After numerous complaints by players about the ridiculous numbers of Abandoned Homesteads cluttering the central regions of the map, it was the decision of the administrators to conduct a purge of inactive accounts. This purge consists of deleting all player accounts that had been inactive for more than 15 months, and replacing their homesteads with randomly generated new terrain. This event also marked the first appearances of Obelisks on the map, and the creation of hundred of new settlements.
One of the unexpected consequences of the purge was an increased difficulty, particularly for new players, in building up the reserves of Star Cards necessary to complete many missions. This problem was at least partially resolved by the inclusion of Abandoned Homestead search results in a small subset of Ruins searches.