I remember the first time I tamed a Quetzal, called it "lucky day", 'cause it was a low level stuck in the trees and a coincidence tame, proudly flying it to the volcano with an Ankylo in it's grasps and the hour long overencumbered flight back...
I never knew that there use to be metal up there, but I do rememmber the old days of Ark. Like when there wasn't any snow any where and the Mammoths use to live in the Mountains where you can find T. Rexs. And another time before the first ever TCL patch and how some of the creatures never use to look like how they do to this day. Those were the good o'll days.
My most favourite memory from ARK back in the day was living on herb island and having a small village with my friends and taming absolutely every new creature we found. I miss those days.
I remember playing on this map as a complete noob, not knowing anything, limited exploring because I was too afraid. It's crazy seeing it again and how much I forgot over the years.
I was playing back in 2015 early access when it was first released so I can answer some of your questions plus a few bonus facts. 1. Not all the caves were present back then. The crawling cave in ice biome was not ice. The hard cave in ice biome was added very late, you can still tell on current map that it was placed in as the ice looks different. 2. No survival of the fittest area was never in the map. SotF was also added much later. 3. There weren't very many variety of Dino's back then, like 20 or so. Just your typical 1995 Jurassic park variety. 4. Mammals could not breed. Only egg layers for several years. 4. There were no bosses to fight. I remember it was a big deal when the broodmother was added. I stopped playing before alpha and there was no dragon or Tek cave still at that point. Started playing again when Abberation was released cuz it looked cool and wanted to check it out.
Yeah, but even breeding was about four months after it came out! I really miss those times, where taming dinos was hard, farming was hard, everything was hard. When you had to try to survive, instead of now when everything is easy as pie.
@@bakeroLJ yeah, it was insane compared to today! Leveling was A LOT harder too, I logged on a official server like a couple of months ago and gathered up my inventory full of fiber in like 10 minutes, layd down and created cloth hats afk until my fiber was used up, came back and was like lvl 60-70. I just laughed at the game, closed it down and uninatalled it again 😂
@@SirWhitez Yeah, I recently played the game until both scorched earth and the island where done on singleplayer with 0,2 on xp, gathering and taming. But you can only play alone if you don't buy a server and I have no friends that play ARK anymore. But thanks for the tip man! :)
This was Ark at it's finest. The freaking nostalgia that this brings up is insane. Despite all its bugs, Ark was an awesome adventure and I'm glad that I got to meet so many awesome survivors. I hope that Ark 2 can do the same.
I started playing before snow was introduced. I remember Berry taming a level 80 Trike and just roaming the whole map with it. Pvp was in its infancy still so most people weren’t very good. You could get away with so much back then. I have such fond memories of those times. The alpha tribe on our server were the first to tame a quetz and take it to the volcano. Everyone went up to see it. We all couldn’t believe how much metal they were taking at once. I sort of miss those simpler times…
Man, I remember our tribe finding out that the weight of the anky wasn't taken into account if you were on the platform saddle, so we built a structure with a ramp so that the anky could get over encumbered as fuck and keep mining metal, obsidian, and crystal on top of the volcano
@@Goonsquad1149 lol yeah that was the start of mega-tribes and multi-world tribes. Also until that moment bases had like 10-20 turrets. That one exploit changed the whole game. They even had to block travel between maps to stop those chinese invasions which also started ddos wars atc..... that update was so fucked up
This took me back! The excitement of the red woods and swamp coming out and being there when it arrived was awesome. Sadly after the honeymoon phase we realized red wood and swamp was hell🤣.
@@AlexEatsCats I still remember wandering in that Forest when the update first dropped and going "what an awesome place" and then immediately getting butt fucked and said nope I'm out all I can think of are those stupid little dinosaurs that knocked you off your mount
@@AlexEatsCats i still have a ptera lost in the swamp on my original save of the island. Its name is Crush, like Orange Crush soda, based on the colors. That was back when we could actually up the flier speed lol
@@jeremiahfyan God I love and hated that change, PvP it was a god send but PvE it hurt bad. Sometime after that change I decided to play on a vanilla no flyer server and it was probably the best Ark experience I've had on that server.
I remember traveling to the volcano to farm metal. with a group of 20 pteras cause I was ptera crazy and didnt had set foot into argy territory yet.. I was dumb but i had pteras and i loved them and I always ended up losing some to the render distance and flying speed on the way back home x)
Nag man, don't hit me with that nostalgia, before vulcano was home of the tek cave, bafore there were alpha beta and gamma rankings, before redwoods were a thing, ah those were the days, of course I like ark way better now its a lot bigger game with an amazing story but this brings back some old memories
I remember when the redwoods was coming and it was new and exciting. The OG volcano was the spot to get metal. You also had to swim for oil because the rocks didn't exist in the snow.
2:25 There, right there, that little isthmus on the left, that's where my and my brother's first base was; a pen around the isthmus and a base attached. We built around a tree and a jerk cut it down (jerk). It was actually a spawn point and someone spawned in our pen, couldn't get out, and left the server. :( We felt bad. Had to abandon it just before they added the ice biome. Actually remember I quit because I tamed a carno and it ran off a cliff into the ocean, and they hadn't added dino swimming yet so it fell like a stone and drowned. :( Good times.
My favorite memory from the early days of The Island is that it introduced me to gaming. I had just gotten engaged to my partner who loved video games, but I had never been allowed to play them growing up. I thought it might be fun to play a game together as a couple… even if I was terrible at it, lol. When I saw him running around in ARK, I asked if I could split screen with him and tag along. We’ve been playing it (and other open world survival craft games) together ever since. ^^
I remember looking for crystal on the eastern shores during my very first time playing. Got chased into the lava cave by a Rex on the beach. The good ole days, when Ark would spawn you into the easy zone and you’d get spawn killed by that damn alpha raptor over and over.
I remember when the snow biome got added to The Island :D It's weird to think that such a basic biome was missing back then. I got very lost on official on a Saber once, between the 3 mountains once because everything was green, it was hard to figure out where you were on the map from your surroundings. And no, SOFT arena wasn't in the original official servers map.
I missed on our map how everyone just shared the volcano and one tribe even left high level ankys "for rent" (donation) that you could use instead of flying your own in.
0:23 I always used to build there it's a really good large flat area for building, the good old memories is coming back to me now. I remember taming my first rex back then at the island i was so proud of myself
@@Bobo-q5y9c i mean its easily confusing bc of sotf and well yea ig from yrs ago its easy to have memorys that u think are from ark but are from sotf or so idk XD
Through messing with depot downloads on steam, i can confirm that the SOTF platform was not part of the island. The red peak has remained virtually the same from the start, its a vestige from before the redwoods
Ahh yes. This brings back so many memories. Back before snow biome, redwoods, swamp expansion, tek cave....playing with the giant red borders around the map that were "do not build zones" when they were planning to implement the biomes was so exciting....also at 5:00 I think that was the drop zone in Survival of the Fittest, if I'm not mistaken. The OG of the battle royale genre.
I remember building my first base where one of the swamps was added. Logged on one day to find myself surrounded by swamp so I moved up to that fishing pond where the redwoods would be added. I got pretty unlucky with them adding biomes on top of all my bases.
Wow such memories ...... remember the introduction of each of those biomes ...... boa's were feared more than rexes for a while, one ko'd you and every other one on the map came and ate your sleeping form then camped your loot bag 🤣. Fond memories of exploring the new changes on what must have been one of the friendliest official pve servers ..... 118
I still remember when the redwood biome was added and I went there expecting it would be a nice place to set up in the woods, how I was wrong, although I think the island redwoods are better than any other maps redwood biomes for some reason.
I started playing in Jan '21... literally 1-23... and I feel like I've barely started my journey in Ark. I can't believe how much it's changed. Mad respect for WC, the og players and the modding community for making Ark what it is today. So cool to see the seedling that grew into today's Ark.
I wasn't able to play the OG version of The Island but I definitely remember it from many TH-cam videos. Nostalgia. I plan to play The Island down the road
ARK in 2015 : DAY 50 : Omg the ennemi team has a REX lvl 100 ! how will we stop it ? ARK in 2022 DAY 2 : We only have 2k elements guys !! Who took my Iron man Armor ?
Man, I remember going to Iron mountain when they added the metal nodes! The entire center of the map being taken up by swamp and the removal of iron mountain were the only things that genuinely irritated me!
This really brings me back. So many years of memories and love. Having just played through it again really let's me see the difference. But the one thing that is still the same is the metal in blue ob(red back then) it's just all covered in snow now
This was a fantastic blast from the past! Thx Raas. My favorite og Island memory was me and my buddy trying to set up our first base in the canyon under the metal pillar. Only by the grace of op wooden spike walls did we survive pve long enough to be pvp fodder.
this brought back some memories, my first base was in the peninsula where now is the East Swamp, i also remember when the Broodmother was the only boss, and she would just spawn in the Obelisk itself (no matter wich one), and people would just lure her to a trap, and farm all the chitin in the world xD
8:01 Its so weird to look at the spot i had my first ever base buided. Thinking back and realicing just how many years it has been since is crazy. The game looked so different back then. That location was the best, random cave creatures camping outside the base and random flying megalodons beaching themselves to the beach, always fun sight to see
Oh man, Raas. I started playing Ark on PC in about November of 2015. Right after the compy was added to the game but a bit before the redwoods were added and the first new creature added after I started was the oviraptor, which one got stuck in my hut and I was afraid it was aggressive. I miss the feeling of adventure in playing ark back then. When it was this primitive, mysterious world. I remember being new, my friend giving me a Doed and getting lost in a forest with it on the island in my first week playing and being like 'I AM GONNA DIE!!' Back when the battle music played even if you punched a parasaur. When the only good way to get cementing paste was going into the swamp (which was there by then) on your frog and killing bugs, before beavers and especially kapros. Those were the days, thanks for the nostalgia!
5:30 ooo boy that spot, the area you were looking at before you turned, I remember that spot being a super high traffic zone, soooo many critters there
I loved the island when I started but now with all the new maps… yeah you know. But every time I go back to the island I just feel the joy I had 6 years ago
Cant forget when me and my tribe got our first longneck, and to test it we called one of our naked guys over from his stone hatchet farming and blew him away. Legendary moment, the Island is still my favourite map and I wish people played ark like they did back when we were all bobs :(.
I joined about a month before center came out, and I miss some of the old areas like the OG volcano. I played on a server and beat my friend using that as my alpha spot.
I started playing in 2017. Until now I thought the volcano was always like that and never knew there was once no snow this is very interesting to see how the game looked in the past.
I remember the heartbreak I felt when I bred my first pair of dodos and the baby just straight up died even though I was trying to feed it. And the hours/days you had to spend guarding your unconscious soon to be tame....and you'd either get killed by environment or you and your tame got merc'd by hostile dinos
Man. The volcano. That really hits me. In the middle of my ark frenzy I was in only 1 tribe that ever claimed it and all its metal. Every new restart (server reset every 3 to 4 weeks for fun) we never managed to claim it again.
that's a nice trip down memory lane. also, there was NO SOTF arena haha, that must be how they got the OG map - SOTF was never updated past the initial island. I remember when they added the snow. I was on official still and you had to make trips in and out of the snow to kill things that would get you fur because beavers and other animals that give it in the warm area weren't in the game yet XD
I still remember one of the first people I ever watched play ark made a massive base at the location at 3:06, and then had to spend 3 episodes moving everything when they announced that that area was changing to a snow biome so everything in that area would be wiped. I can’t remember the channel, and I was subscribed on an old account I’ve now lost. If anyone sees this and remembers a similar thing, please tell me.
I remember back in the day there was only 1 boss the broodmother and only 1 difficulty for it. And you could easily kill it will 1 spino and some longneck rifles (spinos got added not long after the games release and were super op)
aww man, the feels! I remember living by that river leading to the blue ob. There was a spino up river and we got it stuck on some rocks (their AI didn’t make them run back and forth at the time so it was only ever trying to get to us) and shot it full of tranq arrows with our bows and it took several trips back home to get all the narcotics. I still have some screenshots. good times, good times
I remember when the snow and swamp came out. I was so hype for direwolves. Also, the survival of the fittest arena was not on the regular map, this mod is a port of the survival of the fittest map. In actuality it was the same mountain that's in the redwoods now
I still remember my friends and me playing on official servers only, taking days of farming to build a somewhat decent metal base, only to discover unofficial servers with increased material gathering, taming speeds and everything else and having a blast actually being able to play instead of just farming all the time
This brings back so many memories of the Console grind and Server Wars. Elevating every drop, and guarding the obs. The huge downside was it was extremely easy to undermesh and plenty of cheaters did it.
4:01 The Volcano 10:06 Under water cave are the same as Ark mobile.I think they should update Tek cave Larva at Volcano and Update underwater cave like Ark PC.
I remember the first time, they updated terrain. At least one person ended up with a base, stuck under terrain. There was no green/red barrier warning anyone. That was imolemented after everyone freaked out.
I remember when the top of the volcano was the best place to farm metal and obsidian (after the snow was added), and on some servers someone had placed community industrial forges for anyone to use around the top. You had to be quick when using them since everyone was always flying there, didn't wanna get attacked while in your menu. Lol, the good ol days of ark
I feel so old watching this, When I first played Ark it was on my Xbox One and I loved it so much.. This definitely has bought back so many memories. I haven't played it for a while now, I think the last time I played was when Aberration DLC came out..
This brings me back to when my older brother introduced me to this game. The excitement. The wonder. Running around absolutely lost in a forest pitch black because I hadn't earned a torch from him yet.
I’m impressed on how good the game looked back when, but a tad bit disappointed that it didn’t change too much from then. I hope that Ark 2 will look amazing tho and with the trailer for Ark 2 I have my hopes high!
wel uhm u say that it looked good but if u were there its worse than it was in the mod raas showed but there ofc were also way more glitches at that time
dont have to high hopes... i jused to play al ot of ark but stoppet a fiew years ago...as far as i know they never fix, finished or polished the game. And now they just bring out a secon one....seemes like greed to me. At leats to me it always seemed like thy would make amazing trailers, hipe up everyone and in the end every dlc broke the game furter and furter
Took me back in time! Wow it's been a long time since I played on the OG map. Yes I still play Ark all these 7 years latter and I see no chance of myself stopping. Thank you for showing the OG map and I did and do remember playing on the Island map PvP ...
If all of you want to get close without mods: change the build to "timecapsule" it sets the game to one of the earliest builds before redwoods and biome changes. Caves even dont have dinos half the time.
There was something truly special about hearing what new dinosaurs were coming and reading up about them in preparation. Diplocaulus, Tuesotuthis, Thylacoleo, Yutyrannus... I learned so much more about paleontology than I would have otherwise. I remember I was still in High School the summer the Redwoods were announced and when the volcano got its lava. That's what is so magical about early access I think. There's something truly special about knowing that the game you're playing is going to keep getting bigger and more fleshed out as you play. Yeah, the bugs are a mess and sometimes it screwed with your base if you were unlucky, but then you'd be greeted with new mechanics and tames and stuff. The only time I ever played on a public server was when they added leeches and swamp fever, and the entire eastern coast of the Island was dotted with quarantine colonies and groups of healthy people dug in trying to fight off this new disease. Back then it all seemed so much scarier. And then there was Scorched Earth and all the contraversey surrounding it. Fantasy creatures? Paid DLC on an Early Access game? We made such a big fuss about it, but it just feels so normal now. But it was that pleasure of seeing this little project grow into a rich experience that really did it for me those years ago. I think that's why I find Star Citizen so fun nowadays; it gives that same kinda experience where you watch the game grow around you as you play. Just like ARK, you have people calling it a waste of money, that the company is greedy and trash, etc. But as the years go on and as the project grows, more people embrace it and come to realize how fun it is as it becomes more and more like an experience they'd enjoy. I love Early Access so much guys. Anyway, thanks for listening to me nostalgia-ramble.
7:42 my tribe was set up on the ground level close to the river and we had a massive pen covering most of the area for dinosaurs. kind of feel like going back there and seeing if i can still build there.
I miss running around killing alpha raptors on foot. When there was like 5 Dino’s lol. Omg I remember seeing a behemoth gate and I was like WTF lol. Good times, staying up like 9 hours to tame a giga and a quetz. Prime runs to my friends. Big time hustling lol. So many good memories.
Thanks for sharing this. I remember this map, played in there for a year and yes the red obelisk was a dominated location by alpha tribes and also the big flat ground on top of the mountain too.
I've only been playing for about two years, but my fondest Island memories were with my very first Argy I named Luna. She was pretty much my main mount. Lost her and a bunch of my original dinos to a transfer glitch. I found a female Argy that looks exactly like her on Gen 2, so I gave her the same name. I had also tamed another Argy along with the original Luna (I was very proud about catching two birds) but a Titanosaur stepped on it. I still have their children fortunately.
i remember the first time i played ark in 2016 i joined a random sever and made a thatch hut , now every time i play ark i get those vibes and it feels so great
Ah the redwoods update. I still remember my wife and I finishing a base at the pond and being pretty damn proud of ourselves. First base and a great location visually, about a couple weeks later they show the border for the redwoods update. Followed by several days of packing up dozens of dinosaurs to move to a safe spot as well as breeding cargo bears. Funny enough one of the few things that hasn't changed is just how badly animals are when it comes to pathing and following.
The survival of the fittest thing was never there, and the skylord cave was rocky back then. I started playing in Christmas 2015 on the xbox 1. It hits so hard realizing this game is 7 years old. I can't believe that the "new stuff", like the redwoods and expanded snow biome have been around far longer than the "OG" areas that are long gone
i remember beta, had my Large Wooden base with 30 of each dino out to make all the different dino kibbles when they came a thing. Was a harder time to play but was fun. must ad the pc screamed more back then too lol
I remember going into an underwater cave for the first time on The Island when it first came out, was the scariest thing cause you had to swim your dinos down lol
I remember when they had just added snakes to the game. I had my little stone house on the East and was piking ants for chitin because there was no dams for cementing paste yet. When beavers came out we went swamp diving and got blown away by how much paste there was (like 900 in some) then they nerfed it. I remember getting my first red ascendant rocket launcher. I remember getting wiped by the alpha who had a turret quetzal that would patrol the skies on server 425
My Lord it's good to see the classic map, you're right the strong, cunning, and brute caves are not there because they were patched in later after the obs moved and other 2 bosses were added. All of the other artifact caves didn't have any fancy structures or ruins, they were just standalone artifacts in loot crates so unless you knew you thought it was gonna be loot lol
i still have 100s of hours of footage from my ark addiction days on official pvp server 1. from release day one and on for about 2 years. those were the days. so chaotic. raiding was so imbalance and broken but it was fun. hope ark 2 releases soon. i miss this type of game so much.
I miss those early days. I remember the first time I played, I was actually scared of the night. Always expecting the worst to come out of the trees and kill me and my tame I spent 8 hours taming. It was brutal on official, I travel for work, so in those early days Id lose my tames and base almost everytime I went away.
I have been watching ark since 2015 but I didn’t have a device powerful enough to play it until early last year and I have adored this game and it’s community the whole time
I started playing ark about 3 or 4 days after it came out in early access... before crossbows, before fall damage (And when it was implimented falling .5 inches and almost dieing), before many many dinos, before any of the biomes, before breeding, before mammals had fur, before people grew hair where all men were bald, before bosses I was in school when I saw the first look at the dragon and I LOVED it... I miss it but im happy with how ark is today
The survival of the fittest platfrom wasnt there in the description of the mod the creators says that he just couldnt find anything from this area so he added that in
Great video raas I never played till after the island had changed it's crazy to think that even though I started playing in 2019 that I'm still a newer player so it was great to see how the island use to be
when I arrived on ARK (in 2018) there was already the snow biome on The Island and after that I watched this video, I am incredibly surprise that there wasn't snow, it's incredible of the difference level between 2015 and 2022 !
Nope, didn't start playing until just 3 years ago. I don't even remember the original Argies. I DO remember seeing previews of this game when it came out, and thinking. "Who wants to play a dumb game about dinosaurs?". then one day, I had to sit at the vet's office for 8 hours, so I downloaded it onto my iPad, because I thought "I need something to do for 8 hours". After I got home, and my dog got better, I downloaded it on PC. 6500 hours later ... This was really cool to see it this way, thank you Raasclark!
Been so long since I was on this map that this was what it looked when I played. To me this this seemed more like a video to see whats new rather than whats old
man i miss the good ole days lol the metal spot before the volcano was a thing was the best 💪
Mate it was THE spot. Always passing others tribes farming there when you were 😅
I remember the first time I tamed a Quetzal, called it "lucky day", 'cause it was a low level stuck in the trees and a coincidence tame, proudly flying it to the volcano with an Ankylo in it's grasps and the hour long overencumbered flight back...
yh but the volcano patch was pretty late wasnt it?
I never knew that there use to be metal up there, but I do rememmber the old days of Ark. Like when there wasn't any snow any where and the Mammoths use to live in the Mountains where you can find T. Rexs. And another time before the first ever TCL patch and how some of the creatures never use to look like how they do to this day. Those were the good o'll days.
old volcano is what is there on mobile
never defended well though...
My most favourite memory from ARK back in the day was living on herb island and having a small village with my friends and taming absolutely every new creature we found. I miss those days.
Old Ark. I think "beta island" should be a official map for OGs.
I can get down with that, add in some DLC creature spawns to compensate for the non-existent biomes and without Tek it could be dope!
there is the timecapsule beta branch but not sure how close that is to an official map
God no
It was nostalgia but Jesus christ official server back on this map was the most aids thing I've ever witnessed in any video game.
I think oh cool my computer can run it
I remember playing on this map as a complete noob, not knowing anything, limited exploring because I was too afraid. It's crazy seeing it again and how much I forgot over the years.
I was playing back in 2015 early access when it was first released so I can answer some of your questions plus a few bonus facts.
1. Not all the caves were present back then. The crawling cave in ice biome was not ice. The hard cave in ice biome was added very late, you can still tell on current map that it was placed in as the ice looks different.
2. No survival of the fittest area was never in the map. SotF was also added much later.
3. There weren't very many variety of Dino's back then, like 20 or so. Just your typical 1995 Jurassic park variety.
4. Mammals could not breed. Only egg layers for several years.
4. There were no bosses to fight. I remember it was a big deal when the broodmother was added. I stopped playing before alpha and there was no dragon or Tek cave still at that point. Started playing again when Abberation was released cuz it looked cool and wanted to check it out.
Yeah, but even breeding was about four months after it came out! I really miss those times, where taming dinos was hard, farming was hard, everything was hard. When you had to try to survive, instead of now when everything is easy as pie.
@@bakeroLJ yeah, it was insane compared to today! Leveling was A LOT harder too, I logged on a official server like a couple of months ago and gathered up my inventory full of fiber in like 10 minutes, layd down and created cloth hats afk until my fiber was used up, came back and was like lvl 60-70. I just laughed at the game, closed it down and uninatalled it again 😂
@@bakeroLJ the thing I liked about ARK was that it was hard. It was a challange before, and so every bit of progress was soooooo much more gratifying!
@@djingiskhan4581 you know you can make it alot of harder solo right? you can mess with the settings
@@SirWhitez Yeah, I recently played the game until both scorched earth and the island where done on singleplayer with 0,2 on xp, gathering and taming. But you can only play alone if you don't buy a server and I have no friends that play ARK anymore. But thanks for the tip man! :)
This was Ark at it's finest. The freaking nostalgia that this brings up is insane. Despite all its bugs, Ark was an awesome adventure and I'm glad that I got to meet so many awesome survivors. I hope that Ark 2 can do the same.
This just about brought a god damn tear to my eye. There will never be anything as good as OG ARK again. Those were the days.
when ark used to be a dinosaur game...
Best game experience of all time
@@Cub__ Easily the best. Nothing will ever top it.
@@SaintNyx for real ima tell my kids about my ark raids
I started playing before snow was introduced. I remember Berry taming a level 80 Trike and just roaming the whole map with it. Pvp was in its infancy still so most people weren’t very good. You could get away with so much back then. I have such fond memories of those times. The alpha tribe on our server were the first to tame a quetz and take it to the volcano. Everyone went up to see it. We all couldn’t believe how much metal they were taking at once. I sort of miss those simpler times…
Man, I remember our tribe finding out that the weight of the anky wasn't taken into account if you were on the platform saddle, so we built a structure with a ramp so that the anky could get over encumbered as fuck and keep mining metal, obsidian, and crystal on top of the volcano
@@Goonsquad1149 lol yeah that was the start of mega-tribes and multi-world tribes. Also until that moment bases had like 10-20 turrets.
That one exploit changed the whole game. They even had to block travel between maps to stop those chinese invasions which also started ddos wars atc..... that update was so fucked up
This took me back! The excitement of the red woods and swamp coming out and being there when it arrived was awesome. Sadly after the honeymoon phase we realized red wood and swamp was hell🤣.
Ive lost so many dinos to the red woods when first came out 😖
The red woods was and still is amazing, and the swamp was and still is absolutely terrifying. 😳
@@AlexEatsCats I still remember wandering in that Forest when the update first dropped and going "what an awesome place" and then immediately getting butt fucked and said nope I'm out all I can think of are those stupid little dinosaurs that knocked you off your mount
@@AlexEatsCats i still have a ptera lost in the swamp on my original save of the island. Its name is Crush, like Orange Crush soda, based on the colors. That was back when we could actually up the flier speed lol
@@jeremiahfyan God I love and hated that change, PvP it was a god send but PvE it hurt bad. Sometime after that change I decided to play on a vanilla no flyer server and it was probably the best Ark experience I've had on that server.
I remember when I waited forever for the redwoods update, this brought me back
I may have started playing in 2018, but Ark was my favorite game to watch in 2015. The original map, UI, and sounds are really nostalgic
same here
All I watched back then was Sl1pg8r. Very fun times.
same
I remember traveling to the volcano to farm metal. with a group of 20 pteras cause I was ptera crazy and didnt had set foot into argy territory yet.. I was dumb but i had pteras and i loved them and I always ended up losing some to the render distance and flying speed on the way back home x)
Omg the days of ptery/argy train lag and days of searching for the lost only to give up and find them months later flying high
Pteras were awesome before the nerf, be across the map in no time.
Nag man, don't hit me with that nostalgia, before vulcano was home of the tek cave, bafore there were alpha beta and gamma rankings, before redwoods were a thing, ah those were the days, of course I like ark way better now its a lot bigger game with an amazing story but this brings back some old memories
I remember when the redwoods was coming and it was new and exciting. The OG volcano was the spot to get metal. You also had to swim for oil because the rocks didn't exist in the snow.
Ah I forgot about the oil grind! 😂
2:25 There, right there, that little isthmus on the left, that's where my and my brother's first base was; a pen around the isthmus and a base attached. We built around a tree and a jerk cut it down (jerk). It was actually a spawn point and someone spawned in our pen, couldn't get out, and left the server. :( We felt bad. Had to abandon it just before they added the ice biome. Actually remember I quit because I tamed a carno and it ran off a cliff into the ocean, and they hadn't added dino swimming yet so it fell like a stone and drowned. :(
Good times.
My favorite memory from the early days of The Island is that it introduced me to gaming. I had just gotten engaged to my partner who loved video games, but I had never been allowed to play them growing up. I thought it might be fun to play a game together as a couple… even if I was terrible at it, lol. When I saw him running around in ARK, I asked if I could split screen with him and tag along. We’ve been playing it (and other open world survival craft games) together ever since. ^^
I remember looking for crystal on the eastern shores during my very first time playing. Got chased into the lava cave by a Rex on the beach. The good ole days, when Ark would spawn you into the easy zone and you’d get spawn killed by that damn alpha raptor over and over.
My first spawn was right next to a carno on a beach. It just ate me.
I remember when the snow biome got added to The Island :D It's weird to think that such a basic biome was missing back then. I got very lost on official on a Saber once, between the 3 mountains once because everything was green, it was hard to figure out where you were on the map from your surroundings.
And no, SOFT arena wasn't in the original official servers map.
I missed on our map how everyone just shared the volcano and one tribe even left high level ankys "for rent" (donation) that you could use instead of flying your own in.
10:52 there is still tons of metal here, its just that the nodes are covered in snow so you don’t notice it much
Wow! Can't believe I missed that
0:23 I always used to build there it's a really good large flat area for building, the good old memories is coming back to me now. I remember taming my first rex back then at the island i was so proud of myself
the sotf arena wasnt in the game
@@tschaiga308 i remember it was
@@Bobo-q5y9c in that case u remember it wrong bc it wasnt
@@tschaiga308 yea i prob remember it wrong it was a long time ago yk
@@Bobo-q5y9c i mean its easily confusing bc of sotf and well yea ig from yrs ago its easy to have memorys that u think are from ark but are from sotf or so idk XD
Through messing with depot downloads on steam, i can confirm that the SOTF platform was not part of the island. The red peak has remained virtually the same from the start, its a vestige from before the redwoods
Thanks for the confirmation 👍
Ahh yes. This brings back so many memories. Back before snow biome, redwoods, swamp expansion, tek cave....playing with the giant red borders around the map that were "do not build zones" when they were planning to implement the biomes was so exciting....also at 5:00 I think that was the drop zone in Survival of the Fittest, if I'm not mistaken. The OG of the battle royale genre.
I remember building my first base where one of the swamps was added. Logged on one day to find myself surrounded by swamp so I moved up to that fishing pond where the redwoods would be added. I got pretty unlucky with them adding biomes on top of all my bases.
Wow such memories ...... remember the introduction of each of those biomes ...... boa's were feared more than rexes for a while, one ko'd you and every other one on the map came and ate your sleeping form then camped your loot bag 🤣. Fond memories of exploring the new changes on what must have been one of the friendliest official pve servers ..... 118
@@darrenl3497 It's because of Titanaboas and troodons that I always have a stack of stimberries or stimulant on my hotbar.
I still remember when the redwood biome was added and I went there expecting it would be a nice place to set up in the woods, how I was wrong, although I think the island redwoods are better than any other maps redwood biomes for some reason.
I started playing in Jan '21... literally 1-23... and I feel like I've barely started my journey in Ark. I can't believe how much it's changed. Mad respect for WC, the og players and the modding community for making Ark what it is today. So cool to see the seedling that grew into today's Ark.
4:30 there it is the holy spot it was soo beautiful
I wasn't able to play the OG version of The Island but I definitely remember it from many TH-cam videos. Nostalgia. I plan to play The Island down the road
ARK in 2015 :
DAY 50 : Omg the ennemi team has a REX lvl 100 ! how will we stop it ?
ARK in 2022
DAY 2 : We only have 2k elements guys !! Who took my Iron man Armor ?
Man, I remember going to Iron mountain when they added the metal nodes! The entire center of the map being taken up by swamp and the removal of iron mountain were the only things that genuinely irritated me!
Having played since day one I'm feeling nothing but nostalgia looking at this
I'm there with you
That SOTF area was a throw back lol 😂 it wasn’t like that on the actual map tho .... ahh mate ur gonna have me rewatching old ark vids
This really brings me back. So many years of memories and love. Having just played through it again really let's me see the difference. But the one thing that is still the same is the metal in blue ob(red back then) it's just all covered in snow now
This was a fantastic blast from the past! Thx Raas. My favorite og Island memory was me and my buddy trying to set up our first base in the canyon under the metal pillar. Only by the grace of op wooden spike walls did we survive pve long enough to be pvp fodder.
this brought back some memories, my first base was in the peninsula where now is the East Swamp, i also remember when the Broodmother was the only boss, and she would just spawn in the Obelisk itself (no matter wich one), and people would just lure her to a trap, and farm all the chitin in the world xD
8:01 Its so weird to look at the spot i had my first ever base buided. Thinking back and realicing just how many years it has been since is crazy. The game looked so different back then. That location was the best, random cave creatures camping outside the base and random flying megalodons beaching themselves to the beach, always fun sight to see
Thank you for this great retrospective video,you just made my day better
You're very welcome 🙂
Oh man, Raas. I started playing Ark on PC in about November of 2015. Right after the compy was added to the game but a bit before the redwoods were added and the first new creature added after I started was the oviraptor, which one got stuck in my hut and I was afraid it was aggressive. I miss the feeling of adventure in playing ark back then. When it was this primitive, mysterious world. I remember being new, my friend giving me a Doed and getting lost in a forest with it on the island in my first week playing and being like 'I AM GONNA DIE!!' Back when the battle music played even if you punched a parasaur. When the only good way to get cementing paste was going into the swamp (which was there by then) on your frog and killing bugs, before beavers and especially kapros. Those were the days, thanks for the nostalgia!
5:30 ooo boy that spot, the area you were looking at before you turned, I remember that spot being a super high traffic zone, soooo many critters there
I loved the island when I started but now with all the new maps… yeah you know. But every time I go back to the island I just feel the joy I had 6 years ago
Absolutely, the nostalgia will always be there for sure.
Cant forget when me and my tribe got our first longneck, and to test it we called one of our naked guys over from his stone hatchet farming and blew him away. Legendary moment, the Island is still my favourite map and I wish people played ark like they did back when we were all bobs :(.
Mate they were the best moments back then
I joined about a month before center came out, and I miss some of the old areas like the OG volcano. I played on a server and beat my friend using that as my alpha spot.
I started playing in 2017. Until now I thought the volcano was always like that and never knew there was once no snow this is very interesting to see how the game looked in the past.
god damn i haven't played this game for years now and most of those things like metal in the volcano is just a normal thing for me
I remember the heartbreak I felt when I bred my first pair of dodos and the baby just straight up died even though I was trying to feed it.
And the hours/days you had to spend guarding your unconscious soon to be tame....and you'd either get killed by environment or you and your tame got merc'd by hostile dinos
I started playing week one and had built my base in a spot that ended up bordering where they put in the snow biome later. Crazy nostalgia.
Man. The volcano. That really hits me. In the middle of my ark frenzy I was in only 1 tribe that ever claimed it and all its metal. Every new restart (server reset every 3 to 4 weeks for fun) we never managed to claim it again.
NO WAY 😆 that 1st base location was OUR 1st base location haha ahh the nostalgia
that's a nice trip down memory lane. also, there was NO SOTF arena haha, that must be how they got the OG map - SOTF was never updated past the initial island.
I remember when they added the snow. I was on official still and you had to make trips in and out of the snow to kill things that would get you fur because beavers and other animals that give it in the warm area weren't in the game yet XD
5000 hours later and i still love this game in all its soul destroying, mind numbing, glitchy glory
I love how he mentioned
Are boy Syntac 😊
I still remember one of the first people I ever watched play ark made a massive base at the location at 3:06, and then had to spend 3 episodes moving everything when they announced that that area was changing to a snow biome so everything in that area would be wiped. I can’t remember the channel, and I was subscribed on an old account I’ve now lost. If anyone sees this and remembers a similar thing, please tell me.
I remember back in the day there was only 1 boss the broodmother and only 1 difficulty for it. And you could easily kill it will 1 spino and some longneck rifles (spinos got added not long after the games release and were super op)
aww man, the feels! I remember living by that river leading to the blue ob. There was a spino up river and we got it stuck on some rocks (their AI didn’t make them run back and forth at the time so it was only ever trying to get to us) and shot it full of tranq arrows with our bows and it took several trips back home to get all the narcotics. I still have some screenshots. good times, good times
I remember when the snow and swamp came out. I was so hype for direwolves. Also, the survival of the fittest arena was not on the regular map, this mod is a port of the survival of the fittest map. In actuality it was the same mountain that's in the redwoods now
I remember playing this game when it 1st hit the scene....man this takes me back and really shows just how much this game has evolved since 2015
1:30 Those terminals are still on the Center
I still remember my friends and me playing on official servers only, taking days of farming to build a somewhat decent metal base, only to discover unofficial servers with increased material gathering, taming speeds and everything else and having a blast actually being able to play instead of just farming all the time
A little thatch hut that took a whole day to gather materials.
This brings back so many memories of the Console grind and Server Wars. Elevating every drop, and guarding the obs. The huge downside was it was extremely easy to undermesh and plenty of cheaters did it.
4:01 The Volcano 10:06 Under water cave are the same as Ark mobile.I think they should update Tek cave Larva at Volcano and Update underwater cave like Ark PC.
I remember the first time, they updated terrain. At least one person ended up with a base, stuck under terrain. There was no green/red barrier warning anyone. That was imolemented after everyone freaked out.
I remember when the top of the volcano was the best place to farm metal and obsidian (after the snow was added), and on some servers someone had placed community industrial forges for anyone to use around the top. You had to be quick when using them since everyone was always flying there, didn't wanna get attacked while in your menu. Lol, the good ol days of ark
That’s pretty cool of them, surprising that nobody destroyed them as soon as they were placed down
Oh they never lasted that long lol, at most a week
I feel so old watching this, When I first played Ark it was on my Xbox One and I loved it so much.. This definitely has bought back so many memories. I haven't played it for a while now, I think the last time I played was when Aberration DLC came out..
This brings me back to when my older brother introduced me to this game. The excitement. The wonder. Running around absolutely lost in a forest pitch black because I hadn't earned a torch from him yet.
aw man... the nostalgia... I absolutely loved the way The Island used to be. Still love how it is today
I loved being able to go everywhere in a raft.
I’m impressed on how good the game looked back when, but a tad bit disappointed that it didn’t change too much from then. I hope that Ark 2 will look amazing tho and with the trailer for Ark 2 I have my hopes high!
wel uhm u say that it looked good but if u were there its worse than it was in the mod raas showed but there ofc were also way more glitches at that time
The mod I assume is just putting the original map into the modern game version. Everyone has better graphics cards now :)
@@ChristopherMallonMusic Sorry, I continue with my GTX 970.
dont have to high hopes... i jused to play al ot of ark but stoppet a fiew years ago...as far as i know they never fix, finished or polished the game. And now they just bring out a secon one....seemes like greed to me. At leats to me it always seemed like thy would make amazing trailers, hipe up everyone and in the end every dlc broke the game furter and furter
Took me back in time! Wow it's been a long time since I played on the OG map. Yes I still play Ark all these 7 years latter and I see no chance of myself stopping. Thank you for showing the OG map and I did and do remember playing on the Island map PvP ...
If all of you want to get close without mods: change the build to "timecapsule" it sets the game to one of the earliest builds before redwoods and biome changes. Caves even dont have dinos half the time.
I started playing right after they added the redwoods, damn this game has changed, i still love it
There was something truly special about hearing what new dinosaurs were coming and reading up about them in preparation. Diplocaulus, Tuesotuthis, Thylacoleo, Yutyrannus... I learned so much more about paleontology than I would have otherwise. I remember I was still in High School the summer the Redwoods were announced and when the volcano got its lava. That's what is so magical about early access I think. There's something truly special about knowing that the game you're playing is going to keep getting bigger and more fleshed out as you play. Yeah, the bugs are a mess and sometimes it screwed with your base if you were unlucky, but then you'd be greeted with new mechanics and tames and stuff. The only time I ever played on a public server was when they added leeches and swamp fever, and the entire eastern coast of the Island was dotted with quarantine colonies and groups of healthy people dug in trying to fight off this new disease. Back then it all seemed so much scarier. And then there was Scorched Earth and all the contraversey surrounding it. Fantasy creatures? Paid DLC on an Early Access game? We made such a big fuss about it, but it just feels so normal now. But it was that pleasure of seeing this little project grow into a rich experience that really did it for me those years ago.
I think that's why I find Star Citizen so fun nowadays; it gives that same kinda experience where you watch the game grow around you as you play. Just like ARK, you have people calling it a waste of money, that the company is greedy and trash, etc. But as the years go on and as the project grows, more people embrace it and come to realize how fun it is as it becomes more and more like an experience they'd enjoy. I love Early Access so much guys.
Anyway, thanks for listening to me nostalgia-ramble.
7:42 my tribe was set up on the ground level close to the river and we had a massive pen covering most of the area for dinosaurs. kind of feel like going back there and seeing if i can still build there.
I miss running around killing alpha raptors on foot. When there was like 5 Dino’s lol. Omg I remember seeing a behemoth gate and I was like WTF lol. Good times, staying up like 9 hours to tame a giga and a quetz. Prime runs to my friends. Big time hustling lol. So many good memories.
Thanks for sharing this. I remember this map, played in there for a year and yes the red obelisk was a dominated location by alpha tribes and also the big flat ground on top of the mountain too.
I've only been playing for about two years, but my fondest Island memories were with my very first Argy I named Luna. She was pretty much my main mount. Lost her and a bunch of my original dinos to a transfer glitch. I found a female Argy that looks exactly like her on Gen 2, so I gave her the same name.
I had also tamed another Argy along with the original Luna (I was very proud about catching two birds) but a Titanosaur stepped on it. I still have their children fortunately.
i remember the first time i played ark in 2016 i joined a random sever and made a thatch hut , now every time i play ark i get those vibes and it feels so great
Ah the redwoods update. I still remember my wife and I finishing a base at the pond and being pretty damn proud of ourselves. First base and a great location visually, about a couple weeks later they show the border for the redwoods update. Followed by several days of packing up dozens of dinosaurs to move to a safe spot as well as breeding cargo bears. Funny enough one of the few things that hasn't changed is just how badly animals are when it comes to pathing and following.
The survival of the fittest thing was never there, and the skylord cave was rocky back then. I started playing in Christmas 2015 on the xbox 1. It hits so hard realizing this game is 7 years old. I can't believe that the "new stuff", like the redwoods and expanded snow biome have been around far longer than the "OG" areas that are long gone
Thanks for confirming 🙂
So many fucking memories....
i remember beta, had my Large Wooden base with 30 of each dino out to make all the different dino kibbles when they came a thing. Was a harder time to play but was fun. must ad the pc screamed more back then too lol
I remember going into an underwater cave for the first time on The Island when it first came out, was the scariest thing cause you had to swim your dinos down lol
I remember when they had just added snakes to the game. I had my little stone house on the East and was piking ants for chitin because there was no dams for cementing paste yet. When beavers came out we went swamp diving and got blown away by how much paste there was (like 900 in some) then they nerfed it. I remember getting my first red ascendant rocket launcher. I remember getting wiped by the alpha who had a turret quetzal that would patrol the skies on server 425
My Lord it's good to see the classic map, you're right the strong, cunning, and brute caves are not there because they were patched in later after the obs moved and other 2 bosses were added. All of the other artifact caves didn't have any fancy structures or ruins, they were just standalone artifacts in loot crates so unless you knew you thought it was gonna be loot lol
The old ark feel the hud and everything should be a chose able option because I really like that look. I Never got to play it but I was watching vids
i still have 100s of hours of footage from my ark addiction days on official pvp server 1. from release day one and on for about 2 years. those were the days. so chaotic. raiding was so imbalance and broken but it was fun. hope ark 2 releases soon. i miss this type of game so much.
The memories, the music, that feeling of fear of the unknown turned to terror the first time a carno chases you…..good times.
I miss those early days. I remember the first time I played, I was actually scared of the night. Always expecting the worst to come out of the trees and kill me and my tame I spent 8 hours taming. It was brutal on official, I travel for work, so in those early days Id lose my tames and base almost everytime I went away.
Red ob (Blue ob now) still has the same amount of metal. It's just snow covered.
Favorite first memory was thatch hut on official pve located in redwoods. Very Bob of me. 8)
this takes me back. I remember when the crossbow wasn't even in the game yet. still feels like yesterday the crossbow was just added.
I have been watching ark since 2015 but I didn’t have a device powerful enough to play it until early last year and I have adored this game and it’s community the whole time
I started playing ark about 3 or 4 days after it came out in early access... before crossbows, before fall damage (And when it was implimented falling .5 inches and almost dieing), before many many dinos, before any of the biomes, before breeding, before mammals had fur, before people grew hair where all men were bald, before bosses I was in school when I saw the first look at the dragon and I LOVED it... I miss it but im happy with how ark is today
The survival of the fittest platfrom wasnt there in the description of the mod the creators says that he just couldnt find anything from this area so he added that in
Cheers mate! As per the vid I did find it a bit off
3:36
Me and my brother grabbing metal on runs, 4 or 5 trips with our Argys. Nice
Great video raas I never played till after the island had changed it's crazy to think that even though I started playing in 2019 that I'm still a newer player so it was great to see how the island use to be
when I arrived on ARK (in 2018) there was already the snow biome on The Island and after that I watched this video, I am incredibly surprise that there wasn't snow, it's incredible of the difference level between 2015 and 2022 !
That volcano flat was the first base I built in pvp with my tribe. What a time, miss those days fr
Nope, didn't start playing until just 3 years ago. I don't even remember the original Argies. I DO remember seeing previews of this game when it came out, and thinking. "Who wants to play a dumb game about dinosaurs?". then one day, I had to sit at the vet's office for 8 hours, so I downloaded it onto my iPad, because I thought "I need something to do for 8 hours". After I got home, and my dog got better, I downloaded it on PC. 6500 hours later ... This was really cool to see it this way, thank you Raasclark!
and this is actually so nostalgic it's crazy brings back so many memories
Been so long since I was on this map that this was what it looked when I played. To me this this seemed more like a video to see whats new rather than whats old