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. "

Comments

All I can say is . . .

[Seumas]

WoW!

Re:Server software

[Quarters]

What an incredibly short-sighted comment. Turbine makes online game technology and online games. They have two (soon to be one) products running and two more in development. There is no way Turbine wrote a new server system for each of those games. All four of those games have servers that share a codebase to a certain degree. If Turbine open sourced the AC2 server code base they would be, in one fell swoop, giving away a huge part of the value of their company and giving nefarious players the roadmap to cause havoc on their running and future games.

Bonus Dev comments

[grimwell]

From a thread on VNBoards.

In Citan's goodbye post he suggest people view the special credits by holding down the Ctrl+Alt keys while clicking the Credits button.

I did this and wow! The team was as cynical and depressed as many of those who complained about the game. You don't want to miss this. If you have access to the game, take a look. You have to wade through a lot of credits before you get to the team comments, but I'm so amazed this is in there. Here is an example from memory...not a direct quote:

"Pissing off players is what we do best. Best to stick to our strengths"

There are many other comments that just vent frustrations.