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. "

at least we have asheron's call

At least we have the first Asheron's Call which is going quite well right now.

Nietzche...

Well, this didn't kill Turbine, hopefully they learned from this and are stronger as a result (despite it being a rather expensive lesson).

Game box

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

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.

They should have gone out with a bang

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....

....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

Real Life: much more vivid than a MMORPG

Urgh.

This rather makes me think these guys need a life. I don't know, meeting on a virtual mountain with your virtual friends (probably people you wouldn't even feel comfortable sitting next to on a bus)?

MMORPG's just feed of people's loneliness. Most players would probably better off investing the money into their real life.

sekai no hate

It was the end of the world, sekai no hate. (Sorry, just finished the finale of Revolutionary Girl Utena.)

Really rather touching. While the world was virtual, the relationships were not. If reality really is mostly what's in your head, then the end of AC2 really was the end of a world. Hmmm, there's gotta be a good story in there somewhere.

more games

well it might be on http://www.shareware54.com/category.asp?category=G ames [shareware54.com] beside they have 10% discount on software if you use there buy now link

AC2

The four remaining subscribers will now have to find something else to do.

In other news, Anarchy Online today announced that it received a glut of new subscribers after the closure of Asheron's Call 2.

Another site's coverage

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

The End Begins (And Ends) [killtenrats.com]

It really can be a sad moment

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.

What the hell is GameTab?

and why does it bring the Kotaku link up inside the GameTab window? Lame.

The only level 150 to ever play the game...

I knew at the time when I was all of a sudden catapulted to level 150 (Due to a bug in the game) that I would be the one and only player to ever hit that level. My name was Serla on the PvP server. And what a day it was when I hit that level. Every one on the server tried ganging up and killing me. Which was probably more eventful then this lame ending!

So how about a class action suit?

I don't play AC2, but I wonder if the people who paid $60 retail can file a class action suit against Turbine now...after all, they paid for the box and expected the service and now the publisher has decided it doesn't want to provide the service any more, so perhaps they should get their $60 back.

So then be skeptical about D&D online

Turbine is behind the upcoming D&D online.

The company that backs an MMO seriously makes a difference. I now lump Turbine into the same camp as Sony (SOE). They are both companies that don't take their userbases seriously.

SOE screwed the Star Wars Glaxies (SWG) fanbase by pretty much cutting out half of the things that made SWG fun, and hardly giving the existing base warning.

The executives that run these companies are out of touch with the gamers that play their games. At the very least with Asheron's Call 2, they should allow someone else to run the servers. People invest their lives into these games. If you spend more than 80% of your waking hours, for example, playing these games, then you take them just as seriously as you do your existence in the real world. These people will work an entire month just to get a pair of rare, magical shoes. And those shoes are just as important to them as they are to someone who saved up to put a downpayment on a new car.

Turbine is behind a new game, Dungeons and Dragons Online. So my reaction when reading this article is I will vote with my dollar, and avoid companies that treat their userbases like crap.