Back in August, Kakao and XLGAMES announced that it would be merging ArcheAge Unchained into the regular ArcheAge production servers. The move followed Korean media reports that an XLGAMES restructure would result in mass sunsets for the franchise ahead of ArcheAge 2, which Kakao and XL denied while saying they would “assess” all the game versions. The merges will combine a total of 12 servers from OG ArcheAge and Unchained to result in two large servers, one for NA and one for EU, and it marks the end of the Unchained era and ruleset.
At the time, Kakao was targeting November 30th for the big merge, and that date holds – but the schedule has changed slightly. In its updated post heralding the great smooshening, the studio has recalibrated the dates and indeed stricken some items from the to-do list, like the tax prepay restrictions. Right now, players are looking at an auction hall outage beginning on November 28th, with maintenance and merges set to begin at 4 a.m. EST on November 30th. Land rushes will commence bright and early on December 2nd because of course they will.
Players will want to check out the updated blog post to learn how their characters and accounts will be affected; for example, Kakao has a plan for handling extra characters beyond the cap, character names, housing items and taxes, subscription time, and more. The studio also aims to run an XP boosting event in the run-up to the merges to allow players to finish our their existing ArchePasses, which will end come merge day.
