AU/NZ ARK: Survival Evolved Community

Important announcement regarding the Terrus ARK network

Hi everyone,

This is going to be quite a long post, but I hope it will encapsulate my reasoning and provide you with some understanding as to what's currently happening with ARK, the servers and with the team.

As most of you are no doubt aware by now, the developers have put aside development of ARK in favour of development on their standalone SotF game. Unfortunately, they've done this in a way that branches development of each game separately, meaning that they now have twice as much work to keep up with both games. They've done this before ARK was itself in a finished state. This is quite troubling because they're also advertising the SotF game as a separate product and heavily advertising it inside the ARK game itself. It has become blatantly clear which is the successor of the two. The only saving grace is that they aren't making people pay for it, but whether that will continue into the future remains to be seen.

All of this means that in 6 months, ARK itself may well be a dead game (my own prediction). We've been holding out since day one for some improved server-side functionality and some critical bug fixes which just don't seem to be coming. You, the players, are plagued with missing dinos and unexplained deaths each and every day. Now with SotF eclipsing the development agenda, it looks as though full release won't even be happening on any kind of timeline, making it anyone's guess as to when, or if, it may finally happen.

Studio Wildcard are also engaged in a legal battle at the moment which could determine the future of ARK. See this LINK for more details.


We recently rehashed PvP, which has been going quite well functionally, aside from a couple of crashes. PvE, however, is another kettle of fish entirely. You'll all have experienced troubles with connecting recently, whether it be due to mod mismatches, crashes, general unknown disturbances in the force, or because our admins haven't been made aware of an issue until it's too late. All of this is a combination of poor game development, a complete lack of server-side functionality for admins, a bug-ridden game and poor integration with Steam. We're also human beings, so we can't always get it right and we're not alert and functional 24x7, as much as we would like to be. We all run this server on a volunteer basis, meaning that we still have to go about our daily lives in the background somehow.

Many players have also put a huge number of hours into their builds, dinos, etcetera, and the recent survey showed that our players were not in favour of wiping. Many suggested that a wipe, or continuous wipes, would ruin their desire to play the game. We on the admin team completely understand that, however you must understand that ARK is not a game that can continue to function permanently without issues. Again, it's a case of bad programming and shoddy server-side functionality.

We have also struggled over the last few months to maintain a population. Myself and the team have been ceaselessly advertising and bumping our forum post on the Steam forums. Whilst the majority of our players are coming from there, we're presently losing as many as we're gaining. This won't get any better for us as more and more players lose interest in ARK as a result of the state of the game. Running a server for 10-15 casual players is just not worth it; not when it costs so much time, effort and resources to do so.

The other major issue is that we will always have problems as long as the server is hosted in Perth. Originally this was a good thing because it provided a low latency server for those in WA and Indonesia. We had a lot of players from both regions (we hit 60 concurrent players online at one point), but since ARK has dwindled in popularity (and since the severing of the undersea cable between Perth and Singapore) the vast majority of players are now located in eastern Australia. This is a problem because ARK sorts servers on the unofficial server list by their latency. For the majority of players in Australia, our server is therefore located toward the middle of that latency list, meaning that we get ignored in favour of servers at the top of the list. This has a run-on effect, allowing servers in population dense areas to grow effortlessly, without raising a single finger by way of advertising. Servers in population dense areas have absolutely no problems getting players. Yet here's us, on the other side of the coin, struggling to grab the interest of casual passersby on the great and expansive road that is the Internet; ultimately being turned down, despite our higher quality server, in favour of higher population but lower quality servers. This is especially so in the case of our PvP server where, without a population, there's almost no point in playing.


We're tired. We're overworked. We've lost our social lives (what little of them we had). In my case, my connection to the server is severely limiting my life and career choices. I, myself, have pumped at least 4 to 5 hours each night (and most of my weekends) into bettering the server, advertising for more players and building the structure and support systems necessary for your enjoyment. I am also looking at additional career choices in the very near future which would preclude me from running the server in any event, as I would be away from home (and an internet connection) for months on end.

With the state of the game as it is, myself and the admin team have taken a good, hard look at where we see the game headed and whether we're happy to continue onward despite the abovementioned challenges. The answer has been a firm "no". We know you've put heaps of hours and a lot of hard work into your builds, dinos and characters, but the preservation of those shouldn't come at such a great cost to the team and to myself. It is, after all, only a game.


For all of the above reasons, we've decided that we will be closing down the network. I know a lot of you joined us due to our intention of longevity, and I'm sure at least a few of you will be quite disappointed in this news as a result. I hope you can understand our reasons for doing so, however. If we could make it work in perpetuum then we would; but again, the state of the game doesn't allow us to do this, and with no idea as to whether we're ever going to get the functionality we need, we could be holding our breath forever.

For those who have donated within the March period, your donations have been refunded to you. Please allow 5-10 working days for them to reach your accounts. It has never been my intention to profit from the operation of the server; merely to cover costs and upgrades. I would very much like to thank everyone who has supported the server by way of donation and I hope you don't feel you've been cheated. You absolutely helped to keep the server alive and, without it, we would have closed down months ago due to my own financial difficulties.

We're currently in negotiations with a couple of other server admins of similar rate servers in an effort to provide you all with somewhere to go. Ultimately we're trying to convince them to open up transfers to allow you to take some of your dinos and your characters along with you. The chances of this are slim though and we can't make any promises. A lot of other servers are dropping off the radar due to the state of the game, and as a result it's difficult to know where else to look.

I am also going to be uploading the map files for those who are interested. It is my understanding that it's possible to slot those files into single-player mode and continue onwards from there. I am also not averse to providing the full lot of server files if someone else is genuinely interested in continuing on with the administration of the server (albeit under a different name).

We will be closing the network down finally during this Easter long weekend. It is our hope that you succeed in finding a new home and have enough time to establish yourselves. I would like to thank each and every player for their support and loyalty over the last 10 months. We couldn't have done it without you. I will still be around on Discord for a while, so come message me if you have any questions.