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. "
It was Microsofts fault that it flopped
It had an enormously successful beta but was down to a few thousand players within 6 months. I'm sure the game set all kinds of records for the fast decline in playerbase
They seemed to have almost no support after launch to fix bugs, add content, or even get the game to a state where it would have legitimately been ready to launch.
I liked the game, but it was completely unplayble for the first 3 months because they couldn't keep the chat servers up, and it had absolutely no end game at all
One of their biggest problem was that AC2 was not a sequel to AC1, they took the world and lore and made a completely different game. This of course completely aliented their existing users. Combine this with the fact that microsoft did almost no advertising at all, and there was no word of mouth advertsing due to their lack of pre-existing fan base.
The game never had a fair chance, and it probably only lasted as long as it did because they didnt' want to admit the game was a flop as they're gearing up to launch their 2 new games, Middle Earth Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online.
Still, I guess it was a good business decision on MS's part to sell it back. Though Turbines real intention was to get back the rights to their franchise.
The AC1 players are pretty worried right now too though. The Dev team got told today that they are being moved back to boston after having been in california for a year or less.
AC1 is getting double xp weekends and even triple majors(good loot) now. AC2 was getting stuff like this before dying. Whether or not it's a sign it's making a lot of the high level players annoyed that leveling up has been made incredibly easy.
[20:36] wwwdot/.dotorg
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'