Ark cant load saves after Extinction release

My friend and myself (As well as many others) have been having issues with Ark not being able to load old or new saves since Ark Extinction came out last month, purchased and installed through the microsoft store for crossplay. Not only can old maps not
load, but even trying to save new maps we are required to make a new character every time we load back in or die making single player or don-dedicated hosting impossible..

I have tried moving, renaming, deleting, and restoring old save files, reinstalling the game and all patches, and even reinstalling the live app on my PC.

I myself don't have an xbox one to test on, my friend does. When they load the game from their xbox they can access all their old maps and save data, but can't on their PC. They have tried syncing the data between the systems to no avail, still can't access
it on their PC.

My assumption is that the issue is on Wildcard's side, but despite multiple bug reports with no response, and several posts being made to the Ark forums there has been no acknowledgement by Wildcard that there is even a problem. I know WC's response isn't
in Microsoft's realm to do anything about, but I want to know if this maybe is an issue with Live and not Ark itself.

I would appreciate any response at this point, even if the problem can't be resolved here. But if this isn't resolved soon I will be calling in to request a refund for a broken product.

:)