AC2 failed because it was a collection of ideas (sometimes great, sometimes horrific) that were thrown together in a horrible game engine designed to look pretty above all else.
The Good:
1. It was pretty.
2. The classes, abilities, and combat dynamics were really cool.
3. Player made music. Yes please. One of the best ideas ever implemented in a game, and I still give Jason Booth a lube job for that every time I talk about AC2.
The Bad:
1. Pretty graphics engine did not perform well. Character and npc animations were awful. Landscape was horribly angular.
2. While the classes, abilities, and combat dynamics were really cool, the npc's that you used them against were not. Every npc shot out some green ranged attack. Every npc was hostile and attacked, no matter what your level. Npc's had horrid AI. Dungeons were horribly designed, and had awful flow. The overland areas were just infested with npc's, making just normal travel an exercise in tedium.
3. A game world designed to be rebuilt by players, but that dynamic was never actually implemented into the game in any meaningful way.
4. Towns that were simply lag inducing structures with no means of interaction (other than forges, lifestones, portals).
The Ugly:
1. The worst mistake ever made in the history of MMORPG's. Designing a full 2/3 of your game's land mass and content to be completed by characters lvl 40 and below, in essence, making 95% of your gameplay time spent in 1/3 of the game area. You could finish with the first landmass in less than a day. That's 1/3 of the game gone, in less than a day. It still boggles my mind to think about it.
2. Broken Chat. Turbine fanbois love to point the finger at MS for this, but it doesn't matter in the long run.
3. Bugs, bugs, and more bugs. Exploiting stuck npc's was the norm early on. Rubber banding was a common occurance, as were many other numerous glitches. Its been a while, so my memory is failing me, but I just recall so many things just completely not working.
So there ya have it. Recipe for disaster. Speculation puts AC2 dev costs at over $30m.
AC2 failed because it was a collection of ideas (sometimes great, sometimes horrific) that were thrown together in a horrible game engine designed to look pretty above all else.
The Good: 1. It was pretty. 2. The classes, abilities, and combat dynamics were really cool. 3. Player made music. Yes please. One of the best ideas ever implemented in a game, and I still give Jason Booth a lube job for that every time I talk about AC2.
The Bad: 1. Pretty graphics engine did not perform well. Character and npc animations were awful. Landscape was horribly angular. 2. While the classes, abilities, and combat dynamics were really cool, the npc's that you used them against were not. Every npc shot out some green ranged attack. Every npc was hostile and attacked, no matter what your level. Npc's had horrid AI. Dungeons were horribly designed, and had awful flow. The overland areas were just infested with npc's, making just normal travel an exercise in tedium. 3. A game world designed to be rebuilt by players, but that dynamic was never actually implemented into the game in any meaningful way. 4. Towns that were simply lag inducing structures with no means of interaction (other than forges, lifestones, portals). The Ugly: 1. The worst mistake ever made in the history of MMORPG's. Designing a full 2/3 of your game's land mass and content to be completed by characters lvl 40 and below, in essence, making 95% of your gameplay time spent in 1/3 of the game area. You could finish with the first landmass in less than a day. That's 1/3 of the game gone, in less than a day. It still boggles my mind to think about it. 2. Broken Chat. Turbine fanbois love to point the finger at MS for this, but it doesn't matter in the long run. 3. Bugs, bugs, and more bugs. Exploiting stuck npc's was the norm early on. Rubber banding was a common occurance, as were many other numerous glitches. Its been a while, so my memory is failing me, but I just recall so many things just completely not working.
So there ya have it. Recipe for disaster. Speculation puts AC2 dev costs at over $30m.
Add: Could exploit your way to max level in less than a week when the game went live and Turbine did nothing to stop this until it was to late.
Add: Could exploit your way to max level in less than a week when the game went live and Turbine did nothing to stop this until it was to late.
This alone would be a gamekiller for me. Seen this type of thing too many times. Game developers need better internal testing and need to stop relying on free labor from beta testers. You get what you pay for.
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
As someone who played AC1, and was in AC2 beta, and there during the first year of release, ... allow jaded me to comment
1. In the beginning, AC1 came out around the same time as EQ1. UO, then EQ, then AC were the big three. Turbine has always suffered from missmanagement. AC1 was created before EQ1, but got held back, allowing EQ1 to take the fame as the first 3-D mmorpg released. EQ never looked back.
2. AC1 still became a hit, because it was a very unique game. It was more different than EQ, than simular. I still remember the brutal, but incredible moments in that game. One of the many revolutionary features was a near seamless gameworld. In EQ the zones were far more obvious. In AC, if a monster chased you.... heheh.... you better head for a river and hope it can't swim LOL!!! You LITTERALLY could spend hours getting chased by a monster, or group of monsters.
As a result, AC to this day, has the most tight knit player community out of any MMORPG ever created.
3. Back to Turbine's missmanagement problems. Every single mmorpg regularly has free trials. Except for.... AC!!! They have only had 1 in their entire history (as far as I presently know.). Turbine got sold to MicroCrap.... errrr... MicroSoft. And things went soo far down, that a new level of hell was discovered that not even Satan knew about!
4. AC2 was the worse ever Alpha, and beta test in mmorpg history. There litterally was NO ONE for the game testers to talk to! It was only a few weeks before release that MicroSoft hired a community rep, for the beta testers to talk to. But get this... there was a cache for all beta test reports. Meaning, when a beta tester posted their reports, it took 1-5 days for it to appear!!!
5. Many, many, fans of Turbine posted step by step instructions what Turbine could, and should do... to get their money! Customers actually telling a buisness what to do to get their money! And MicroSoft never listened. AC2 released in such a bad state, it took the crown as worse release... formerly held by Anarchy Online. The game litteraly was 20% complete. The power gamers leveled to high level and discovered there was NO high level game at all for high level characters. Exploits were everywhere. In desperation, Turbine aka MicroSoft, allowed all exploiters to keep their gains, even after the exploits were taken care of.
6. All of my predictions in the beta forums came true. One of the ideas I kept pushing was having mounts. The game devs responded by saying they did not want mounts, because other mmorpgs had mounts. I tried explaining that other mmorpgs had mounts because it added to the fun factor - it was something players loved.
If it works - use it! And guess what... 1 year after release, AC2 finally put in mounts.
7. AC1 met the definition of a hit mmorpg. It cost roughly 5-10 million to make. And it made it to 100,000 accounts. AC2 at release had 50,000 accounts. 6 months after release it plunged down to 12,000 accounts. I posted here on MMORPG.com back then, that AC2 would get shut down because of the soon to be onslaught of new BIG BOY mmorpgs (WoW, AoC, EQ2, VG, and many more.) Maybe you can find my old AC2 posts here. It was me and a few others using logic vs. 50-100 ultra-fanboys of AC2.
8. It became too obvious that the profits from AC1 was being used as life support for AC2. AC2 finally got the plug pulled. Gross missmanagement is the short answer to your question.
MicroSoft finally sold Turbine back to itself, to further cut it's losses. MicroSoft has one of the worse mmorpg records in history, With 2-3 failed mmorpgs. That's a roughly 75 million dollar lost!!! AC2 cost roughly 25 million to make, and never re-couped any of that money.
9. BTW DDO and MEO aka LotRO are AC2 in disguise. Exact game engine. Where does Turbine keep gettting the money to finance new projects?
Check out the article "The Sorcerer of Sony", one of the most incredible articles on mmorpgs. It details how outside of illegal drugs, the mmorpg industry is one of the few industries with insane returns. 40% and higher. The majority of Fortune 500 companies operate with a 5%-20% profit. EQ cost 5 million to make.... it has made over 1 B-I-L-L-I-O-N!!! And that was as of a few years ago. If EQ made that much, it's very safe to say AC1 which cost roughly the same as EQ, made roughly 200 million. Still insane profits... considering a modern mmorpg cost roughly 25-30 million to make.
(Do a searh on my name, in one of my posts is the direct link to the article which goes into far more detail about the insanely low operating costs of a mmorpg.)
10. Gross missmanagement aka incompantance will ruin anything.
Don't worry, you did not miss anything by not getting to play AC2. I do recommend (if you can afford it) you check out AC1, even though it's far past its prime. And check out EQ1. Kind of like parking your 2008 Farrari, and driving a 1936 Packard. It gives you an appreciation how far cars... aka mmorpgs ... have come. We're all gamers, including the illogical AC2 ultra-fanboys, we're all on the same side! Happy gaming everyone !!!!
11. Oh yeah, I forgot... the main revolutionary feature that AC2 advertised around, that no other mmorpg had, or was planning to have:
- Towns would get attacked by NPCs, and get destroyed. Players could defend towns, and rebuild towns.
- This idea alone would have made AC2 a hit. Talk about a dynamic world! It would go further than DAoC, and even more further than the still revolutionary Anarchy Online!
- AC2 never got around to putting this main feature in, even though it was advertised on the game box that was on the store shelves! lol!
Sad... so sad. The lesson is for players to light a fire under the game DEVs, and game moneymen, and let them know they won't stand for shoddy products. So be it... death to AC2, Mythica, DAWN (heheh), Earth and Beyond, Motor City Online, UXO.... and sniff.... UO2!
We need some mmorpg fans to win the lotto so they can make their own mmorpg, free of moneymen who are not gammers!
My main pet peev about AC2 was the fact that dungeons/certain quest areas would NOT allow players of a certain level to enter! You litterally end up banned from 30% - 50% of the gameworld!!! I remember leveling up in the far south area, becoming strong enough to venture to the middle of the landmass I was on, and discovering a new dungeon. Turned out I was 2 levels too high to enter!?! Bad... very bad... game programming! A player should decide when they are strong enough to adventure wherever, and be allowed to adventure wherever... no matter how weak or strong or avarage their character is.
The town being attacked and rebuilt idea was actually taken from Horizons aka Istaria. As far as I remember, AC2 came out before Horizions the mmorpg. Thus AC2 was the first mmorpg to have it -- errr the first that was planning to have it, and revolve around it. This would have taken gameworld interaction in a mmorpg to the next high level. The idea of being able to change the gameworld map itself, to influence it. DAoC was the first step. AO took it to the next step. AC2 could have taken it even further. Horizions the mmorpg also ended up on the list of failed mmorpgs.
With PvE raiding it has never been a question of being "good enough". I play games to have fun, not to be a simpering toady sitting through hour after hour of mind numbing boredom and fauning over a guild master in the hopes that he will condescend to reward me with shiny bits of loot. But in games where those people get the highest progression anyone who doesn't do that will just be a moving target for them and I'll be damned if I'm going to pay money for the privelege. - Neanderthal
PvE raiding comes in different forms. It all comes down to one thing - how many choices does a mmorpg give players to play? EQ for example makes raiding the ONLY choice for high level players. Is there a market for that? Yes. But it's a specific market. In WoW it's almost the only choice .... with exploring the incredibly visual gameworld the next choice for high level players.
I agree with you, that if the 1 specific choice does not fit the playstyle of 50% of the community, that is not good. The only thing to do is... look for another mmorpg to play. And leave those who like the 1 specific choice available.... to have fun in that mmorpg.
CSWG so far made the best effort in providing players with as many choices as possible. Want to raid? Want to check out the 30+ OTHER professions? Want to explore? And far, far, far, far, more choices. Alas... CSWG got gutted....
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
I played that, but it was so many years ago, I cannot remember if I beta tested it right before it came out, or actually bought a box and played a month after it released.
Anyway, the game played well, graphics were very nice for the time. There were three races and maybe three classes, if I recall. Or rather a talent tree that had three branches, which was effectively three classes.
Problems:
1) It had a mini-map that let you see upcoming mobs, so nothing was surprise and you could run by potential encounters just as a Hunter in WOW dodges mobs he or she doesn't want to fight. (i.e., navigate the mini-map)
2) No NPC's that I recall. I think they wanted the players to make the world come alive and sell their wares as merchants in place of the NPC's. The result was that the world felt pretty empty.
Despite it's failure, it was a game with some interesting points and much more deserving of survival than the steaming pile that is Vanguard.
I tell you, Vanguard living past AC2 ranks down there with Hitler surviving the bunker plot while Stauffenberg got captured and sent before the firing squad. It's wrong, just wrong.
I was more interested in UO2. Have always lamented it being canned before even being released.
I was hoping for UO2 as well, and then Ultima Odyssey X, both canned before being given a real chance, and UOX was in development and hyped more than UO2 and it looked to be a brilliant free game in the vain of Guild Wars, it's truly a shame neither came to be.
As for AC2, I had wanted to try it but when there was hardly ever any positive feedback, I never gave it a chance.
AC1 was / is 100% superior to AC2. In fact ni many peoples eyes AC1 was superior to any MMORPG ever produced to date.
Why Turbine would shut down a full featured MMORPG that even has an exp pack is beyond me and completely stupid. They could of given AC1 + AC2 in a one subscription package.
He lied To MS and told them that the game was ready, I know folks love to bash MS and a lot of it is warranted, but AC2 failure was all David Bowman.
Dave went as far as telling MS that the game had features that weren't even in the alpha stages. He doctored proof of concepts during milestones and fired anyone that dared questioned him. I know this to be a fact because several close friends were on the original AC2 team.
After Turbine kicked his ass out the door for basically embezzling funds and lying to share holders he went on to do the exact same thing with Horizons. DB cannot buy a job sweeping floors in this industry as a result of his slimey actions.
Ac2 personally was my favorite MMO of all time, and I've played well in excess of 15 titles. I started playing Ac2 at launch, and leveled several classes at once, and fairly slowly, so I had no idea of the content problems at the higher portion of the game because I was too interested in exploring and taking screenshots.
If I had leveled up quickly then there was a good chance I never would have stayed with the game, because I would have ran into the problems so many others did.
Problems:
Ac2 suffered from publishing issues, with Microsoft forcing the game out the door with unfinished content, unbalanced classes, and perhaps damning of all - a broken chat system. Hugely understaffed with DDO and LotR eventually stealing all of Ac2's resources. Ac2 also had a terrible webpage with very little information on the game. I also had billing issues with the game and was double charged on two occasions, which I was able to get fixed. Unreachable level cap.
Sandbox gameplay at a certain point, poeple often mistook the unreachable level cap as a linear grind.
PVP hit system based on levels.
Rubberbanding: Evidentally there were invisible trees in the game that caused people to be pulled backwards. This was a major issue for some people, but I always thought it was my internet connection.
Highlights of Ac2:
Amazing story and lore
Most innovative classes of any MMO, also provided a decent amount of class flexibility, although this upsets Ac1 players because it never was enough.
Great quests - not just kill 10 beetles, but puzzle quests, gauntlets, adventure quests, some where you take three groups and split up, even some like Mario.
Gorgeous game
Great way to build stores
Great combat system - no rezzes for a very long time, death was casual yet meaningful.
Today
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In my opinion World of Warcraft heavily implemented ideas from Asheron's Call 2, and I think it is the least credited game with influencing WoW, when it should be in the top 3.
There actually is a lot of talk and activity regarding Ac2 today, with several projects underway to get the game relaunched. 2008 has seen the most interest in Ac2 out of any year since its closure, and Turbine should be paying attention.
Here is a nice list of many Ac2 Videos:
romotional Videos:
Quest Night
by Tonka, formerly of Hell. Incorporated
This video shows one of routine weekly events that guilds had. The video highlights several different quests that were ran together on the same night. Guilds would gather in their guild hall prior to the start of the questing, and then they would run the quests together. Perhaps one of the most famous quests of Ac2 is included in this video, called Bringing Down the Catacombs. Players had to destroy olthoi while simultaneously attacking the structures supporting the catacombs. After the supports collapsed players had to escape from the dungeon before being killed.
This video happens to be from a former allegiancemate of mine .
I have no idea if a longer version of this exists, but this is a really good video. It's very heavily doctored for visual effects, so this is not representative of the gameplay.
This video was made only to show Turbine how easy it is to produce a video and show off some of the things put into the game before its closing including the new buildings, kingdom leaders, mini-game and a few bits and pieces thrown around from quests. It features a variety of different locations, and the new kingdom leaders mainly for asthetic purposes. The video was put on the Ac2 webpage one day before the closing announcement.
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
Haven't read all the posts yes, but I can tell you my experience and point of view.
#1. Released to early by Microsoft after a terrible beta.
#2. Asheron's Call wasn't a big franchise to begin with and releasing a sequal within 3 years of your main game meant you had 2 games competing for the same customers. Never compete with your own product.
#.3 Terrible Buggy launch with crippling issues. Broken Chat and exploits. Nefd classes and lack of content.
#4. Tons of other issues that all MMO's suffer at launch.
#5. Lastly, the death nail was having to transfer all their accounts off of Microsoft billing to Turbines. In any MMO you always have tons of inactive accounts that people are too lazy to unsubscribe or people think they may come back to later. This pretty much cut off that lifesupport.
AC2 was actually a very cool game and WoW borrowed heavily from it, but they executed where Microsoft and Turbine failed.
Edit* Just read all the posts and this is probably one of the most informative Why AC2 failed threads around. One other thing to add, at the end, most of the new players liked the game but the population was too low and that was the main reason for cancelling. They had absolutely zero marketing for AC2.
He lied To MS and told them that the game was ready, I know folks love to bash MS and a lot of it is warranted, but AC2 failure was all David Bowman.
Dave went as far as telling MS that the game had features that weren't even in the alpha stages. He doctored proof of concepts during milestones and fired anyone that dared questioned him. I know this to be a fact because several close friends were on the original AC2 team.
After Turbine kicked his ass out the door for basically embezzling funds and lying to share holders he went on to do the exact same thing with Horizons. DB cannot buy a job sweeping floors in this industry as a result of his slimey actions.
Thanks. Its about time people really started looking into the downright underhanded business practices of Turbine. Don't forget the absolutely astounding scam they pulled near the end...
Launched an expansion pack, then closed the game down very soon after.
One of, if not the, biggest FU's to a customer base I have ever witnessed in the MMORPG genre.If you think that sort of thing isn't still going on at Turbine, then you are sadly mistaken, though. Any person who gives Turbine money after how they treated their FANS, is a complete hypocrite.
Thanks. Its about time people really started looking into the downright underhanded business practices of Turbine. Don't forget the absolutely astounding scam they pulled near the end... Launched an expansion pack, then closed the game down very soon after. One of, if not the, biggest FU's to a customer base I have ever witnessed in the MMORPG genre.If you think that sort of thing isn't still going on at Turbine, then you are sadly mistaken, though. Any person who gives Turbine money after how they treated their FANS, is a complete hypocrite.
I never really felt like I was scammed, mainly because they apologized and made AC2 F2P the last 6 months. But yeah, I generally agree it was a low blow from turbine.
I have to say the expansion pack was not designed as a way to weasel out money, but was a way to give Turbine a reason to not move out its entire dev team to LOTR and DDO.
If I am right it even gave a free month to anyone, not just new players, who purchased it, coming out to something like $3 on top of a regular monthly fee. It was a great value and introduced even more original classes that can't be found anywhere in MMO's, and the Death Knight Runic system in WoW being implemented is practically directly being taken from the expansion.
Turbine gets a bad wrap for the Legions Xpac from some players, but I give them a lot of props for trying to do it in the first place. WoW completely decimated the player base and there wasn't much left after. They made it with a skeleton crew and it turned out pretty decent. But according to Citan (main AC2 dev) on the last day of AC2, he confessed if you saw how disappointed the Xpac first week sales were, the writing was on the wall right away. They probably lost money doing the Xpac and had 2 new games they could easily devote extra resources to. They tried to throw AC2 a last bone and give people a reason to get back into the game, but by that time it was too little too late.
There was one major problem with AC2, it was nothing like AC1. Turbine tried to copy EQ1 and failed, not realizing that chat was far more vital to EQ players than AC players. AC players did not like it because it was nothing like AC1.
It was not a bad game, just published in an unfinished state and at a bad time.
Turbine learned from that mistake, they have not had a bad game release since, although DDO was somewhat content poor in the beginning.
Originally posted by Perception Thanks. Its about time people really started looking into the downright underhanded business practices of Turbine. Don't forget the absolutely astounding scam they pulled near the end...
Launched an expansion pack, then closed the game down very soon after.
One of, if not the, biggest FU's to a customer base I have ever witnessed in the MMORPG genre.If you think that sort of thing isn't still going on at Turbine, then you are sadly mistaken, though. Any person who gives Turbine money after how they treated their FANS, is a complete hypocrite.
Seemed to me the only people that got mad were the people that did not even play AC2. I was playing AC2 at the time, bought the expansion when it came out. I didn't throw a hissy fit that the game was closing down and I just bought this damn expansion. I don't recall an outcry of the majority of the playerbase lashing out, "We just got this expansion and now this!?"
No I got plenty use out of the expansion, two new races/classes to play, brand new area with better loot and quests. No I had a pretty good time, and towards the end is what AC2 should have been at release.
But people will look for a way to bash Turbine any chance they get. I'm not happy at some of the choices they made in some of their games, but some of you act like they stole your unborn children, robbed you at knife point, stole your boyfriend/girlfriend away from you. Such drama...
Comments
AC2 failed because it was a collection of ideas (sometimes great, sometimes horrific) that were thrown together in a horrible game engine designed to look pretty above all else.
The Good:
1. It was pretty.
2. The classes, abilities, and combat dynamics were really cool.
3. Player made music. Yes please. One of the best ideas ever implemented in a game, and I still give Jason Booth a lube job for that every time I talk about AC2.
The Bad:
1. Pretty graphics engine did not perform well. Character and npc animations were awful. Landscape was horribly angular.
2. While the classes, abilities, and combat dynamics were really cool, the npc's that you used them against were not. Every npc shot out some green ranged attack. Every npc was hostile and attacked, no matter what your level. Npc's had horrid AI. Dungeons were horribly designed, and had awful flow. The overland areas were just infested with npc's, making just normal travel an exercise in tedium.
3. A game world designed to be rebuilt by players, but that dynamic was never actually implemented into the game in any meaningful way.
4. Towns that were simply lag inducing structures with no means of interaction (other than forges, lifestones, portals).
The Ugly:
1. The worst mistake ever made in the history of MMORPG's. Designing a full 2/3 of your game's land mass and content to be completed by characters lvl 40 and below, in essence, making 95% of your gameplay time spent in 1/3 of the game area. You could finish with the first landmass in less than a day. That's 1/3 of the game gone, in less than a day. It still boggles my mind to think about it.
2. Broken Chat. Turbine fanbois love to point the finger at MS for this, but it doesn't matter in the long run.
3. Bugs, bugs, and more bugs. Exploiting stuck npc's was the norm early on. Rubber banding was a common occurance, as were many other numerous glitches. Its been a while, so my memory is failing me, but I just recall so many things just completely not working.
So there ya have it. Recipe for disaster. Speculation puts AC2 dev costs at over $30m.
Perception is Reality.
Add: Could exploit your way to max level in less than a week when the game went live and Turbine did nothing to stop this until it was to late.
Add: Could exploit your way to max level in less than a week when the game went live and Turbine did nothing to stop this until it was to late.
This alone would be a gamekiller for me. Seen this type of thing too many times. Game developers need better internal testing and need to stop relying on free labor from beta testers. You get what you pay for.
*comes out of cryo for a few mins...*
Hello Duilyon, and welcome to MMORPG.com !!!
community.webshots.com/user/xplororor
As someone who played AC1, and was in AC2 beta, and there during the first year of release, ... allow jaded me to comment
1. In the beginning, AC1 came out around the same time as EQ1. UO, then EQ, then AC were the big three. Turbine has always suffered from missmanagement. AC1 was created before EQ1, but got held back, allowing EQ1 to take the fame as the first 3-D mmorpg released. EQ never looked back.
2. AC1 still became a hit, because it was a very unique game. It was more different than EQ, than simular. I still remember the brutal, but incredible moments in that game. One of the many revolutionary features was a near seamless gameworld. In EQ the zones were far more obvious. In AC, if a monster chased you.... heheh.... you better head for a river and hope it can't swim LOL!!! You LITTERALLY could spend hours getting chased by a monster, or group of monsters.
As a result, AC to this day, has the most tight knit player community out of any MMORPG ever created.
3. Back to Turbine's missmanagement problems. Every single mmorpg regularly has free trials. Except for.... AC!!! They have only had 1 in their entire history (as far as I presently know.). Turbine got sold to MicroCrap.... errrr... MicroSoft. And things went soo far down, that a new level of hell was discovered that not even Satan knew about!
4. AC2 was the worse ever Alpha, and beta test in mmorpg history. There litterally was NO ONE for the game testers to talk to! It was only a few weeks before release that MicroSoft hired a community rep, for the beta testers to talk to. But get this... there was a cache for all beta test reports. Meaning, when a beta tester posted their reports, it took 1-5 days for it to appear!!!
5. Many, many, fans of Turbine posted step by step instructions what Turbine could, and should do... to get their money! Customers actually telling a buisness what to do to get their money! And MicroSoft never listened. AC2 released in such a bad state, it took the crown as worse release... formerly held by Anarchy Online. The game litteraly was 20% complete. The power gamers leveled to high level and discovered there was NO high level game at all for high level characters. Exploits were everywhere. In desperation, Turbine aka MicroSoft, allowed all exploiters to keep their gains, even after the exploits were taken care of.
6. All of my predictions in the beta forums came true. One of the ideas I kept pushing was having mounts. The game devs responded by saying they did not want mounts, because other mmorpgs had mounts. I tried explaining that other mmorpgs had mounts because it added to the fun factor - it was something players loved.
http://image05.webshots.com/5/8/51/58/64985158LTfVya_fs.jpg
If it works - use it! And guess what... 1 year after release, AC2 finally put in mounts.
7. AC1 met the definition of a hit mmorpg. It cost roughly 5-10 million to make. And it made it to 100,000 accounts. AC2 at release had 50,000 accounts. 6 months after release it plunged down to 12,000 accounts. I posted here on MMORPG.com back then, that AC2 would get shut down because of the soon to be onslaught of new BIG BOY mmorpgs (WoW, AoC, EQ2, VG, and many more.) Maybe you can find my old AC2 posts here. It was me and a few others using logic vs. 50-100 ultra-fanboys of AC2.
8. It became too obvious that the profits from AC1 was being used as life support for AC2. AC2 finally got the plug pulled. Gross missmanagement is the short answer to your question.
MicroSoft finally sold Turbine back to itself, to further cut it's losses. MicroSoft has one of the worse mmorpg records in history, With 2-3 failed mmorpgs. That's a roughly 75 million dollar lost!!! AC2 cost roughly 25 million to make, and never re-couped any of that money.
9. BTW DDO and MEO aka LotRO are AC2 in disguise. Exact game engine. Where does Turbine keep gettting the money to finance new projects?
Check out the article "The Sorcerer of Sony", one of the most incredible articles on mmorpgs. It details how outside of illegal drugs, the mmorpg industry is one of the few industries with insane returns. 40% and higher. The majority of Fortune 500 companies operate with a 5%-20% profit. EQ cost 5 million to make.... it has made over 1 B-I-L-L-I-O-N!!! And that was as of a few years ago. If EQ made that much, it's very safe to say AC1 which cost roughly the same as EQ, made roughly 200 million. Still insane profits... considering a modern mmorpg cost roughly 25-30 million to make.
(Do a searh on my name, in one of my posts is the direct link to the article which goes into far more detail about the insanely low operating costs of a mmorpg.)
10. Gross missmanagement aka incompantance will ruin anything.
http://community.webshots.com/user/xplororor
Don't worry, you did not miss anything by not getting to play AC2. I do recommend (if you can afford it) you check out AC1, even though it's far past its prime. And check out EQ1. Kind of like parking your 2008 Farrari, and driving a 1936 Packard. It gives you an appreciation how far cars... aka mmorpgs ... have come.
We're all gamers, including the illogical AC2 ultra-fanboys, we're all on the same side! Happy gaming everyone !!!!
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List of all my mmorpg, and other game ... albums:
http://www.webshots.com/search?query=xplororor&new=1&source=chromeheader
11. Oh yeah, I forgot... the main revolutionary feature that AC2 advertised around, that no other mmorpg had, or was planning to have:
- Towns would get attacked by NPCs, and get destroyed. Players could defend towns, and rebuild towns.
- This idea alone would have made AC2 a hit. Talk about a dynamic world! It would go further than DAoC, and even more further than the still revolutionary Anarchy Online!
- AC2 never got around to putting this main feature in, even though it was advertised on the game box that was on the store shelves! lol!
Sad... so sad. The lesson is for players to light a fire under the game DEVs, and game moneymen, and let them know they won't stand for shoddy products. So be it... death to AC2, Mythica, DAWN (heheh), Earth and Beyond, Motor City Online, UXO.... and sniff.... UO2!
We need some mmorpg fans to win the lotto so they can make their own mmorpg, free of moneymen who are not gammers!
nevermind I was wrong
12. *Last comment before going back into cryo*
My main pet peev about AC2 was the fact that dungeons/certain quest areas would NOT allow players of a certain level to enter! You litterally end up banned from 30% - 50% of the gameworld!!! I remember leveling up in the far south area, becoming strong enough to venture to the middle of the landmass I was on, and discovering a new dungeon. Turned out I was 2 levels too high to enter!?! Bad... very bad... game programming! A player should decide when they are strong enough to adventure wherever, and be allowed to adventure wherever... no matter how weak or strong or avarage their character is.
*Goes back into cryo*
PvE raiding comes in different forms. It all comes down to one thing - how many choices does a mmorpg give players to play? EQ for example makes raiding the ONLY choice for high level players. Is there a market for that? Yes. But it's a specific market. In WoW it's almost the only choice .... with exploring the incredibly visual gameworld the next choice for high level players.
I agree with you, that if the 1 specific choice does not fit the playstyle of 50% of the community, that is not good. The only thing to do is... look for another mmorpg to play. And leave those who like the 1 specific choice available.... to have fun in that mmorpg.
CSWG so far made the best effort in providing players with as many choices as possible. Want to raid? Want to check out the 30+ OTHER professions? Want to explore? And far, far, far, far, more choices. Alas... CSWG got gutted....
NP.... your a gamer, I'm a gamer, we're all gamers here! As long as we all don't stop being gamers, all is good and well!!!
I played that, but it was so many years ago, I cannot remember if I beta tested it right before it came out, or actually bought a box and played a month after it released.
Anyway, the game played well, graphics were very nice for the time. There were three races and maybe three classes, if I recall. Or rather a talent tree that had three branches, which was effectively three classes.
Problems:
1) It had a mini-map that let you see upcoming mobs, so nothing was surprise and you could run by potential encounters just as a Hunter in WOW dodges mobs he or she doesn't want to fight. (i.e., navigate the mini-map)
2) No NPC's that I recall. I think they wanted the players to make the world come alive and sell their wares as merchants in place of the NPC's. The result was that the world felt pretty empty.
Despite it's failure, it was a game with some interesting points and much more deserving of survival than the steaming pile that is Vanguard.
I tell you, Vanguard living past AC2 ranks down there with Hitler surviving the bunker plot while Stauffenberg got captured and sent before the firing squad. It's wrong, just wrong.
I was hoping for UO2 as well, and then Ultima Odyssey X, both canned before being given a real chance, and UOX was in development and hyped more than UO2 and it looked to be a brilliant free game in the vain of Guild Wars, it's truly a shame neither came to be.
As for AC2, I had wanted to try it but when there was hardly ever any positive feedback, I never gave it a chance.
AC1 was / is 100% superior to AC2. In fact ni many peoples eyes AC1 was superior to any MMORPG ever produced to date.
Why Turbine would shut down a full featured MMORPG that even has an exp pack is beyond me and completely stupid. They could of given AC1 + AC2 in a one subscription package.
David Bowman.
He lied To MS and told them that the game was ready, I know folks love to bash MS and a lot of it is warranted, but AC2 failure was all David Bowman.
Dave went as far as telling MS that the game had features that weren't even in the alpha stages. He doctored proof of concepts during milestones and fired anyone that dared questioned him. I know this to be a fact because several close friends were on the original AC2 team.
After Turbine kicked his ass out the door for basically embezzling funds and lying to share holders he went on to do the exact same thing with Horizons. DB cannot buy a job sweeping floors in this industry as a result of his slimey actions.
Ac2 personally was my favorite MMO of all time, and I've played well in excess of 15 titles. I started playing Ac2 at launch, and leveled several classes at once, and fairly slowly, so I had no idea of the content problems at the higher portion of the game because I was too interested in exploring and taking screenshots.
If I had leveled up quickly then there was a good chance I never would have stayed with the game, because I would have ran into the problems so many others did.
Problems:
Ac2 suffered from publishing issues, with Microsoft forcing the game out the door with unfinished content, unbalanced classes, and perhaps damning of all - a broken chat system. Hugely understaffed with DDO and LotR eventually stealing all of Ac2's resources. Ac2 also had a terrible webpage with very little information on the game. I also had billing issues with the game and was double charged on two occasions, which I was able to get fixed. Unreachable level cap.
Sandbox gameplay at a certain point, poeple often mistook the unreachable level cap as a linear grind.
PVP hit system based on levels.
Rubberbanding: Evidentally there were invisible trees in the game that caused people to be pulled backwards. This was a major issue for some people, but I always thought it was my internet connection.
Highlights of Ac2:
Amazing story and lore
Most innovative classes of any MMO, also provided a decent amount of class flexibility, although this upsets Ac1 players because it never was enough.
Great quests - not just kill 10 beetles, but puzzle quests, gauntlets, adventure quests, some where you take three groups and split up, even some like Mario.
Gorgeous game
Great way to build stores
Great combat system - no rezzes for a very long time, death was casual yet meaningful.
Today
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In my opinion World of Warcraft heavily implemented ideas from Asheron's Call 2, and I think it is the least credited game with influencing WoW, when it should be in the top 3.
There actually is a lot of talk and activity regarding Ac2 today, with several projects underway to get the game relaunched. 2008 has seen the most interest in Ac2 out of any year since its closure, and Turbine should be paying attention.
Here is a nice list of many Ac2 Videos:
romotional Videos:
.
Quest Night
by Tonka, formerly of Hell. Incorporated
This video shows one of routine weekly events that guilds had. The video highlights several different quests that were ran together on the same night. Guilds would gather in their guild hall prior to the start of the questing, and then they would run the quests together. Perhaps one of the most famous quests of Ac2 is included in this video, called Bringing Down the Catacombs. Players had to destroy olthoi while simultaneously attacking the structures supporting the catacombs. After the supports collapsed players had to escape from the dungeon before being killed.
This video happens to be from a former allegiancemate of mine
http://vnfiles.ign.com/ac2vault/movies/QuestNight.wmv
Plight of the Empyreans
This video highlights the plight of the Empyreans, and is the primary promotional video released for the Ac2 expansion pack Legions.
http://www.sidewinderclan.com/ac2/Legions trailer.wmv
Knorr promo:
This video for the most part captures a few of the areas added prior to the game's closure, the barely explored continent of Knorr.
I can't even tell you where all of the things on this video are at!
http://www.sidewinderclan.com/ac2/Legions2.avi
Legends of Dereth:
by Obi-Won
I have no idea if a longer version of this exists, but this is a really good video. It's very heavily doctored for visual effects, so this is not representative of the gameplay.
http://ac2.bdd.free.fr/images/interface/ico_download.png]Legends of Dereth
The Call:
by Platinumstorm
This video was made only to show Turbine how easy it is to produce a video and show off some of the things put into the game before its closing including the new buildings, kingdom leaders, mini-game and a few bits and pieces thrown around from quests. It features a variety of different locations, and the new kingdom leaders mainly for asthetic purposes. The video was put on the Ac2 webpage one day before the closing announcement.
or
http://www.sidewinderclan.com/ac2/TheCall.wmv
Haven't read all the posts yes, but I can tell you my experience and point of view.
#1. Released to early by Microsoft after a terrible beta.
#2. Asheron's Call wasn't a big franchise to begin with and releasing a sequal within 3 years of your main game meant you had 2 games competing for the same customers. Never compete with your own product.
#.3 Terrible Buggy launch with crippling issues. Broken Chat and exploits. Nefd classes and lack of content.
#4. Tons of other issues that all MMO's suffer at launch.
#5. Lastly, the death nail was having to transfer all their accounts off of Microsoft billing to Turbines. In any MMO you always have tons of inactive accounts that people are too lazy to unsubscribe or people think they may come back to later. This pretty much cut off that lifesupport.
AC2 was actually a very cool game and WoW borrowed heavily from it, but they executed where Microsoft and Turbine failed.
Edit* Just read all the posts and this is probably one of the most informative Why AC2 failed threads around. One other thing to add, at the end, most of the new players liked the game but the population was too low and that was the main reason for cancelling. They had absolutely zero marketing for AC2.
Thanks. Its about time people really started looking into the downright underhanded business practices of Turbine. Don't forget the absolutely astounding scam they pulled near the end...
Launched an expansion pack, then closed the game down very soon after.
One of, if not the, biggest FU's to a customer base I have ever witnessed in the MMORPG genre. If you think that sort of thing isn't still going on at Turbine, then you are sadly mistaken, though. Any person who gives Turbine money after how they treated their FANS, is a complete hypocrite.
Perception is Reality.
Yeah, it shows you how really sleazy the software industry can be.
Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands? ~Ernest Gaines
I never really felt like I was scammed, mainly because they apologized and made AC2 F2P the last 6 months. But yeah, I generally agree it was a low blow from turbine.
I have to say the expansion pack was not designed as a way to weasel out money, but was a way to give Turbine a reason to not move out its entire dev team to LOTR and DDO.
If I am right it even gave a free month to anyone, not just new players, who purchased it, coming out to something like $3 on top of a regular monthly fee. It was a great value and introduced even more original classes that can't be found anywhere in MMO's, and the Death Knight Runic system in WoW being implemented is practically directly being taken from the expansion.
Turbine gets a bad wrap for the Legions Xpac from some players, but I give them a lot of props for trying to do it in the first place. WoW completely decimated the player base and there wasn't much left after. They made it with a skeleton crew and it turned out pretty decent. But according to Citan (main AC2 dev) on the last day of AC2, he confessed if you saw how disappointed the Xpac first week sales were, the writing was on the wall right away. They probably lost money doing the Xpac and had 2 new games they could easily devote extra resources to. They tried to throw AC2 a last bone and give people a reason to get back into the game, but by that time it was too little too late.
There was one major problem with AC2, it was nothing like AC1. Turbine tried to copy EQ1 and failed, not realizing that chat was far more vital to EQ players than AC players. AC players did not like it because it was nothing like AC1.
It was not a bad game, just published in an unfinished state and at a bad time.
Turbine learned from that mistake, they have not had a bad game release since, although DDO was somewhat content poor in the beginning.
Seemed to me the only people that got mad were the people that did not even play AC2. I was playing AC2 at the time, bought the expansion when it came out. I didn't throw a hissy fit that the game was closing down and I just bought this damn expansion. I don't recall an outcry of the majority of the playerbase lashing out, "We just got this expansion and now this!?"
No I got plenty use out of the expansion, two new races/classes to play, brand new area with better loot and quests. No I had a pretty good time, and towards the end is what AC2 should have been at release.
But people will look for a way to bash Turbine any chance they get. I'm not happy at some of the choices they made in some of their games, but some of you act like they stole your unborn children, robbed you at knife point, stole your boyfriend/girlfriend away from you. Such drama...
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Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate.