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Asheron's CAll 2 - What was it like? Why did it fail?
Duilyon
Member Posts: 326
I never had the chance to play AC2 and I am currently playing Lord of the ring online and was just wondering how turbine could mess up a game enough for it to be shut down! I played two turbine games, LOTRO and DDO, and I have yet to be really dissapointed with any of their games. That and also Asherons Call is still up and running! how could they mess up the sequal so horribly?
What was the game like? How was the combat / crafting / PVP and all of that and why did it fail? how were the patches? I wanna know all about AC2 >: D
Comments
Pretty much the same things as any mmo. Just less effective. Shaky startup, minimal content, no npc traders, very poor chat system ( the chat server was defective for the first year), small small world, linear content
AC2 was nothing like AC1. The only thing in common was the background history (not story) and races and species in the game.
I was more interested in UO2. Have always lamented it being canned before even being released.
http://mmo-hell.blogspot.com/
http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/rejad
Didnt AC2 try to be a bit more EQish? Never got the chance to play it, though I did get accepted into the beta (which I didnt notice till AFTER release because it was sent to an old obscure hotmail account...)
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
I don't ever see UO2 coming as long as they can still crank out expansions that people still buy... I'm amazed every time I see a new expansion for UO... I played the game through 5 expansions too but seriously enough is enough. Make it free to play and focus efforts on a UO for the new millennium.
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/28371832@N02/2648951313/[/url]
I don't ever see UO2 coming as long as they can still crank out expansions that people still buy... I'm amazed every time I see a new expansion for UO... I played the game through 5 expansions too but seriously enough is enough. Make it free to play and focus efforts on a UO for the new millennium.
UO2 (later named Ultima Worlds Online: Origin) looked good for its time. We were waiting for that game to come out and then it just suddenly got canned. Instead they decided just focusing on UO was more worth it in the long run.
There are 3 types of people in the world.
1.) Those who make things happen
2.) Those who watch things happen
3.) And those who wonder "What the %#*& just happened?!"
I live in Las Vegas, NV and had the pleasure of meeting a Turbine empolyee that worked on AC2 DDO UO and now he is on LoTRO. I did make it a point to ask him about AC2 and why it went poof after being out for a short while. He did not tell me alot, but there where some statements that there was some internal problems with the dev teams due to the company not being very big. He told me that b/c Turbine did not have alot of employes they had to cut the teams that where on AC2 and put them to better use on a game they thought would do better in the market, that being DDO.
I myslef liked the game b/c of the different skills it let you choose from for your class and this time around in AC2 there was no need for spell componets
.
I loved AC2 just the mass lag experience wasn't too great.
(\ /) ?
( . .)
c('')('')
I was in AC2 beta and after vowing I'd not buy it when it launched I ended up doing just that. AC2 was one of the biggest disappointments in game history in my eyes. Up there with Daikatana...and well Age of Conan.
For AC2 Turbine pretty much abandoned much of the mechanics and diferences that had made AC1 stand out in the MMO comunity. AC1 had a skills based character generation and advancement system. making each character highly unique and very flexible. AC2 went with a more traditional EQ'ish 3 races, 18 classes.
On the positive side, AC2 was gorgeous. Perhaps one of the most stunning looking worlds ever. The characters were distinctive, but lacked alot of visual variety. The games engine was also a tad to much for most of the systems at the time, leading to performance issues.
Also on the positive side for the game was the classes themselves. Each race had 2 each of melee, caster and missile type classes. And each was really really distinctive. Some cool stuff. I still miss the game play of my Feral Attendant and Lugian Sage.
But then we come to the bad stuff. The game was pushed out way too early. Lots of terrain bugs, and nowhere near enough content. The original idiotic plan was to have no NPC's. Towns would develop and populate out as various progression goals were reached in the worlds. Possibly a neat idea, but poorly executed, and any world changes had to be done manually by the devs. Buildings were basically big rocks. You could not enter. The 1-20 island was wonderfully fleshed out, with lots of content and was a fun game. The 20-40 island was a mixed bag with not enough content and some bugs. The 40-60 island was an abomination mired in massive terrain bugs, poorly placed mob spawns, no content whatsoever and a bleak and unappealing terrain motiff. (oh look more snow!)
It wasn't a bad game however, and probably would have survived, except for one truly tragic error on the part of the devs and publisher. Turbine was the developer, but at the time Microsoft was the publisher/producer. MS insisted that they use MS's new experimental Windows 2k based chat server as the primary in game chat platform. Well about 30-40 days after release the MS global chat server gave up the ghost. (and it wasn't a world by world thing, all servers used the same common global chat, ideally so you could chat between servers. In this case it meant you couldn't.) The MS chat failed miserably, killing all in game chat except the immediate local channel. No guild chat, no friends chat, no friends lists or who is online, no directed /tells. not only was it broken, it couldn't be fixed. Turbine had to recode the chat server from scratch. This meant from roughly 2 months after release until almost 8 months after, there was no functioning chat and no ability for the in game comunity to comunicate. This single fact was pretty much the death knell of the game.
Yeah, they recovered from it, and eventually evolved a fairly stable and fun game. But 90% of their player base fled when the chat servers crashed, and would never even consider coming back.
There were a ton of mistakes made with the game. released too soon, trying to turn a succesful franchise into an eq clone thus pissing off your established player base, really horrible lore that also pissed off said previous player base, incomplete content path, letting MS meddle in MMORPG development, the list goes on. In the end it was a brilliant case study in how not to do it.
Ultimately many of AC2's more inovative and interesting elements did eventually see the light of day again in LoTRO. Things like the music system.
It's a shame, because at release AC2 had an absolutely fantastic comunity. some of the nicest people I have ever gamed with I met in AC2.
As far as combat, PvE and PvP etc. It was pretty much like any other game out there these days. Combat was not unlike LoTRO or WoW. the same for character development. PvP was a little forced at times. They tried to create a 3 faction suystem similar to DAoC, but it never really went anywhere. PvP simply became a process of portal ring ganking.
I tried AC2 well after the game had its what many say horrible launch and after maybe a year or two of fixing and thought through the trial it was overall a pretty decent game, never understood why it did so miserably. I guess the launch plays a huge part in games, just look at others like Dark and Light, etc.
~Greatness~
Currently Playing:
Nothing
Cheers
Tan
Probably would never be enough time to describe this one or a way to word it properly. Since someone already described how it failed I hope to describe how it lived for me.
My first MMO played. Good ole Frostfell server on AC2. Haven't seen a community that nice in any game since. Actually had complete strangers waiting to sheperd me and others into the game when creating my first character a human. He would later become a defender. (think more along paladin)
Nice cutscenes telling the story as you complete a vault eventually telling you the enemy of the world and the reason heroes are now needed. You would complete all vaults on that continent and recieve a recall to Cragstone, (human) Linvak (Lugian) and I forget the Tumerok one.
Combat for me was nice and involving for the time. (well till DDO and now AoC keeping me combat occupied actually) Had to keep up healing myself, restoring my vigour, (think mana) fight, and keep up taunts at the same time if grouping. You could tackle MOBs 12+ levels over you. Skill could factor into that game.
Solo content to level at the end with the Heart of Darkness area they added. They had group content too.
They were adding quests though. Turbine was always great in that area. One you had to kill some MOBs, don the garb they dropped, and go at the enemy through disguise striking your quarry at the end.
Olothoi actually creeping me out when I first saw them. They reminded me of the xenomorphs in Aliens. "It's a bug hunt." Stir up the hive. Most would gather for the Chaos Portal at Cragstone when the timers counted down. (quests had timers but could be re-done mostly)
You could also treasure hunt. Crafted items had decay.
Later on you would have to search out your resources as they didn't make nodes so easily visible as other games these days. You could guess the pattern eventually though.
Not sure if another game will feel like it again. A somewhat sense of mystery and exploration. My first though. A shame the AC1 and AC2 cousins still have the possibility of being so divided. Least we were all in Dereth.
Goodness yes! I remembers those tacs dropping their walls preventing entry into the Order and Shadow forts much to the aggervation of Dom forces. (hehe was an interesting bug to say the least) Dominion later grew frustrated defending their spiral fort against the typical fantasy like structures of Order and Shadow.
Ah the mech runs...
AC2 Player RIP Final Death Jan 31st 2017
Refugee of Auberean
Refugee of Dereth
The game failed because of many misshappenings at launch and never did recover from it (population wise), which has been explained here pretty well by now, but I can tell you why I found it to be so fun and unique.
Sure you don't got AoC mixed up?
edit: excellent summary faefrost
LOTR music system came from AC2.
it took them six months to make a new chat server? Really? How hard can it be?
I think without chat most people wouldn't stay around a lot of mmorpgs. So that has got to be one big nail. I personally liked AC2 but I did join pretty late. I did notice there were some aspects that were pretty naff, that otherwise, was quite a nice little game. It had originality and it arguably brought some mmo elements to the genre before WoW, (quest log, radar map thingy, it's interface was pretty good). The best aspect I kind of liked about it was that it had pretty nice graphics and environments(though not as diverse as it could have been) and it had a wormhole transport system- which was offputting at first, but really was a useful feature.
The portals were a thing from Asherons call 1. -would of pissed off a ton of people if AC2 didnt at least have portals-
-yeah I played it, was also in the beta wave while playing Ac1-
=Ac1 was like a solo dream -you were almost like a super hero capable of killing 10's of mobs at once =back to the wall olthoi fighting anyone?= -since ac1 had no real quest system, you got your levels from just killing things. -save for olthoi pincers, you bring a pincer from the olthoi of certain olthoi nests to get xp -these also had timers that you couldnt turn in another pincer till that timer was up =needed to either get a third party timer or remember when you first did it=-
=Ac2 was a step back into more group oriented play -depending on your class/race choice- you werent going to take on 10 mobs at once with every class, most of the time 3 mobs would mean certain doom-, and actually had the quests like eq -kill so many of this and that, and collect and bring this back- however it didnt have enough quests that you could never end up having to grind.. -DILLOS! omg DILLOS!-
One other thing that killed AC2 was a subtle problem that alot of next gen MMORPG's suffer from. (It's also one of the subtler things that succesful games such as WoW and DAoC did right)
AC1 used a very low rez almost crude graphics engine. It was better then UO but not as good as EQ's. But it served its purpose. And AC1 had some incredibly powerful developer tools that allowed them to generate new content quickly and efficiently. Every month AC1 had a new content patch. These would often have 6-10 new dungeons, new quests, new items etc.
For AC2 they went with the most cutting edge graphics engine they possibly could. And it looked spectacular. Individual models had 10x the poly count of AC1's. Grass swayed in the breeze. Critters breathed. It was just stunning. But anytime you increase the games poly count to that degree, you also increase the load on the artistic and development staff. A sword that would take an AC1 artist 1 man hour to create now takes 10 man hours in AC2. This was crippling in a game franchise who's fanbase was conditioned to expect large content patches monthly. Instead of AC1's 6-10 monthly dungeons, AC2 may get 1 dungeon every 2 or 3 months. New armor and textures were rare. And the monthly quest content was exhausted within 2 hours of the patch going live.
In this case better looking did not lead to better gaming. This is a lesson that quite a few other modern games have learned the hard way. Vanguard is a spectacular example of this. Horizons to some degree as well. And EQ2 was hit hard by this same problem early in its release cycle. Fortunately SOE was able to recover and throw enough resources at it to get past the issue.
Whereas as a point of comparison, bot WoW and DAoC used and continue to use lower rez graphics engines, but make up for it with very good use of art styling and artistic creativity. (This is the underlying purpose for the cartoony feel of WoW)This makes for a smooth playing game that can be quickly and easily filled with content and new stuff.
I do agree that AC2 suffered because it was aimed towards high-end machines, and that higher graphics demanded more work, therefor AC2 didnt have as big patches as AC1 - might hold some truth. But to hold that against AC2 when no one added content like turbine at that time and still dont, look at Lotro and DDO, I find it to be flawed.
Ill take AC2 graphics over AC1 graphics any day of the year, even if it means alittle less content in the montly patches.
Well, while the game of AC2 itself was more conventional than its predecessor, a lot of lessons were learned in making it that were pretty much new to the industry at that time. You might take them for granted now, but it was new stuff then.
The first is just what effect a sequel has on a MMO. Turbine hoped to create two fairly distinct MMO's and thus grow the combined playerbase of the two significantly from that of just AC. It really didn't work out that way at all. There's nothing wrong with a sequel. You need one eventually to continue a franchise, but their timing was way wrong. Remember that AC2 was the first of the big name MMO sequels, and it was by far the closest we've seen so far, with only a three year gap. EQ was released only a few months earlier than AC, yet its sequel came two years later. The only Asian mega-MMO at the time, Lineage, waited even longer for its sequel. AC2 really helped to set the sequel timetable for the whole industry, but somebody had to make the mistake first.
The second was production size. Modern-day Turbine is very large for a privately-held development house. I believe they're at about 250 people now. That's why they got Dungeons & Dragons and Lord of the Rings Online, probably the two most coveted fantasy IP's. The trust they received was because they were able to say, "Hey, look at us. We've got an engine in the works. We've got a production process. We've got the manpower. We're not distracted by our internal projects." The importance of scale was one the whole industry was learning at the time. Both EQ2 and WoW, during the '01-'02 period, were undergoing some pretty massive changes themselves. You might recall that both of them underwent some pretty dramatic reboots at the time. All three companies were starting to realize, "The industry has changed. This generation of MMO's cannot possibly be produced in the same way with the kind of teams that put together EQ, AO, AC, and UO." Unfortunately, while EQ2 and WoW could change direction because they were relatively early in development, AC2 could not. Thankfully, most everybody has now learned this lesson. Funcom has grown in a big way since its AO days. I think they're about the same size as Turbine now. Blizzard, compared to your average privately-held studio, has an army of employees. Something like 1,500 worldwide, with 700 in Irvine? Even just that 700 is massive for a game studio, especially given how small of a slice of that is WoW and Starcraft 2. But I guess they need that many people, given all that's on their plate. The point I'm getting to is to compare the quality of Turbine, Funcom, and Blizzard's latest offerings, in terms of polish, to what the smaller studios have come up with.
Beyond that, the lessons of AC2 get a bit more questionable. The biggest two issues beyond the ones above were the importance of branding in online gaming and trying to call the desires of the market.
So if Turbine knew everything we know now, I think AC2 would have taken a drastically different shape. Still, I don't think it was a bad game on the whole. It was just a host of a lot of other little things that did it in. You don't see a lot of overlap between the fanbases of AC and AC2, but the latter definitely did have its admirers.
Now a lot of people say it failed due to lack of subs and what not and yes it had a bad chat system were it would just die.
But what most people don't know is that they didn't stop AC2 due to lack of subs but cause Microsoft stoped supporting and Microsoft pulled the plug.
Playing: Everthing
Played: DAoC,AC2,EvE,SWG,WAR,MXO,CoX,EQ2,L2,LOTRO,SB,UO,WoW.
I have played every MMO that has ever come out.
Now a lot of people say it failed due to lack of subs and what not and yes it had a bad chat system were it would just die.
But what most people don't know is that they didn't stop AC2 due to lack of subs but cause Microsoft stoped supporting and Microsoft pulled the plug.
they didn't pull the plug until fully a year after Turbine had bought all their properties back from MS. MS while being the cause of the games problems early on, was well out of the picture when the decision was made to close it.
Microsoft got antsy and wanted the game out RFN.
Until you cancel your subscription, you are only helping to continue the cycle of mediocrity.
If I recall correctly EQ2 had announced a tentative release date of right around then. MS got antsy and wanted AC2 out before EQ2, so they forced the issue. In the end EQ2 was delayed for 2 years from the original release date that MS acted on, and AC2 was released at least a year before it was ready.