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Role Playing (Games)

Asheron's Call 2 Goes Sunset 94

Posted by Zonk from the cue-taps dept.
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. "
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Asheron's Call 2 Goes Sunset

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  • I played AC1 a lot during highschool, and occasionally over holidays from college. Everybody who had played AC2 said it was nothing compared to 1.

    Glad to hear AC1 is sticking around, though.

    • The game was really bad.
    • All the reviews I saw said that AC2 was extremely streamlined , but wasn't all that compelling to play. No NPCs, you could "sell" unwanted objects no matter where you were, no vendors...
    • I took a free trial of AC1 fairly late into the life of the game, and it seemed to be interesting and fairly well designed.

      Never tried AC2 though, and I'm glad I didn't.

      This isn't real confidence inspiring however, for the company slated to launch Dungeons and Dragons: Online and Middle Earth Online in the near future.

      Looks like I'll be giving those 2 games a wide berth.

      *Presently suffering from MMORPG withdrawal, having quit WoW 4 months ago (60 Orc Shaman) and Guildwars 3 months ago.

      I was eyeing Auto Assa
      • Honestly, I think AC2 was a fluke, and a learning experience for Turbine. They know better now ;) I played AC1 on and off since the public beta, and it is probably my favorite MMORPG (I've played AC1, a little EQ, Lineage II, RYL, Anarchy Online, and that FF mmorpg, FFXI I think it was).

    • Re:Not surprised. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by skreeech ( 221390 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @09:40PM (#13403335)
      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.
      • The Dev team got told today that they are being moved back to boston after having been in california for a year or less.

        Heh.
        Let me translate that for you.

        The Suits have decided that the LA Office was a failure. So they're "moving Live back to Boston". What that really means is they've decided to move the *office* back to Boston. They could care less if any of the LA crew move. If they don't, it just means they wrap AC1 up a few months earlier, or hire a bunch of wetback coders from Brown at half the price f
        • If they kill AC1, consider Middle Earth Online and D&D online as still-borne.

          I won't even think about buying a MMORPG from a company that kills it's game worlds in that short a time (I dont' care about AC2, it was an abortion).

          If Turbine kills Asheron's Call, there's no fuckign way I will ever look at another game they publish.

  • Whoops (Score:1)

    by IIDX ( 873577 )
    No wonder MS sold it back to them.

    • Re:Whoops (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Fo0eY ( 546716 )
      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 absolute
      • I'm not sure how "enormously successful" the beta was. I played it on and off, well tried to, for about two weeks. Almost the entire time the communciation server was down (you couldn't msg other people or talk at all), it would lag out entirely, or the servers would just go down. I don't but other people, but them having such a large open beta that they seemed completely unprepared for is what drove me away. Yes I know it's beta, but if such seemingly basic problems still exist, what do you gain by ope
      • 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

        You must not have been in beta or have a very short memory. There were tens of thousands of people in the open beta because it was free and overwhelmingly they HATED it. There was so much comtempt for AC2 and the problems in the game Turbine/MS all but shut down their forums only allowing positive posts.

        If you define "success" as "lots

  • Server software (Score:2, Interesting)

    by wed128 ( 722152 )
    They ought to open source (or at least release) their server software so the community could pick up where they left off...
    • Incredibly unlikely for two reasons: a) Middleware licensing issues - they likely don't have the legal rights to give certian aspects of the back end away. b) AC2 is a centralized service, I doubt anyone wants to pony up for the bandwidth.
      • It doesn't have to be hugely centralized. Multiplayer games that serve on the order of 8-20 players at a time are at times paid for by individuals (eg. Natural Selection servers, for one, were always player-funded).

        I hear that there are some World of Warcraft personal servers that host some small number of players. Maybe it doesn't suck so much if you had your whole guild on a single server, or something like that.

        • I hear that there are some World of Warcraft personal servers that host some small number of players. Maybe it doesn't suck so much if you had your whole guild on a single server, or something like that.

          As far as I'm aware, these were illegally reverse-engineered servers. From the same group that duplicated Battle.net. (Their name escapes me at the moment). There's been a long legal battle between this group and Blizzard.

          Looked up the name: BnetD [google.com]

    • Re:Server software (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Quarters ( 18322 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @10:07PM (#13403469)
      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.
      • What a short-sighted comment this is! If they are going to discontinue work on the AC2 server engine and client then obviously they would be the ones that benefit the most with a GPL license since any community additions and fixes would go back to the company without any cost to themselves.

        If someone can look at the client and server code and then hack the game then by god it will be fixed faster and more efficiently if everyone in the world is looking at it rather than a understaffed team of bug fixers tha
        • What a short-sighted comment this is! If they are going to discontinue work on the AC2 server engine and client then obviously they would be the ones that benefit the most with a GPL license since any community additions and fixes would go back to the company without any cost to themselves. The GPL is good for some applications but not all applications.

          I'm sorry but the GP has a far better grasp on short sighted than you do. What you are failing to see is that they could not use those changes in their
          • " What a short-sighted comment this is! If they are going to discontinue work on the AC2 server engine and client then obviously they would be the ones that benefit the most with a GPL license since any community additions and fixes would go back to the company without any cost to themselves. The GPL is good for some applications but not all applications. [cut]"

            I'm sorry but the GP has a far better grasp on short sighted than you do. What you are failing to see is that they could not use those changes in
      • What an incredibly short-sighted comment on your part too! Your argument that their closed source must remain this way because they se the same or similar server code for each game and it could lead to hackers/loss of profits is just as lame.

        The fact is that all MMO's basically will go this same way eventually as none of them will continue to be viable for very long. I think what needs to happen is MMO makers need to try harder. Let users run their own servers, it will only help sales... but then make the o
    • They ought to open source (or at least release) their server software so the community could pick up where they left off...

      Why would they want to make free competition for their other current and future games?

  • Dereth was full of wonders. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by DoctaWatson ( 38667 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @08:49PM (#13403087)
    It seems like MMORPG sequels have a rough time. Ultima Online's sequel died in the womb, Asheron's Call 2 had a rough time getting customers and is now dying, and Everquest 2 is near the bottom of the population statistics charts.

    Meanwhile, the original games continue to chug along, not gaining new users but also not hemorraging their core fans.

    Sequels rarely live up to originals in any medium, but I suppose that effect is amplified in a genre where titles are considered a billable service and "persistence" is the main attraction.

    If the game never ends, why would a player pull up the stakes in a game where so much time and effort is invested just to move into a newer, shinier world and start all over? On the other side of things, why would a new player going to join a game that already has the history and culture associated with it?

    It's a shame though. Turbine got a lot right with Asheron's Call 1 that hasn't been seen in other MMORPG's since. AC2 was supposed to be the update that filled in all the cracks of that flawed masterpiece. And the next we can expect from Turbine are derivative medival fantasy franchise titles like Dungeons and Dragons and Middle Earth Online.
    • It seems like MMORPG sequels have a rough time. Ultima Online's sequel died in the womb,

      That is not true. Both UO2 (known as Origin) and UX:O were not meant to be sequals to UO. UO2 was canceled because they finally realized it would canbalize the current playerbase of UO, potentially causing both games to go under. UX:O fell apart after most of the developers working on it did not move to California when their studio was moved. EA decided it would have been too costly to and time consuming to hire and
    • The problem with some of these things isn't as much that they're sequels, but that they're not that much fun as a game.

      E.g., I just started on EQ2 and I can already tell that WoW is simply a much more fun game.

      So maybe it's not that sequels have a hard time, it's that the better games thrive and the worse ones die. Being a sequel to a successful game, or based on a successful franchise can only do so much. But in the end, if the actual game is lacking, it can't save you.

      "If the game never ends, why would a

  • It was obvious from the beta... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by EvilMagnus ( 32878 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @08:52PM (#13403103)
    I was in the beta from very early on, and it was obvious to me back then that AC2 wasn't going to be a success. It just didn't stand out from the other MMORPGs (and compared to DAOC, it didn't shine at all, except on graphics).

    What's really been key, though, is that for it's entire life, AC2 has been dwarfed by AC1: itself not a very big game, but it says volumes about the game when you can't even convert a majority of your AC1 players over to AC2.
    • Biggest problem that AC2 had from my standpoint, they still had the same bugs that made me quit Asherons Call. (my Slashdot tag is my Asheron's Call Character name.)

      I quit Asherons Call because the damned client would crash, my character would run off into the wilderness, and I would die. THis would result in an hours long search for my corpse so that I could get back the equipment that I had lost. Eventually, I decided the hell with it, and stopped playing altogether, since I had become afraid to go anywhe
    • "What's really been key, though, is that for it's entire life, AC2 has been dwarfed by AC1: itself not a very big game, but it says volumes about the game when you can't even convert a majority of your AC1 players over to AC2."

      The same basically holds true for EQ1 and EQ2. Though EQ1 with its numerous expansions is fairly large now.
    • AC2 wasn't trying to convert AC1 players. For one thing it's robbing Peter to pay Paul. For another, the two games aren't the same style and feel.

  • All I can say is . . . (Score:5, Funny)

    by Seumas ( 6865 ) * on Thursday August 25, 2005 @09:00PM (#13403148)
    WoW!

  • Freedom (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bogtha ( 906264 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @09:16PM (#13403221)

    Correct me if I'm wrong (I don't play MMOGs), but isn't this a case of somebody going out and buying a game in a box, only to have it break completely a few months later?

    This is the thing I don't like about proprietary software and service-oriented gaming. You aren't in control; they can disappear at any time. Proprietary software because they inevitably aren't compatible with whatever system you'll be running in the future, and service-oriented gaming because the servers can go away due to reasons out of your control.

    It would be great if somebody made a server that could support these games after the service has been dropped, but the last time somebody did that, Blizzard sued them for violating the DMCA [eff.org].

    It seems to me that a lot of Slashdotters bitch and moan about DRM when it's applied to their music and DVDs, but quite happily lap it up when it comes to them in game form. Where are all the complaints that you don't really own your digital media when the subject of MMOGs comes up?

    • Very excellent points. And to what degree does this same problem exist on consoles, I wonder? I wouldn't know, since I don't own or play any of them.

      Imagine if, back in the day, you found out that you couldn't play Burger Time anymore because Atari had decided it wasn't making enough money or they went out of business and yanked your ability to play it?
      • This is the core reason why I believe that companies who close down a game world should give the game back to the community in some way. That, or the client should be absolutely free and the user solely need to pay for the monthly service.

        For example, even if all the BattleNet servers go *poof* tonight, I can still play Diablo 2 in a local or LAN mode. However if they shut down the EQ2 servers, I am left with nothing but memories pretty much as I and my guild find a new game.

        The developers of AC2 should

    • Re:Freedom (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "It seems to me that a lot of Slashdotters bitch and moan about DRM when it's applied to their music and DVDs, but quite happily lap it up when it comes to them in game form."

      Jesus Tittyfucking Christ! We've been over this! THOSE ARE DIFFERENT PEOPLE!
    • "Correct me if I'm wrong (I don't play MMOGs), but isn't this a case of somebody going out and buying a game in a box, only to have it break completely a few months later?"

      Not an accurate analogy. In spite of your having to keep paying monthly fees (comparable or slightly higher than a price of movie ticket) the amount of time you spend playing (most) mmorpgs numbers into the hundreds of hours.

      AC2 has been around for more than a couple of years. Lets see you get that kind of gameplay out of your latest game

      • Re:Freedom (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Moraelin ( 679338 )
        1. You seem to assume that everyone joined from the start, and got a full 3 years out of it. Which is just false.

        I'm pretty sure it was still on the shelves at EB Games, together with its expansion pack, last weekend. In fact, I almost bought it. (But ended up getting EQ2 instead.)

        I know I'd be a tad pissed off if I bought a game _and_ its expansion pack, and 5 days later someone pulls the plug on it. Not "the sky is falling" kind of pissed off, but still.

        2. I don't think even the "but you got 3 years out o
        • Yep it sucks. However, MMO's are really services, not stand alone games.
          Requiring a standalone server and staff to maintain it is not DRM, it's a fact of how these games work. It would be nice if free server software were made available after a games demise, but it's pretty easy to see why a company wouldn't want to give up it's codebase.
          MMOs also change over the course of their existance, so the style of play changes. You may never be able to play the character you used to in the game. Class changes, game
        • " 1. You seem to assume that everyone joined from the start, and got a full 3 years out of it. Which is just false.

          I'm pretty sure it was still on the shelves at EB Games, together with its expansion pack, last weekend. In fact, I almost bought it. (But ended up getting EQ2 instead.)"

          Ah my apologies then, I didn't realize that people actually bought and started playing 3 year old MMORPGs off the shelf retail. I would never buy into a three year old MMORPG, let alone buy it retail.

          I make it a point to start
          • Nah, I just got the full thing. A couple of co-workers seemed to be thoroughly addicted to it ever since it was released, so I figured, wth, it can't be completely bad then.

            Strangely enough ;) I'm not _too_ far from the same "I'd rather undergo MMORPG withdrawal" conclusion so far. Well, ok, maybe not that extreme. It's not necessarily that it's "bad" as such. It's just that, well, comparing it to WoW, WoW seemed to do just about everything a little better.
    • And what's the alternative for Turbine? You can't force a company to continue to run a service that costs them money. And if you could, who would ever build these kinds of games (or services in any industry for that matter). The risks would be far to high. Whether you understand or appreciate these services is irrelevant. The fact is, there are plenty of people who do. And if you were to mandate to the developing companies that they have no 'out', they'd stop producing them to the dismay of all gamers. No
    • I am betting that they will release the server code when they shut down so that people can still enjoy the game. Fans have a way of keeping these things alive if they want to. Blizzard.net servers are not down...they are alive and supported. So your analogy is flawed. It would be like be running my own WoW server...and yeah, I would probably sue if someone was doing that.
    • Umm...a big part of MMORPGs is supposed to be the community, right? So what if you pay for the game and then the community dwindles away?

      This happens in general communities too--the competitive scene for Tekken 4 is all but dead now, for instance; is this negligence on the part of Namco? What if the key players all stopped doing Super Metroid speed runs and got tired of paying for web hosting the videos. Can you complain to Nintendo? What about how the FFT SCC community is no longer nearly as vogue a

  • Something to try... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kaenneth ( 82978 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @09:41PM (#13403339) Journal
    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'
    • Thats godamn brilliant. Invite only MMo
    • that out of the box thinking is exactly what established game franchises are trying to avoid.

      your example is also not good for the pocketbook of the company running the game.

      i played eq2 for a long time, and slowly it is becoming eq1, since players are dropping like dying flies (me included). they have to make the game funner, rather than designed perfectly. a game with perfect balance and design is very different from a fun game.

      i could be all wrong though. who really cares, they're games. the challeng
    • "What I really want is an invite-only MM game, like G-mail, with invites being per-server."

      The launch of FFXI tried something like this.
      You couldn't pick the server you wanted to go to, and you were randomly assigned to a server with lower populations, to which you pinged lower.

      Your friends who had already started playing however could purchase invites with in-game currency.

      This infuriated many of the hard core gamers initially, as they were forced to repeatedly re-roll characters until they ended up on the
    • Actually, I could very easily see a server in a new MMO that is designated as a "veteran's" server where they do exactly that - give your new character some things based on what your old character had. An inheritance, if you will.

      If the "upgraders" are kept seperate from the characters starting from scratch - like, only allowed on certain designated servers - I absolutely believe there would be a demand for this kind of thing and the complaints from everyone else could very easily be answered with "Well the

  • Asheron's Call 2 wasn't fun (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CrazyJim1 ( 809850 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @10:02PM (#13403441) Journal
    Combat in Asheron's Call 2 consisted of making 2 turrets, then going afk for the next hour. I got 2 max level characters in under a month then quit. Turbine spent no effort on an effective combat system for AC2 as if you fought with anything besides walls and turrets, you just got killed since armor didn't work. The only other effective hunting group besides turrets and walls was mass archers. Mass archers means everyone shoots at the monster, and the unfortunate guy to be attacked just constantly runs away. Picture marine micro in Starcraft where one zealot charges in, you move the one marine away while the rest fire.

    Even though Asheron's Call 2 was a failure, I do like Turbine. I'm looking forward to D&D online.
    • AC2 combat was what you described way back in the early months of its release. The sad thing is that coming after AC1 known for its macroing tolerance (until recently), it was very bad publicity for AC2.

      They killed Tactician camps by nerfing the class and nerfed XP rewards for perching but the harm was done.

      They changed the combat system to be more group-oriented and give room for every class. In the end, it was almost balanced but just too late to regain the lost players.

  • The Ultimate Nerf (Score:3, Insightful)

    by learithe ( 442716 ) on Thursday August 25, 2005 @10:17PM (#13403521)
    I loved AC2. It was beautiful, solo-able, and had plenty of content for the causual player. [i]And Then[/i]... the developers realized "oh, wait a minute -- people are finishing the game in a month... and then they're leaving..." Their answer? "I know! Adding content takes too long, so we'll just make everyone really weak all of a sudden, and give all the mobs more armor and resistance! Then it will take everyone longer to do the same things!"

    The fateful day of that "update" to the game was it's death. Things that I was able to solo before, I now needed a group of 5 players to kill. Everyone I know left the game within about two weeks. Most went back to AC1....
    • A friend raised this point to me, and so here, I am raising it to you ... why you want to solo when you are playing a massive MULTIPLAYER online game. Doesn't just make sense to play a single player offline game instead? Or is it all about the pvp factor?

      • Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @12:04AM (#13404016)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:The Ultimate Nerf (Score:2, Insightful)

        by learithe ( 442716 )
        This is definately an interesting question. For me personally, I find that I enjoy playing in a world populated by real people, chatting and interacting, whether or not I'm actually in a group. I like just knowing that my friends are online with me. I love being in a good party, but I don't always have the time to devote to a group, and soloing allows me to play in the short intervals I can fit into my busy life, and allows me to progress (albeit slowly) in the game.

        I have found MMORPGs which require groupi
        • And if it makes any difference, I'm a guy, so I don't think that's the cause there. I don't know about shy and "too sensitive". I figure I'm anything but "too sensitive", but some people just aren't fun to play with.

          E.g., the kind of control freak that just has to have everyone do something _exactly_ his way, oh yeah, that one got on my nerves quickly too. Bonus points if his way is all wrong to start with. (E.g., I've grouped with a mage who insisted that he opens the fight with a big AOE attack against a

      • Re:The Ultimate Nerf (Score:2, Informative)

        by blackicye ( 760472 )
        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 grou

      • Well, here's why (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Moraelin ( 679338 )
        A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, I was asking the same question: "why on earth would anyone want to play a Massively MULTI-PLAYER game solo? WTF is the point of playing it as a Massively SINGLE-PLAYER game?"

        When the gods want to punish you, they give you what you asked for. In this case, the MMO gods made me understand. After a couple of months of doing pickup-groups in COH, I ended up with a severe case of misanthropy.

        The problem in a nutshell is that functioning as a group is, more or less, like mak
      • To the original poster,

        My intent here is not to flame but to educate so whatever I say here following is not a flame but rather something you can take back to the friend who originally raised the point.

        Inevitably, anytime someone even so much as mentions soloing in a thread discussing an MMORPG there will be someone who does this ---->"Doesn't the name mean massively MULTIPLAYER????. Yes that is what the acronym means but you are sadly misinterpreting what the word MULTIPLAYER means (for some strange re
  • the mor-peg bubble went bust! woe! WOE!!
    </idiocy>

    From what was said by those who have actually played the game, it sounds like the makers of the game pretty much did the game in themselves by using nerf paint with an extra broad brush.

    I've not played many MMORPGs myself (just anarchy online and toontown), but it doesn't surprise me too much that at least one well known name has fallen to the wayside. As it is, i couldn't really see playing either of the two games i mentioned for more than a few
  • Given that the peak population on one of the 2 major North American servers was guessed to be at about 400-500, this doesn't come as a suprise. Since the release of the last patch near the beginning of August, there's been rumblings from the playerbase that things were on the decline.

    I played AC2 while it was in beta, I purchased it about 4 months after it went live, I cancelled after about 6 months of play, but I re-subscribed about 4 or 5 months ago. It's a fun game, and it has something for everyone.

  • Developer hubirs is what killed AC2 (Score:5, Informative)

    by Shivetya ( 243324 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @06:23AM (#13405853) Homepage Journal
    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

  • Bonus Dev comments (Score:5, Informative)

    by grimwell ( 141031 ) on Friday August 26, 2005 @06:42AM (#13405915)

    From a thread on VNBoards. [ign.com]

    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.

    • Not surprising. People always act like development teams are these monolithic beasts that hate the players. In truth, many devs can easily see the truth of the matter, and they often are just as torn up by what's happening as anyone else is. The "official word" comes from managers that try to put the best spin possible on things, and don't necessarily reflect the opinions of the people in the trenches.

      Having been on an ignored project in a large company, I can sympathize with the developers. Often the d
  • I had to play AC2 as part of a class on Social Issues in Games. The game looks nice, but when I had to do this back in March the servers were pretty much devoid of people (aside from the sudden influx of ~25 people).

    I don't think Turbine is too worried though, they're expecting the D&D Online game and Middle-Earth Online game to be much more popular than AC2.
  • Someone already mentioned that perhaps they'd release the backend to the public, and while I didn't play AC2, I'd love to see this with some of the MMORPGs I've played.

    Not for any benevolent purpose mind you, like setting up a server for people to use for free, but so I could stride like a GOD across those zones I kept getting slaughtered in. Damn you Kithicor! Damn you!! My revenge is at hand!
  • What I'd like to see is them release the code and art for these games. After all, they're shutdown - they won't ever make another cent from the game. Might as well sell the code & art to tinkerers like myself for $100 a pop. I might be willing to even go to $200. Its better than just sitting on it.

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