Slashdot Mirror
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. "
The reason many (most) prefer to solo a majority of the time is that in almost every MMORPG these days, you are required to form complete parties of 5 or more players.
Unless you're gaming for 4 - 8 hour stretches, its kinda inconvenient. 5 - 10 people needing to go to the bathroom, answer phonecalls, eat dinner and go to bed at various times just usually makes grouping downright inconvenient.
Developers in their infinite wisdom (with WoW being the only notable recent exception) didn't usually make 2 man groups or small groups viable for questing or gaining experience.
Requiring that you have every specific role filled in a party (tank, healer, nuker, downtime reducer, buffer) etc and not allowing much flexibility in the group just exarcebates the problem (yes FFXI I'm looking at you.)
I think many enjoy the social aspects of mmorpgs, not necessary meaning playing with other people all the time.
In the same way when back in the day when MUDS were popular, people soloed most of the time, but you chatted almost constantly with everyone else online. To the extent that there were players who just logged in to chat and hardly played at all.
Also aside from PvP, the other form of "competition" in an mmorpg, is for who has the coolest toys, the highest level etc. I think its a legitimate form of competition personally, though its been reduced to who has the most time to spend or has the most unbalanced character build now, more than a show of skill.
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