As of now it’s already ended, so use local saving for now. Regarding announcements, it’s been mentioned in several channels but it’s understandable a lot of players wouldn’t have seen it. Sorry it took you by surprise.
Thanks to the hard work of some extremely talented developers, local saving allows groups to save and load their data, so it’s not like ALiVE persistence has gone anywhere. It’s just the cost of the DB doesn’t make sense. The mod is free, the team works for free, and donations simply don’t cover the overhead.
I’m hopeful at some stage DB cloud saving can be revisited, but for the time being try out local saving and I think you won’t miss the WR as much as it might feel right this moment.