The age of ArcheAge Unchained is over: Kakao and XLGAMES have apparently decided to merge the Unchained servers back into the regular ArcheAge production servers, resulting in one unified server for North America and another for Europe.
“We went through many discussions and concluded that we could not provide you a smooth gameplay experience with the game’s current servers,” Kakao says. “Especially, in the case of ArcheAge: Unchained, the population per server has reached a point where it is no longer possible for you to enjoy systems are they were designed to be. Unfortunately, with the current server population, we can’t continue servicing ArcheAge: Unchained alone. We regret having to inform our ArcheAge: Unchained players of this decision.”
“Although, comparatively speaking, we can continue servicing ArcheAge, we internally reviewed if merging ArcheAge and ArcheAge: Unchained would be possible to provide you a better gameplay experience and a more stable service, and are now preparing for the actual merge. We hope the merge of ArcheAge and ArcheAge: Unchained leads to an active and lively field PvP as well as Faction War. Players in the server that has recently opened have been sharing their concerns regarding the merge. We are trying to come up with different ways to aid those players who are not strong enough to compete with the existing players yet upon merge. We sincerely apologize to our ArcheAge: Unchained players once again that this decision had to be made.”
The big merge is set for November 30th. If you’re a current player, you absolutely must go read up on what this means for your account, your remaining sub time, your account buffs, and perhaps most importantly, your houses, as Kakao says “installed houses will be redistributed as Full Kits upon merge.”
Readers will recall that just a month ago, Korean media scooped an XLGAMES layoff and restructure that management said would mean the eventual end of ArcheAge both inside and outside Korea; supposedly, each region was set to sunset when the publisher contracts ended. Kakao and XLGAMES denied the report in part, claiming that there were “no plans to terminate service in NA/EU” or any other regions, although it did reiterate that underperforming regions were set to be “assessed” for sunset worthiness. It appears now that the western Unchained version didn’t make the cut.
ArcheAge Unchained itself was launched back in 2019 under the stewardship of Gamigo, who’d taken over the western edition of the 2014 MMORPG after Trion Worlds’ collapse; Unchained was originally conceived as a sub-free, buy-to-play, anti-pay-to-win version of the game, but it didn’t take long for those promises to break down.
