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Asheron's Call 2 Goes Sunset
In the wake of so many new MMOGs, it was inevitable that one would sink beneath the waves. Turbine's Asheron's Call 2 has called it quits, with a message on the official site stating that AC2 will close as of the end of December. The move comes at a somewhat confusing time, only three months after the release of Legions, the newest expansion for the two and a half year old gameworld. Gamespot has a report as well. The notice on the site reads: "In spite of our hard work and the launch of Legions, AC2 has reached the point where it no longer makes sense to continue the service. We will be officially closing the Asheron's Call 2 service on 12/30/05. Until then, we plan to run live events, but we will not be adding any content or features. We deeply appreciate the many dedicated fans of AC2 who have stood by us over the years. You have our sincerest gratitude. "
I played AC1 a lot during highschool, and occasionally over holidays from college. Everybody who had played AC2 said it was nothing compared to 1.
Glad to hear AC1 is sticking around, though.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
No wonder MS sold it back to them.
They ought to open source (or at least release) their server software so the community could pick up where they left off...
Wow, I wonder how this is going to impact the release of Middle Earth Online.
I was just wondering can anyone recommend any free MMORPGs? I've never really tried any and would be interested to see what all the fuss is about :)
It seems like MMORPG sequels have a rough time. Ultima Online's sequel died in the womb, Asheron's Call 2 had a rough time getting customers and is now dying, and Everquest 2 is near the bottom of the population statistics charts.
Meanwhile, the original games continue to chug along, not gaining new users but also not hemorraging their core fans.
Sequels rarely live up to originals in any medium, but I suppose that effect is amplified in a genre where titles are considered a billable service and "persistence" is the main attraction.
If the game never ends, why would a player pull up the stakes in a game where so much time and effort is invested just to move into a newer, shinier world and start all over? On the other side of things, why would a new player going to join a game that already has the history and culture associated with it?
It's a shame though. Turbine got a lot right with Asheron's Call 1 that hasn't been seen in other MMORPG's since. AC2 was supposed to be the update that filled in all the cracks of that flawed masterpiece. And the next we can expect from Turbine are derivative medival fantasy franchise titles like Dungeons and Dragons and Middle Earth Online.
I was in the beta from very early on, and it was obvious to me back then that AC2 wasn't going to be a success. It just didn't stand out from the other MMORPGs (and compared to DAOC, it didn't shine at all, except on graphics).
What's really been key, though, is that for it's entire life, AC2 has been dwarfed by AC1: itself not a very big game, but it says volumes about the game when you can't even convert a majority of your AC1 players over to AC2.
-EvilMagnus
WoW!
Correct me if I'm wrong (I don't play MMOGs), but isn't this a case of somebody going out and buying a game in a box, only to have it break completely a few months later?
This is the thing I don't like about proprietary software and service-oriented gaming. You aren't in control; they can disappear at any time. Proprietary software because they inevitably aren't compatible with whatever system you'll be running in the future, and service-oriented gaming because the servers can go away due to reasons out of your control.
It would be great if somebody made a server that could support these games after the service has been dropped, but the last time somebody did that, Blizzard sued them for violating the DMCA.
It seems to me that a lot of Slashdotters bitch and moan about DRM when it's applied to their music and DVDs, but quite happily lap it up when it comes to them in game form. Where are all the complaints that you don't really own your digital media when the subject of MMOGs comes up?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Competitive Upgrades.
Give the company running the new game the username/password to your old service, they login and analyse your character/inventory (perhaps in an automated way) and give you starting benifits in their new game based upon what you had in the old, then destroy/delete your character from the old game...
That is so wrong, and such a bad idea, someone is absolutly going to try it.
What I really want is an invite-only MM game, like G-mail, with invites being per-server.
the bonus part being, assuming a basic Everquest style interface, that you can target another player, and rate them Positive or Negative, and your rating, as given by other players, would help determine if/when/how many invites you get, as well as being publicly viewable (I suppose a bit like Slashdot moderations).
while this conflicts with the idea of getting as many subscribers as possible, you would also hopefully get a higher quality of subscribers, with better retention, and maybe lower support costs, due to reduced griefing/exploiting.
it also has a 'Cartmanland' marketing appeal, where the simple fact of it being hard to get in, makes it even more desirable, and if the game is any good, you'll have a nice viral marketing effect, like when g-mail was new, I continually saw message board posts along the lines of 'first 3 people to PM me get invites'
Why don't they open source the servers, or at least release them for public use, and maybe they could still sell the client for a modest fee and still make money off of it. Or sell the server even. Everyone wins. -- Tick! Tock! I'm a clock!
Combat in Asheron's Call 2 consisted of making 2 turrets, then going afk for the next hour. I got 2 max level characters in under a month then quit. Turbine spent no effort on an effective combat system for AC2 as if you fought with anything besides walls and turrets, you just got killed since armor didn't work. The only other effective hunting group besides turrets and walls was mass archers. Mass archers means everyone shoots at the monster, and the unfortunate guy to be attacked just constantly runs away. Picture marine micro in Starcraft where one zealot charges in, you move the one marine away while the rest fire.
Even though Asheron's Call 2 was a failure, I do like Turbine. I'm looking forward to D&D online.
God spoke to me.
I loved AC2. It was beautiful, solo-able, and had plenty of content for the causual player. [i]And Then[/i]... the developers realized "oh, wait a minute -- people are finishing the game in a month... and then they're leaving..." Their answer? "I know! Adding content takes too long, so we'll just make everyone really weak all of a sudden, and give all the mobs more armor and resistance! Then it will take everyone longer to do the same things!"
The fateful day of that "update" to the game was it's death. Things that I was able to solo before, I now needed a group of 5 players to kill. Everyone I know left the game within about two weeks. Most went back to AC1....
the mor-peg bubble went bust! woe! WOE!!
</idiocy>
From what was said by those who have actually played the game, it sounds like the makers of the game pretty much did the game in themselves by using nerf paint with an extra broad brush.
I've not played many MMORPGs myself (just anarchy online and toontown), but it doesn't surprise me too much that at least one well known name has fallen to the wayside. As it is, i couldn't really see playing either of the two games i mentioned for more than a few months. Toontown was fairly original and light-hearted, but the simplicity of the game started to make it repetitive. Anarchy Online is fairly complex, but - try to disguise it as they may - a grind is still a grind (the pretty ones just take slightly longer to notice). By the time i quit, any sort of "role playing" i saw being done in AO could have been done for free in any old chat room.
I played AC2 while it was in beta, I purchased it about 4 months after it went live, I cancelled after about 6 months of play, but I re-subscribed about 4 or 5 months ago. It's a fun game, and it has something for everyone. It never took off because Turbine doesn't know how to advertise, and with WoW and EQ2, it seems dated to any newcomers.
We were hoping Turbine would combine the last 4 servers into one, giving it a decent popultion. With AC1 still running, and their 2 new MMORPG's set to release, it would probably be not the dumbest move. But instead, they pissed off a portion of their fanbase, and killed a game that a lot of work went into. With all the artwork, lore, class balancing, just everything, it really seems like a waste instead of putting the game on the backburner while their other projects launch.
Oh well, I guess I'll join the WoW croud after I come back from my Real Life break from MMORPGS.
The problem with some of these things isn't as much that they're sequels, but that they're not that much fun as a game.
E.g., I just started on EQ2 and I can already tell that WoW is simply a much more fun game.
So maybe it's not that sequels have a hard time, it's that the better games thrive and the worse ones die. Being a sequel to a successful game, or based on a successful franchise can only do so much. But in the end, if the actual game is lacking, it can't save you.
"If the game never ends, why would a player pull up the stakes in a game where so much time and effort is invested just to move into a newer, shinier world and start all over?"
Actually, that happens all the time. Even Sony plans around the average player sticking around for only 6 months or so. Sure, some get bored and leave before even their free month is over, and some go nuts and hang around for 8 years in UO, but the vast majority don't.
So the problem isn't that people never leave EQ1. They had more than a milion that came and left. (Although by now it's probably populated mostly with those that don't leave. They tend to accumulate.) But when they leave, they won't automatically just move to the sequel, and won't automatically stick around if the sequel isn't that much fun.
If Joe Average leaves EQ 1 today, there are a lot more games than EQ 2 competing for Joe's time and credit card. And Joe might as well end up on WoW instead, if that's the better game.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The death of a MMORPG, which is, let's face it, as inevitable as my own eventual death and that of everybody reading this comment (yes, that means YOU) raises a few interesting issues.
By far the most pressing of these concerns virtual property. We've already seen the beginnings of a trend towards legal systems considering in-game items as real property; witness the story we had a few days back about the arrest of an online "mugger" in Japan. Now, if stealing in-game items and cash from a few players is a crime, what does this make shutting down a server containing said items belonging to thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands of players?
Of course, nobody can reasonably argue that a MMORPG could be considered an essential service, like electricity, gas or water supplies. If a developer wants to shut down a game because it is no longer financially viable (or indeed, for any other reason), they should be within their rights to do so, provided they give a reasonable notice period. Before you shout "they should open the source and let people run their own servers", do a little research into the server and bandwidth costs for running a modern, graphical MMORPG (not a text-based MUD).
So what happens if a court decides that players' in-game items have a real monetary value? Are developers forced to "buy" these items off players before shutting down the servers. If this is the case, then I suspect the potential cost would just keep most developers out of the MMORPG business altogether.
This, to my mind, gets to the heart of why online-gaming currencies must absolutely not be given equivalent status to "real" currencies. I know that "real" currencies are "virtual" these days, but there remains an important distinction. The value of "real" currencies in entirely based upon the fact that they are supported by a government, which can be expected to continue to support them in the future, or to make adequate provision to bearers in the event of a change of currency (such as the shift to the Euro in some European nations). MMORPG currency, by its very nature, has no such backing and cannot, to my mind, be considered to have "real" value as a currency.
AC2 was not written for the players. It was written by the developers for developers. AC2 had everything their players didn't ask for any nothing they wanted.
There were many hints of discord among the players of the beta. The end of beta event quickly turned into damage control. Turbine introduced items that benefitted PvP players more than regular players. This immediately alarmed many about what the future would hold. They made quite a few changes to the end of beta event to fix that mistake but it was truly a harbringer too come.
Examples of the hubris.
Having the audacity, though they might have though themselves humorous, to have a PR person bring "books" down from an ivory tower.
Having a world where the cities were essentially monuments to the developers. None of the buildings were enterable. There were no NPCs. The cities all looked wrecked at the start and only improved if people used the crafting facilities. What was funny was there were ruins of some of the older cities from the previous games and you could enter those buildings; granted they didn't have doors but you could still get in them!
Inability to code a decent AI led to giving nearly all MOBs a ranged attack. This happened in beta and stunk to high heaven. What hurt them the most was that most of the mobs were new versions of AC1 mobs - and none of them had ranged attacks so they broke lore because they could not make their new AI work.
Inability to code a decent pathing engine into the new system. This led to the mobs being able to go through many objects AND shoot through them.
Starting the live game with a well known and documented exploit in place. Tyrants were AC2's solution to having Dragons. Unfortunately the model was so large it got stuck on the terrain. People used this throughout beta to powerlevel as even moderately level characters could take down a mob that could not fight back. Turbine was warned over and over about it and how if it went live people would abuse it. It went live and people abused the daylights out of it!
Broken chat at launch. One of the requirements of any MMORPG and it was essentially gone at launch. Half the time you could not even fellowship chat, let alone be heard in a city. If you wanted to chat with people not in your immediate vicinity you used IRC.
Horrible interface. Too many fixed windows and conflicting windows. No real player convienences either. Strange issues with the look of running characters, humans seemed have broken backs on anything but flat surfaces. A combat system that relied on visual cues to tell you when to use your special power yet those cues were lost in the other special effects like frill and fixed objects.
No class balance at launch. It was so bad that it was common knowledge that if you wanted to get ahead you only played a few certain classes. One, the Lugian, had a subclass which could place walls and turrets which allowed the player to literally take a nap and level!
Simple quests. Most were nothing more than finding potions on mobs that made you "horny" to kill other mobs. Really that is how it felt. You drank this potion and suddenly you felt the need to kill 10 of some particular creature. Never mind the fact that half the time that particular mob wasn't anywhere nearby.
Half hearted KvK system. Heavily influenced by DAOC, as in there were even 3 factions, but obviously never thought out. PvP/KvK was a joke from the start. Being heavily level focused PvP was no longer skill oriented when compared to AC1. (in AC1 levels became mostly meaningless after a point, not so in AC2 as there were hidden modifiers based on your level). However the biggest screw up was having non-PvP player forced to go PvP to complete some quests. This led to a lot of grief play as griefers would portal camp.
Vaults. No, these were not player storage, something else that was missing from the game. Vaults were special dungeons that told the story of the game. This was the other major f
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
From a thread on VNBoards.
If the govt becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law, it invites man to become his own law, it invites anarchy
A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, I was asking the same question: "why on earth would anyone want to play a Massively MULTI-PLAYER game solo? WTF is the point of playing it as a Massively SINGLE-PLAYER game?"
When the gods want to punish you, they give you what you asked for. In this case, the MMO gods made me understand. After a couple of months of doing pickup-groups in COH, I ended up with a severe case of misanthropy.
The problem in a nutshell is that functioning as a group is, more or less, like making a watch out of a bunch of cogs. They have to fit together. Throwing together some random cogs isn't always going to work that well.
Some of the random pickup groups I've been in, to borrow someone else's expression, bordered on traumatic.
Some people were just literally unable to function in a group. Some people lacked even the basic skills or clue to play the game at all. (Somehow they had gotten a character to level 50, but didn't yet figure out how tanking works or how EOE attacks work. Did they buy that level 50 character on ebay, or wtf?) And then there were those with a major attitude problem.
At some point I was actually at the point where groups were what got me killed and into XP debt, and soloing was what I had to do to actually repay that debt and eventually level-up. _Literally_.
I know, so I'm supposed to find a group I can play with, and avoid pickup groups, right? Trust me, I thought of that too.
The problem there are the levels. E.g., in COH, by the time my character was level 35, some of my online friends were level 20 (those who weren't as hardcore players as I was), but on the other hand some were already level 50. (Being a teenager on vacation and playing 16 hours a day can have that effect. Even I can't compete with that.)
And then there's another aspect: sometimes I just don't have the time to group, or none of them are online at the moment. E.g., I've been known to play some half an hour in the morning before I went to work. The problem there is that:
1. that's just not enough time to put together a group and do anything meaningful together. I can run bash a few NPCs, maybe even do a quick solo quest, but that's it.
2. it's a pretty crappy time by anyone's standards. The chances of anyone I know being online at that hour, are rather low. Heck, even for grouping with strangers it's pretty bad on games with a low-ish population. (E.g., in EQ2 last time I've grouped in the morning in the newbie area, there were exactly two people there: me and a rogue.)
So any game where you can't solo, is inherently one game I can't play at all in that time slot, or in any situation where I don't have at least half the evening available.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I had to play AC2 as part of a class on Social Issues in Games. The game looks nice, but when I had to do this back in March the servers were pretty much devoid of people (aside from the sudden influx of ~25 people).
I don't think Turbine is too worried though, they're expecting the D&D Online game and Middle-Earth Online game to be much more popular than AC2.
Insert Sig Here
And if it makes any difference, I'm a guy, so I don't think that's the cause there. I don't know about shy and "too sensitive". I figure I'm anything but "too sensitive", but some people just aren't fun to play with.
E.g., the kind of control freak that just has to have everyone do something _exactly_ his way, oh yeah, that one got on my nerves quickly too. Bonus points if his way is all wrong to start with. (E.g., I've grouped with a mage who insisted that he opens the fight with a big AOE attack against a whole company of enemies, and just got mad that everyone else didn't heal him quickly enough after that.) I don't think it's really necessary to be "too sensitive" to get annoyed by that kind of person.
E.g., ending up in the wrong level bracket to group with your friends, that's actually a very common problem.
One game which I've found more tolerable in those aspects, is Planetside. I don't know if you like the genre. It's basically a MMO-FPS. But it doesn't have a lot of the more traditional MMO problems.
E.g., levels in Planetside don't work like in most MMOs. Having more levels in Planetside gives one more flexibility in what mix of equipment they can take, but nothing more. It is certainly possible to contribute your fair share to a level 20 group as a level 1 player.
E.g., "groups" (well, "squads") are a much more loose concept in Planetside. Being in a squad gives you the group chat, which is very useful for coordinating your actions. But for anything else (e.g., xp) just being in the same area/battle is more than enough.
Even as a support character (medic, repairman, driver, etc), you can get the same xp by just going to the nearest battle and healing the people fighting. You don't have to be grouped with them. Or you can drive an AMS or ANT to where one is needed, and get the same rewards whether you're grouped with anyone or not. Or a few other options.
Again, I don't know if it's your kind of game. It's closer to FPS than to a medieval RPG, which also means pure PvP, so it's not everyone's cup of tea. But if you think you can live with that, it might be worth a try.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Someone already mentioned that perhaps they'd release the backend to the public, and while I didn't play AC2, I'd love to see this with some of the MMORPGs I've played.
Not for any benevolent purpose mind you, like setting up a server for people to use for free, but so I could stride like a GOD across those zones I kept getting slaughtered in. Damn you Kithicor! Damn you!! My revenge is at hand!
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
The Throne of Destiny expansion pack relased on July 18. The graphics are updated but not AC2 graphics. Turbine has always stated that it is not possible to run AC1 with the AC2 graphics engine and judging by the difference, I believe them.
So, pick up a copy and try it again. Depending on how long you have been gone, you will notice quite a difference.
What I'd like to see is them release the code and art for these games. After all, they're shutdown - they won't ever make another cent from the game. Might as well sell the code & art to tinkerers like myself for $100 a pop. I might be willing to even go to $200. Its better than just sitting on it.
" What a short-sighted comment this is! If they are going to discontinue work on the AC2 server engine and client then obviously they would be the ones that benefit the most with a GPL license since any community additions and fixes would go back to the company without any cost to themselves. The GPL is good for some applications but not all applications. [cut]"
I'm sorry but the GP has a far better grasp on short sighted than you do. What you are failing to see is that they could not use those changes in their other related servers due to the viral nature of the GPL. [insert]
Apologies for the bad paste. "The GPL is good for some applications but not all applications" should have been added to my paragraph not yours.
It's interesting what the game as evolved into. It is very, very different today than it was during the first 2 years of its life.