After being on quite a few private servers here I am back to the point that I am doing single player mainly because people stopped logging into the servers I played on or the servers went offline entirely. So I understand your frustrations here, a few servers started as PVE as well but eventually moved to PVP or PvPvE due to a lot of base crowding and a ton of tamed dinos or plain boredom between the players. Pity as well as some had rather nice communities of folks actually wanting to be helpful and any issues were dealt with by the admins.

I've been tempted to play Ark: Survival Evolved but all the horror stories of "If you're not in a clan, you're screwed" are putting me off.

I get you. I feel that strongly about trying to find a new MMO to get into that has fun combat, crafting, and maybe an optional housing/farming system. PVP just isn't my cup of tea and the idea of messing with or being messed with is something I just can't be okay with.

I have a strong fear of dinosaurs, but I thought maybe it wouldn't be so bad in game since crafting and resource gathering is one of my favorite things to do. But man, the mobs are scary for me and trying to play without a dedicated server is awful, especially since if the host dies, I get teleported to them then it's just a loop of dying to the things or the environment. x wx;

If you happen upon a PVE server, me and my sweetie may be interested at some point too. ; u;

I really want to play this game, but I have to save-up for a whole new computer that can handle it. :(

I mostly play singleplayer, to be honest.