disregard and arrogance towards their player community, and the multitude of technical problems that persist, all while charging an exorbitant monthly subscription fee. It’s absolutely outrageous.