I have to agree. I've mostly played on Unofficial servers since ARK's initial launch, because I knew having an active attentive admin on hand to deal with issues immediately was far better than the shitshow Official would turn into... but fast forward a bit and I finally decided to see what it was all about and tried joining a random Official server.

Nothing but people bitching and telling newcomers to the server that the dino limit was already capped so they can't tame anything and you might as well leave. All very hostile and unwelcoming, I can't imagine what an actual new player would think or be able to do.

I was able to try out the "new" cross-ARK stuff by just uploading my still semi-newbie survivor and picking another server at random to try. And funnily enough, same damn thing. Dino tame cap is reached, you can't tame, server is packed, go away. Rinse and repeat.

Not only is that game mechanic blocking newer players, but then there's also the matter of trying to find a tribe. Nobody trusts you, etc.

And frankly with how much cheating/duping has happened on the official servers, a complete clean slate wipe before launch would probably be good. If they can stay on top of it and prevent it from getting that bad again. But BattleEye is a separate thing, not Wildcard's, and if it's not currently getting the job done promptly enough... I dunno.

And if there's no wipe, I can just imagine all the helpless newbies wandering around and getting sniped for sport by some dude decked out with all his not-wiped gear. That's the kind of situation WC needs to avoid, because if the newbies don't have fun, that screws your launch.