The Final Moments of Asheron's Call 2

Via Kotaku, the final moments of Asheron's Call 2 in text and images. Highlights include the in-game appearance of a community moderator, and a killable version of a notorious dragon. Then, a lost connection. Gamespot has the story as well. From that article: "Turbine performed a little house cleaning this weekend as it shut down its massively multi-player online role-playing game Asheron's Call 2. Originally released in November of 2002, the fantasy game world met an unceremonious armageddon December 30. As of press time, the Asheron's Call 2 forums were still up for mourning players, and blow-by-blow accounts of the world of Dereth's final moments had started circulating the Web. "

Comments

Game box

[Lord_Dweomer]

So now that this is over, when will these players be getting back the $60 they forked over for the game initially? I mean, you purchase the game and pay the monthly fee, shouldn't there be some sort of guarantee that you can keep playing the game as long as you want?

What's that? There isn't?

I swear, there should be a law that if a MMORPG closes its servers, they open the source to the playerbase so people can create and host their own servers off of it.

I'm so sick of paying for a game that may not exist in the future. Its the same reason why I'd never sign up for a subscription music service.

Re:Game box

[HTH NE1]

I swear, there should be a law that if a MMORPG closes its servers, they open the source to the playerbase so people can create and host their own servers off of it.

It's called the public domain, and it won't happen within your lifetime, nor that of your great grandchildren, nor even within the lifetime of the codebase.

Welcome to the new dark ages as mandated by international copyright law.

Re:Game box

[Breakfast Pants]

Wtf is this tripe? The public domain doesn't require anyone to release the source to their servers after the expired time. They could eschew their copyright right now by announcing that all their server code is now a part of the public domain and unless they were to release the code for people to see it wouldn't mean a damn thing. Trade secrets last as long as you can keep them.

Re:Game box

[Cecil]

Well, public domain is what it becomes. It's actually true that copyright law (used to) require that something become public domain after the copyright period has expired.

Now, I agree it doesn't require anyone to release the source, unfortunately. But what it does do, is allow completely legal reverse engineering, emulation, and cloning. Trade secrets have never been a problem in the software world. bnetd never used any leaked source code, they simply sniffed the network traffic and figured out what it was doing. If copyright ever expired on the Battle.net protocol, then bnetd would be legal.

Unfortunately, copyright can now be extended indefinitely, so this is all a moot point.

They should have gone out with a bang

[Zork the Almighty]

I would have liked to see them go out with a bang. Unleash hordes of monsters into the towns and have the server randomly modify items!

it woulda been nice....

[B3AST!]

....if they went out better than that...something fun for the players, not so sappy

they shoulda turned it all PvP, and each day for like a month they'd continuously add more mobs.....once you died, you're DEAD...no coming back.....no creating new chars. and then finally they'd come up with a final survivor and he'd win something

like...a cake

Re:Real Life: much more vivid than a MMORPG

[Breakfast Pants]

And what exactly is it that you are doing here on slashdot?

Another site's coverage

[Teh Suq]

More coverage of the end of Asheron's Call 2 here:

The End Begins (And Ends)

Re:Real Life: much more vivid than a MMORPG

[Neoncow]

Flaming lonely people who have no lives. What a wonderful world.

It really can be a sad moment

[SmallFurryCreature]

When the time comes to say goodbye to a MMORPG it is more then just uninstalling a single player RPG. Unless the bugs were to bad you will usually have spend some good time with other players getting to know a land.

Most single player games never have this. In fact if in a single player RPG you would still visit the beginner level merchant it would probably be considered a bad thing. Yet in MMORPG land you can really get to know your neighbourhood.

Leaving it can really create a sense of homesickness, a sense of something lost. Of course you know that the game is nothing more then a IRC with pretty pictures and yet it is more.

No MMORPG is any good if it were judged as a single player experience. Combat is simplistic and repetitive with moronic AI. Guild wars is about the only game were I seen proper interaction between AI enemies in that they really know how to use their healers. Even then simple pathfinding is a joke compared to "real" games.

The quests/story are a pale shadow of a single player RPG.

So the only "pull" left is either the level up OR the sense of community.

That community is more then simply chatting online. The MMORPG gives you a common goal to achieve. Chat for days on a IRC channel and you will maybe have made some friends. Play a MMORPG for days and you will have gone to hell and back shared victory and defeat, died and achieved vengeance. You will in fact have done more then most people can do in real live.

Leaving all that can cause a twinge or two. Or perhaps it is just the realisation that with the money you spend you could have bought several single player games.

Those who never played a MMORPG or do not become involved with other players will not understand and that is good. There is a reason we call it Evercrack.

I fear the day that an MMORPG will arrive that does not have horrid framerates and game breaking bugs. When someone invents a MMORPG that is bug free, glitch free, cheat free, lag free and has game play that would not be out of place in the best single player games that is the day I will sign up to be a battery in the matrix. Just plug me in and call me SmallFurryCreature Eater of Rats.

Re:So how about a class action suit?

[Delphiki]

So, if in 2075, World of Warcraft shuts down, the ten surviving people who still play it and don't like the new fangled "beam images directly into your brain interface" of World of Warcraft XII can sue Blizzard? Nowhere on the box of any MMORPG I've seen does it guarantee the service will be available for all eternity, and no thinking person would expect it to be available for all eternity. It's simply not possible.

If I had to pay an installation fee to my cable company, and then they went out of business, could I sue them, too? If I bought a copy of Mac OS in the eighties but now I can't purchase hardware to run it on, can I sue Apple?

Any lawsuit by people who played AC2 and want their $60 back would get laughed out of the courts, unless maybe they bought the game new after it was shut down.

Re:So how about a class action suit?

[garylian]

What possible justification do they have for a class action suit? They paid 60 bucks, but played the game starting in 2002 if they got in at the start, and bought an update in Feb. of 2005. They paid a monthly fee for patches and server uptime, which they are no longer having to pay now that the game is done.

So, 60 or so bucks for a little over 3 years of playing, plus monthly maintenance fees. And more than half the players left prior to the cancelling of the game, because they felt it wasn't worth it. Did they scream for a refund?

Face the facts. There weren't enough players actively subscribing to make it cost effective to keep the game live. End of story.

What is it with /.'ers and their love of crying for a class action suit? I've seen some dumb requests for them, but this one may take the cake. We have enough stupid litigation going on here in the U.S. without this idiocy joining it.