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Turbine Expansions And Turnovers
According to Gamespot Asheron's Call 2 players don't have long to wait before the "Legions" expansion will find its way to store shelves. The content expansion for the graphics intensive game went gold this week. Players of the original Asheron's Call will have to wait until this summer to enjoy their new content, as the expansion has been pushed back for further testing and refinement. Additionally, MMOG industry veteran Jessica Mulligan used the expansion announcements as an opportunity to mention her departure from Turbine. She hasn't publicly stated a reason for her departure, saying only that the decision is unrelated to the expansion titles. Gamasutra has an interview with Ms. Mulligan about the state of the industry up from last week. From the Gamespot article: "Legions will include a new continent, called Knorr, which will increase the size of the Asheron's Call 2 world by 30 percent. Also included in this expansion pack are new playable races (one of which is the much maligned Drudge), three new prestige classes, more than 100 new quests, and 10 new monster types."
Try Guild Wars. It's not REALLY an MMORPG, since after you party up, the game creates an instance of a map section for your party only, no more "kill stealing" or such non-pvp annoying things people do to eachother.
It doesn't have this "time-wasting treadmill cycle", simply by capping the level at 20. You don't waste time "levelling", but rather in doing "quests" and gaining new skills.
The game is pretty analogous to playing a game like Magic: The Gathering, since the skills are pretty balanced, and the outcome of battles depends not on how much time you wasted "levelling", but rather on how good you play your skills strategically.
Oh and there's no monthly subscription.
^_^
The thing is, Turbine's future is not tied into Asheron's Call. Turbine is developing Dungeons and Dragons Online, and the D&D brand name has the potential to catapult them to the top of the heap if they can make a good game. By no means is the brand a guarantee of success - but it is a guarantee of attention. If the game's beta picks up good buzz, I wouldn't at all be surprised to see DDO enter the market with 250k subscribers.
This has no bearing on your criticism of AC at all, but as far as Turbine, DDO is their future, not AC.