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Role Playing (Games)

The Last Days of an Online World 76

Posted by Zonk from the it's-a-sad-day-in-dereth dept.
These are the last days of Asheron's Call 2. We've known since late August that the online world was slated for sunset, and Wired has a stirring look at the final days of a dying world. From the article: "The economy has also tanked. When the announcement first came down, players say, a majority of gamers immediately fled. Previously, you'd log on and find several hundred people online; now you'll get nine or 10. High-powered character accounts used to sell for as much as $500, but the online auctions have gone silent. That's partly because, as the end nears, Turbine is tossing out some freebies and giving away more "rare" items, making them less rare. Without a sense of a future, capitalism ends. There's no demand in a condemned world."
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The Last Days of an Online World More

The Last Days of an Online World

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  • The Private MMORPG server. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Hott of the World ( 537284 ) on Monday December 19, 2005 @05:40PM (#14294816) Homepage Journal
    A privately run MMORPG server for games who no longer have any official support.

    I mean, thats gotta be freaking better than paying 15 dollars a month just to lose the ability to play.
    • The whole idea of paying a monthly fee is exactly why I won't purchase those types of games. I've been dying to try one, but I refuse to pay thier server tax.

      • Re:The Private MMORPG server. (Score:4, Informative)

        by Elshar ( 232380 ) <elshar@[ ]il.com ['gma' in gap]> on Monday December 19, 2005 @05:55PM (#14294939) Journal
        There's always Neverwinter Nights. You still have to buy the game, but there's dozens and dozens of different worlds all free to play on.

        There's also the MUDs of old, or some 'free' MMORPGs, but generally speaking they make it a pain in the arse to play for 'free' (ie: Runescape's fencing off easy ways to get to places and then making a door that 'donators' can go through is one example of this, while people playing for free have to go the long, long, long long way around).

        Also, Anarchy Online is free for the base client+world, no monthly fee, don't have to pay for the client. You can download it off their website of via their own bittorent tracker. You have to pay the monthly fee if you want to play with any of the expansions, but you don't NEED them to experience the vast majority of the fiction.

        I'd suggest some websites with free MMORPGs, but those have gone downhill the past couple years as well. Well, at least the ones I knew about and used frequently.

        • I'd suggest some websites with free MMORPGs, but those have gone downhill the past couple years as well. Well, at least the ones I knew about and used frequently.

          Are you talking about those turn-based browser games? If so, and you like that sort of thing, you might give my game a try. It's different from the big name browser games in that there's no link-clicking and more strategy. The link's in my sig.

        • Re:The Private MMORPG server. (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward

          If you run an NWNServer you can set it to ServerVault (meaning all stats, character file, etc are saved server side) you can also turn on ELC (Enforce Legal Character) and ILR (Item Level Restriction) meaning even if a person 'hacks' the character file in some fashion on the serverside, it still has internal checks to make sure the character is within valid limits. Also there is server side scripts for verifing character, items, etc that you can get from the vault or write yourself... meaning if you find a
          • Do you have any links or information about NWN servers? I played it single player and have played multiplayer with friends - but I don't know anything about the persistant worlds that people have set up.
      • well, if it's not worth $15 to you, I wouldn't say you're exactly dying to try one. More like mildly interested.
      • Actually since they're constantly adding new content and you're playing on their servers, I think the $15/mo is more than fair. Imagine that you're paying a subscription for a passworded server and buying a small expansion pack every month.

        This isn't like UT where a single box can run the whole game. They run more than just a server browser.

        But if you really feel that way, Guild Wars is an MMO with no subscription fee. You could try that.
        • Don't fall for this malarky. It's not a true mmorpg at all. You see other people, true. But only in towns. When you venture out you can only see other players if you're in a party with them. Meaning you'll wander around a countryside playing a 1 player game. Then go through a portal and see 80 people. It's quite silly.

      • Re:The Private MMORPG server. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by LoRdTAW ( 99712 ) on Monday December 19, 2005 @08:23PM (#14295793)
        I guess you don't realize the amount of work that goes into the back end of an mmorpg. This isn't an FPS like half life where anyone can setup a simple server on a desktop machine and host games. We are talking about big iron or clusters of servers and a database with high speed storage to to handle all player stats and items. Think about it every time you open your inventory and move, sell, or aquire an item their data base has to handle it. The system also has to handle all the monsters, items dropped by them, timers on dungeons per player, exp and stats. The list goes on and on. Plus there are multiple installations like this to handle people from different geological locations so players can all enjoy low latency. Also these systems require human beings to constantly maintain them along with a team of developers that are constantly fixing bugs and adding more content.

        Calling it a server tax is a very poor choice of words.

      • I've been dying to try one, but I refuse to pay thier server tax

        That's right!!! Damn those game companies, how DARE they charge you a service fee to pay for the bandwidth, power, cooling, and improvements to a perpetual online game. I mean Jesus Christ, next thing you know, I'll have to pay for my cable modem AND a monthly fee just to use the internet...or buy a cable box but still be required to subscribe to channels to actually use it...or buy a $200 cell phone and pay for airtime...or my favorite, I c

      • So play guildwars. No monthly fee
    • Private servers have their own issues. Diablo & NWN let users run the world but character statistics are stored on each players local machines. Giving players access to their own data store leads inevitably to hacking problems. Diablo has had many more issues with that than NWN, but the problem is ever-present. Freelancer let users run their own servers and tried to solve the hacking problems by keeping player statistics on the server. That was great until you logged on one day to find that your favor

  • SWG is next (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) on Monday December 19, 2005 @05:52PM (#14294912)
    Nobody wants to admit it, but Star Wars Galaxies is probably going to be the next big MMORPG to go down. There are too many resources dedicated to that system and not enough players. The desperation the producers have in trying to keep the game from tanking is evident in the constant changes they make to virtually every system.

    It should come as no surprise that AC will be shut down. It's amazing it lasted this long. The game suffered horribly under the strain of its initial launch and complaints that the servers were buggy and unstable. I don't think it ever recovered.

    What's even more depressing than entering an empty game world, is entering a game world filled with people and not being able to participate. Everquest I has become like this to some degree now, with the world being so big and so many players at high levels, it's easy to be ignored.

    • You can watch it for free (Score:5, Interesting)

      by SmallFurryCreature ( 593017 ) on Monday December 19, 2005 @07:10PM (#14295379) Journal
      Just download the free trial. Granted it is about 1-1.5 gig but hey that is nothing over broadband. There is no credit card info needed to get a trial account so no risk. Try it, don't speculate.

      You can then see for yourselve what it is all about.

      But okay, most will not want to bother because it is easier to just talk about.

      So here is my review of Star Wars Galaxies, New Game Experience.

      First is the same as it was before. Create a new character on a server of your choice. DO NOT CHOOSE RECOMMENDED. That is the most underpopulated server. It could well mean that for the whole trial you never see an other player. Choose the one in red (if there still is one)

      Now the character creation itself is still as good as it ever was with you really being able to design a character you like better then in any current MMORPG. Breast size, fatness make sure that not all characters look alike even from a distance. You can now also decide you starter outfit and this introduces you to another SWG good point, the wide selection of clothing further allowing you to make your character unique.

      Satisfied with your character (don't worry it can be changed in game by a specific player class) you then get put in the game.

      Well almost, SWG used to have a short tutorial and then dump you in the main game (lately Mos Eisley) but now the tutorial is bigger.

      The old tutorial is gone and your now being called by C3-PO to do some basic stuff. Look around, move, talk to droid, get gun from cabinet, equip, shoot at target. WHOOPS. BIG FUCKING CHANGE. The first change is cosmetic. The camera now hovers behind your character offset to the right. Meaning you sorta look over your characters gun hand. Odd, I don't like it but livable. Now to the big change the NGE brought. Most MMO's you target your enemy, then trigger attack and from then on attack the target on auto doing the occasional special move.

      No longer. NGE is FPS. You click, you fire. You actually have to aim at the target to hit it. For now it seems easy enough but these boxes take one hit to destroy. I can forsee difficulty later.

      Anyway next task is to blast open door and there nobody else then Han Solo and Chewbacca (on a diet) is waiting to safe you. Follow him and you come to a big hangar with a lot parked vehicles as well as the Millenium Falcon and 3 storm troopers. You are told to take cover and you get in a brief fight. Here the FPS switch starts to show its ugly head. Yes you got to aim in a mode that looks a bit FPS like. Yes you got to hold the mouse button down to keep firing BUT it feels nothing like a fps. There is no ducking, there is no AI there is no cover, really this is FPS pre-wolfenstein. Played GTA San Andreas? Well it is like that but worse. You just stand there, hold the mouse button down over you enemy, watch their health drop, hopefully before yours do and rince and repeat.

      Before NGE your first fight would actually be a challenge. Now it isn't. I didn't die ONCE!

      Run aboard the MF and you will take off. Here we see a second change, a lot more FMV cutscenes. In fact I don't remeber any apart from the intro before.

      You are now in space "YEAH" about the MF (you need to be told this as it looks nothing like in the movies. Here another problem starts to emerge. SWG did not have much in the way of scripting. So now they have to add story telling scripting to an engine that does not support it. The result that the following bit is incredibily slow and unbelievable and prone to you rushing ahead and getting stuck.

      Your under attack and told to man the turret. WAIT. DO NOT MOVE. Wait for the script to catch up and after a number of pauses you will be instructed to climb in. If you do it before the game will not realize you did and will keep telling you to climb in. Have a character stuck there.

      Shoot at the TIE's actually looks decent but no real challenge, get out and go to the cockpit (this engine just isn't desinged to render the MF I guess) and next bit.

      You are now

      • Ah - you know what a debit card is, right? You can even limit it to only accept that payment each month.
        • I searched, I tried, the CC companies do not seem to offer debit cards here. Trust me, it has been researched on every MMO beta forum. We got our own debit system here, in fact it is the norm here.

          Just doesn't seem to exist. It is a real case of americans not being able to understand that the rest of the world is not like america.

          Credit Cards in europe are expensive, rarely accepted and just not popular. Some american companies realize this, most don't. The ones that don't are the ones who say that europe

          • You can't get a debit card attached to your bank acccount in Europe? Can't you setup a paypal account (??which you probably already have??) and get them to issue you a debit card? Correction FYI - the combined GDP of Europe is less than that of the US. Bigger reason to buy via the net? Not likely - less people to buy from, right?
            • No, we have a debit card system wich is called giro and works across europe.

              HOWEVER that is not a system accepted by default by american companies. See those little symbols behind a credit card form? American Express, VISA, Master card and another? Well those are american, some banks do offer a combo but then you simply have a combo debit credit card with each credit payment being charged to your credit account. With very bad conditions like interest and subscription fees.

              Paypal? Credit Card. it is a well

              • Even fairly advanced countries are not in the EU

                Like Iceland you mean ? Or Norway ?

                Do those count as "advanced" ? They've only got like the highest GDP/capita in the world.

              • Rather than whining, perhaps you should either: 1) push your banking system to get on the same page as the US OR 2) Start an MMO that accepts Euro payment. After all, if no one else accepts payment and there really is demand, you will be RICH!
          • More bad news for you: WoW's free trial asks for a credit card anyway.
            • it does, but it doesn't check it, so you can put in any number that meets the simple requirements, eg. 16 numbers, starts with a 4 for visa.

              But WoW actually does take Maestro/Switch (the europe-wide debit card system)
          • In the United States I know with much certainty that Blizzard sells time cards for WoW--by the truckload, in fact. My local game store runs through them fairly quick, and I'm going to be moving to them myself soon.

            While I'm fairly confident you're not lying when you say you cannot find time cards in your area, I am a bit suprised. I know European players that play on my server using time cards.
            • I live in Belgium (which is directly south of the Netherlands for you geographically challenged people :-)) and my local game store has WoW game cards; I find it hard to believe not a single store in .nl does.
      • Blizzard is too evil to even play with gamecards as they seem determined to screw europe (why didn't we get a free trial?)

        Blizzard doesn't sell WoW gamecards in Europe? That's odd.

        I'd recommend just hopping on one of the North American free trials [fileplanet.com]. The trans-atlantic lag isn't bad, supposedly.
      • 'Did you know that before WoW there were people who claimed that a subscription based game would never have more then say a half million subscribers and that new games would only attract players from older mmo's?'

        Just a small point. WoW only recently became the biggest MMO. Lineage1 before it had a playerbase that peaked at over 4,000,000 users. It still manages to maintain a user base in to the millions today.
      • Oh well, I'll say again, the NGE changes are not for everyone, however my wife and I are enjoying it. Once you get higher in level and get better ships (or not) the dogfighting can be a challange. If you want a challange use a melee weapon in combat (lightsaber, vibroblade, sword, etc) - it makes it a bit tougher. If SWG goes belly up, at least I enjoyed it and that's all that can be said about a game really. After being burned by several other dog games out at least I had (having) fun.
    • I would imagine that Matrix online or Sims Online will go down before Star Wars. At least with Star Wars they appear to be actively developing it. When is the last time you heard anything about Matrix or Sims Online development?
      • My GF and I left SWG a little over a year ago, just before Jump to Lightspeed came out. Back then, there were servers with populations of Full, Heavy, and Medium...with a Light one or two at the bottom of the list. My GF received an unrestricted 15-day trial for her old character to come back and try the new changes. When she looked at the server list, the server populations were all "Light" and "Very Light," with one "Medium" over the weekend during peak play hours.

        The busiest cities are ghost towns now

  • Well, someone had to do it... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Netcraft confirms: Asheron's Call 2 is dead.

    AC2: I'm getting better!
    N: No, you're not -- you'll be stone dead in a moment.
    AC2: I don't want to go in the cart!
    N: Oh, don't be such a baby.

    AC2 (singing): I feel happy. I feel happy.
    [thud]

  • Well, the original AC is still going... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by aapold ( 753705 ) * on Monday December 19, 2005 @06:33PM (#14295168) Homepage Journal
    but it probably has a lot less overhead to keep running. I wonder how AC2 would have fared if it had still been microsoft behind it... (Turbine, the developer, bought the franchise back from Microsoft)...

    The AC2 world had some fatal flaws, but that didn't stop some people from getting very wrapped up in it. For one brief instant, it was the place to be, and in less than two months that spotlight was gone.

    Turbine had long since shifted all its hopes towards DDO and MEO.

    I do wax nostalgic on it now and then. More the original AC than AC2. Even though the original is still up, it is still true that you can't go home again. It isn't the same, never will be. In part its the peole, in part its the moment in time. Still, this isn't exactly Jack Vance's The Dying Earth.
    • Microsoft sold AC2 to turbine after it had been released.

      AC2 was a flop because it was no where near ready for release. In addition the design was done by microsoft and they were tring to turn it into a EQ/DaOC clone. If read some of the original stuff that Turbine put out when it was initially talked about it was going to be an majorily improved AC1, better graphics, more capabilities and fixing the problems of AC1.

    • Hear, hear, brother! I don't think I ever enjoyed an MMORPG more than AC1. It was incredible fun to write macros for cooking your foodstuffs and the like - which, as I understand it, was one of the things UO's players remember foldly about that game. I tried AC2 when it came out and hated it, and that somehow made AC1 unplayable as well. *Sigh* Memories...

  • I almost cried... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by KevMar ( 471257 ) on Monday December 19, 2005 @06:56PM (#14295311) Homepage Journal
    That was a sad read.

    I almost had a tear.

    I am one of the sad individuals that plays WOW too much. my /played time is 40 days. I could only imgain login to see a world where I have spend a good part of my life about to die.

    The article talkes about people visiting places that had created momories and taking photos while they still could.

    That first challenging boss, that scary spot that made your heart stop, or that spot that you could have been killed fro the first time by a player 40 lvls above you but he choose to spare your life.

    How would you spend your last moments in a dying digital world?
    • I am one of the sad individuals that plays WOW too much. my /played time is 40 days.

      That's nothing!

    • You get over it (Score:4, Insightful)

      by snuf23 ( 182335 ) on Monday December 19, 2005 @07:33PM (#14295519)
      Leaving an MMO is practically the same thing. It "hurts" a bit at first, your uber character, your favorite places, your guildies - giving all those things up. If your like me, you've left to play something else and once you get sucked in you remember the sense of discovery and wonder that is missng from an MMO once you've "seen it all".
      I'm a nostalgic dork myself however. I make heavy use of the screenshot button as I play through a game. I also tend to make some videos using FRAPs that I can view long after the game is gone or changed or I'm no longer playing it.
    • LOL 40 days is nothing. I started in April and have roughly 85days played maybe more.

  • Simple (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kenp2002 ( 545495 ) on Monday December 19, 2005 @07:01PM (#14295343) Homepage Journal
    Release the source code\ server code under a restricted license (non-commerical use) and allow people to take up the falg of using the old dated-engine to create new worlds or preserve the old world. Anything on the Internet can live forever, so long as there is space and people with time on their hands. It would be great to see those of us that still to this day use DIKU and ROM and SMUAG etc.. to run smaller, more imtimate worlds have tools to do the same but with graphics.

    Free the code and AC will live forever.

    • Re:Simple (Score:3, Informative)

      by puppetman ( 131489 )
      AC IS still going strong [turbine.com]. It actually has one very cool feature that most MMPOGs don't have - true pathing for arrows, spells, etc. You can step out of the way of an arrow or spell, and it misses you.

      It's AC2 that's being shut down.

      I played AC (my first MMPOG) for a year or two - it was fun. I remember when they did their big Christmas update, the first year, and there were snowmen, and snow, etc. Was really cool.

      I played AC2 during the beta, and it was dead and empty. Looks like it's leaving the same way i

      • Re:Simple (Score:2, Informative)

        by sirboxalot ( 791959 )
        Asheron's Call, in my humble opinion, was and still is one of the greatests MMORPG's to grace the Earth. Great gameplay and skill advancement, magic system, great however now dated graphics, monthly updates with TONS of content, huge arcing storylines, an entire city getting blown off the face of the planet, the list goes on and on.

        I played in the original Beta and we had the same situation. The world was going to end, because the beta was ending, so it was basically a huge ingame party. People were runni

        • Re:Simple (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Quarters ( 18322 )
          The only problem with Asheron's Call was Turbine's credo of "We won't punish the hackers for finding an exploit and using it. We'll fix it." It was a noble but empty promise. There were too many people trying to find exploits relative to the number of people that were maintaining the game. Once SpeedHack hit after the firt 1.5 years or so the game was over. Either you exploited or you died. It's too bad, really, as the game was generations ahead of the other RPG MMOs of that time (Legends of Kesmai, Meridi
        • Asheron's Call was also my first MMORPG. I played on Harvestgain for two years. The best thing I think Asheron's Call did that I haven't really seen any other games do is their monthly updates. While World of Warcraft does updates, they are just adding new items, or skills, or something like that. With Asheron's Call, the monthly updates moved the entire storyline of the game along. The whole Martine story arc was by far my favorite. That poor tormented bastard. :)
    • The game engine and code are probably still worth something to Turbine. Keep in mind that even if AC2 is dead, a bit of the code may have been used in Dungeons and Dragons Online for all we know.

      The only time when source code will be released is if the rights to the game arn't sold and the developer is about to go under. Freespace 2 had it's source code released, but it's one of the few GOOD games where the source was released. I really wish that there had been a Freespace 3 because both Freespace 1 and

  • Good Riddance (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Shivetya ( 243324 ) on Monday December 19, 2005 @08:05PM (#14295709) Homepage Journal
    AC2 should have never been released. At least never under the AC name.

    AC2 had a horrid open beta and terrible end of beta event that lead of a ho-hum release. They //Turbine// were warned off the bugs and exploits remaining yet released anyway. The most famous of exploits was to use terrain versus tyrants (their dragons). Get them stuck and missle them to death and voila, you could level to max in a month or two. Took them a while to fix and that was only the tip of the exploit iceburg. The Turbine motto assigned by fans is , "Exploit Early, Exploit Often". It is a well deserved motto they earned in AC1 and carried into AC2 with abandon.

    The whole dev team was just inept. They could not get pathing right so they allowed mobs to move through trees and rocks. To make matters worse one day we found nearly all mobs had ranged attacks! Yippee! They made a half-hearted attempt at RvR like DAOC. Half-hearted might be too strong, they put 3 kingdoms down, 3 plateaus, and forgot about it. Basically they had no idea other than what they saw someone else did but after copying the concept they could not figure out how to implement. Improvements sometimes were worse than what was before. To spice the lands up group mobs were put in. Trouble was there were too many and they aggro'd when you attacked nearby of the same. Old bugs would resurface from patch to patch, exploits were left in for whole patches.

    The game was a mess. They put together a world without NPCs but didn't provide the players a means to compensate. They had huge wrecked cities that supposedly would repair if the players spent time in them and used their crafting facilities. Trouble was the cities were huge and dead, monuments to the egos of developers. They only improved through downtime! They even launched with a wrecked chat system. Half the time you could not use world or allegiance channels! Hilarious fun.

    Worst feature, their "vaults". Quest dungeons where you get a story at the end. While beautiful in looks they showed the flaw of the game. Turbine wrote the game the developers wanted to play, not what their players were clamouring for. They then attempted to ram that idea down player's throats. Play it the way we intend or forget it. Well you could always exploit it...

    Attemps were made to fix crafting and they came close, but the promised change to make crafting work took over 1 and 1/2 years beyond when promised. Which about summarizes the game, promises made and rarely delivered and if delivered so late it mattered not. A visually beautiful game with no real point. A game so diametrically opposed to its predecessor that it alienated those fans of the franchise.

    To top off all the insults to their player base they released an expansion in late summer only to announce a few months later they were closing. Before then they chopped monthly updates to push their expansion for their older game AC1 because that expansion was so far behind as to be near vaporware.

    Turbine is a gaming company without management or programming discipline. They take overly long to deliver on promises, they leave exploits in their games, they even condoned "Attended Combat macroing", and their updates had some bugs that smacked of last minute developer sneak ins (cowboy programming).

    Fans of D&D and Middle Earth can only hope the franchise owners keep a tight leash on Turbine else these games will be travesties. Already both games have been pushed back beyond relevance, with MEO having even gone through a name change to boot! D&D looks and plays like NWN in FPS style but without player ability to customize the world (promised for "later") and a monthly fee! MEO, well, hell, with their previous history everyone will have a copy of the "one ring" before the first quarter is out.

    Turbine is proof the Dilbert principle works in the business world, fail badly and your noticed, being assigned even something bigger :)
  • The Last Days of an Online World?

    Well, Pluto's Kiss is just a few days away.... December 24th 2005.

    :(

  • Why not have an endgame? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by patternjuggler ( 738978 ) on Monday December 19, 2005 @11:57PM (#14296645) Homepage
    MMORPG developers all seem to suffer from the same delusion: their game is going to last forever. TV shows seem to be the same, but if they've been around for more than a couple of years usually they have the good grace to bring some kind of conclusion to the show- they may not tie up every plot thread, resolve every conflict (because who knows, maybe it will be brought back, or made into a movie) but there's a two part last episode to cap it all off.

    MMORPG need to have a concept of an endgame, where something happens to bring an end to the game that is consisent with the virtual world. The obvious thing is to literally have the world end- there's a comet, an invasion of a far superior foe that spares no one, or something, but maybe there is one last thing to accomplish before it all crashes down (to keep players hooked before the servers go offline). Maybe 99% of all the players are killed permanently during the last pay period by calamity, the final players hole up in a mountain fortress and make a final stand, and die nobly rather than just logging out for the last time...

    Or maybe it's all a stunt to reinvigorate the game and it turns some heroes actually did save the world. It costs a little more money for extra content, but they should just budget that or create that content when the game is first developed.

    The idea is that instead of all your previous players just being disappointed and looking for the next interesting MMORPG before it too decays and withers, and then eventually getting burnt out by the whole concept, actually give them some kind of sense of closure (and hopefully accomplishment).
    • I think this is a very good idea. Not only would it give a sense of closure, but I think it would go along way towards showing your community that while it is sad the world is ending, we care enough about your continued support that we arn't going to just drop you. This would certainly help their reputation and help sales in future games they may publish.
    • The idea sounds nice, but what good is an end-game if there's no way to deal with the result? If you're going to have an end-game, you'll want to have atleast a couple of days afterwards to wrap things up nicely; for people to see the devestated world or for people to appear in the afterlife (in which there is nothing to do but communicate, thus "naturally" ending the whole game aspect of it).

      On the other hand, the way AC2 is going down is "clean" in that by the time the servers switch off, nobody is there
    • I was part of the original AC beta when it was on the Zone, and when the beta was announced as being over, and was going to go live in a week, Turbine announced there would be all kinds of crazy things, like a comet appearing in the sky (I saw it) and that it was supposed to crash and destroy the world (which I'm not sure if it did...wasn't on when the end came).

      Because I think only one person got to keep his/her beta character through some contest, everyone else knew theirs would be removed, so I saw peopl
    • While an endgame would be nice...it doesn't provide fulfillment to the customer who's now left saying: "Hmm...I had to buy a $50 game, then pay monthly fees...and now I will no longer have to pay monthly fees, but I'll be stuck with a useless $50 game."

      What sort of refund is intended for the playerbase to recoup the cost of their now useless disc? If they let players run their own servers, thats one thing, but it is fairly ridiculous otherwise, and why I foresee games with subscription models eventually ju

    • The biggest problem with an endgame is that the one aspect of online RPGs that has the most value for players is the groups of friends they develop there. Whether it's a guild or just a handful of buddies you go adventuring with. People want stories to end, they want game goals to end. But they don't want their friendships or social groups to end. Shutting all those down on them makes for a bunch of very unhappy people. In a game where you just don't make friends with people, a big ending might be ok.

  • Who cares? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Louis Guerin ( 728805 ) <guerin@[ ].net ['gmx' in gap]> on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @01:55AM (#14296972)
    We still have http://cities.totl.net/ [totl.net]

    L
  • >> High-powered character accounts used to sell for as much as $500, but the online auctions have gone silent. That's partly because, as the end nears, Turbine is tossing out some freebies and giving away more "rare" items, making them less rare.

    It's not at all because of the freebies. It's because the game is SHUTTING DOWN!
  • I've never been around at the end of an online world, but I've has similar experiences, most notably the recent Dungeons and Dragons Online stress test. I thought a had another couple days left, but alas, I did not. However, I found a fun party and we threw a little apocalyptic bash, admiring the graphics, emotes, and downright coolness of what it was while it lasted. We did much the same as they say here, collecting memorable screenshots, blowing our inventory money, and generally dancing in the streets, b

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