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The Main Reason AC2 Failed
sempiternal
Member UncommonPosts: 1,082
What is the main reason that AC2 Failed?
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The game was rushed out early and needed about 6 more months to tweak classes, add more content and fix exploits.
The chat servers were terrible and hardly worked for a while which drove entire guilds away.
There was little to no advertising.
Ultimately those were all Microsoft issues and the game could never recover from such a bad first impression.
AC2 was a much better game then alot of MMORPG that are still around but it never received the proper support or funding from either Microsoft or later on Turbine.
AC2, I knew thee well....
Which FF Character Are You?
One other reason AC2 failed and this ties into the M$ sale was the inability to migrate subscriptions. AC2 for a long time still had adequete subscription revenue from non playing accounts that were still being billed. Legions was made to give those people a reason to transfer over to Turbine's own internal billing system off of Microsofts. This was one of the critical elements of why the game was shut down. They didn't come close to getting near enough accts transfered over and Legions was barely advertised due to a lack of budgeted funds which also had extremely disappointing sales.
SOE also did a horrendus job of distributing the game and had problems getting the product out and without faulty discs. The turbine devs did a pretty amazing job considering the size of the staff and budget they had to work with but Turbine management never game the expansion a fighting chance. There was no sense of urgency to get new players to buy the game. Most of the new players that came to the game towards the end liked the game but ended up quiting due to lack of other players to group with.
AC2 would never have been a mass market game like WoW but it could have easily been at where Eve Online is without all the debacles considering the great lore and storylines. AC2 was also a much different game then its predecessor AC1. So it immediately didn't appeal to the core AC fans and rule number one in business, never compete against your own product.
but AC2 pulled together and created a very good mmo (offcourse the best imo
) and inspite of my first impression of you...you may be a good guy , who knows... lol
I think one of the main reasons it failed was that most of the people who went to play it were AC1 players. And we go from AC1, a very in depth game with virtually unlimited character customization, to a half-finished buggy game that introduced rigid character building and 'skill trees'. AC1, pvp is completely optional. AC2, there are PVP zones you have to run through to get places to hunt/quest/etc. AC1, you could solo very effectively. AC2 was much more 'group oriented.' Don't get me wrong, I think AC2 was a great game, but there were a lot of things about it at release that really irked former AC1 players. Add that to the exploits, bugs, server problems for the first several months causing many people to leave - if and when they got their act together they had already taken too big a hit. It is unfortunate, if it was still around today I'd give it a second shot for sure now that it has had time to iron out a lot of the kinks.
Gaming? That's not gaming!
That's just people sat 'round in costumes drinking...
I played AC2 for a few months and I have to say, the landscape graphics were stunning. I used to down a few tequilas, head to the ocean, find an island and sit down and play my musical instruments. Then I would get up, fight a little and explore. I really loved that game. Granted, I didnt get too involved in the content, but to me, as an older gamer, I enjoyed it.
The only problem I had was interaction. I rarely saw anyone on the roads or in the fields.
The primary reason (IMHO) AC2 failed was because of its terrible launch. You would think Turbine learned its lesson but now look at D&DO. Another one of their games is crashing hard and they are scrambling to get it fixed.
I feel there where a few other reasons. The main thing was the game "felt" empty. Not because it actually was but because of one critical thing. They left out any sort of social center at release. There was no common place for players to congregate. There was no way to sell crafted items, no town, no market. It isolated the player. The closest thing they got was the guild halls but it was far to late at that point.
It was a big, huge, nice looking but solitary world. Once the pops dropped any new player was greeted with........solitude. It was to big of a world for the low pops it had with no social centers or way to meet up with anyone.
It was such an easy problem to fix. A starter town with a market at launch would have changed the entire course of AC2's short history.
It was also not customizable enough. Looks where pretty bland. More importantly there wasn't enough variety. AC players where use to being able to tweek and fiddle with every stat and skill. AC2 offered none of that. It kept everyone on a lineare skill tree. It never offered player housing which AC is one of the first to have. All the crafting was more or less combat related. No cloths, no furniture, nothing just for fun or challenge. It never gave the players the opportunity to really express or build or do anything but kill monsters.
It had an interesting musical emote system but never gave the players the opportunity to meet with other players with the same interest. (by leaving out a common social center) No taverns or towns...bah such an easy fix.
-Chat was literally broken for 3 months. There was no in-game chat except local which took what little chance crafters had in the first place away immediatly and killed the social end of the game.
-The revamped the classes more times then I could count. Every time I logged in I had another skill reset waiting for me.
-The world was dead at launch. No cities, no vendors, hell you were lucky if there was 2 NPC's in the same destroyed town's ruins.
-Their monthly update plan backfired on them because they couldn't get a solid bug free publish out once a month, every one brought a new onslaught of problems to the game.
-The pathing bug being fixed by removing over 75% of all tree's in the game. Whole forests literally dissapeared.
-Their content consisted of a 2 minute storyboards each month.The stories was so elementary it was actually insulting to someone that actually expected real content.
-Completely automated events, I never saw the staff once get involved in the game play of an event.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
Existing AC players were given AC2 beta accounts and I think a majority of us reported back to our friends in AC that it was nothing like the game we were expecting and got pissed about it. Bottomline is MS/Turbine alienated it's player base from the start which was not a good sign.
- So they had a game with NPC's no one really couldn't related too, like they could with ones they grew up with like Trolls, Goblins and Orcs.
- There were towns with building you couldn't enter, making for an unrealistic environment.
- There were no vendors and converting items to coin was just an odd system.
- They alienated the existing player base with an EQ style game.
- MS really was bad at marketing their MMORPG's
Insiders said AC2 was not the game Turbine wanted to make but MS was bankrolling them and wanted it more EQ'ish. Who knows for certain...the game is dead and was from the start.
Ok see this is something I don't get it. They already had AC 1 why would they want to make it again? AC 2 was never intended to be the same as AC 1 nor should it have been. That was lack of thought on the players part.
They didn't alienate their playerbase, they already had an AC 1 playerbase. Why would they want to suck the wind right out of their exhisting product with a new one?
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
I really liked the game myself. I think the classes were some of the most interesting I've seen in an MMO. The tactician was simply awesome. I also think that the Ranger spec class, which I played, was very fun too. If everything in the game was wrong, the class and combat system was still quite entertaining.
Ok see this is something I don't get it. They already had AC 1 why would they want to make it again? AC 2 was never intended to be the same as AC 1 nor should it have been. That was lack of thought on the players part.
They didn't alienate their playerbase, they already had an AC 1 playerbase. Why would they want to suck the wind right out of their exhisting product with a new one?
That was one major problem that AC2 had was competing with its own product. It confused new customers and alienated fans of AC1 because it was nothing like the original. The game itself was not nearly as bad a lot of MMORPG's that are still around but was a signifcant factor on why it failed.
AC2 was intended to be the WoW of its day. A much easier game for the average casual gamer to get into. It was supposed to have been released on the Xbox as part of the Live package but due to the terrible launch it was shelved by Microsoft. Microsoft always believed they could make a better MMO then AC1 and the result was AC2. AC2 had alot of great features and was so close but yet so far away because it wasn't given the proper development time like WoW had. AC2 really needed another 6-12 months of dev time and it would still be around today probably with pretty healthy subscriber numbers.
Did you read my post? No that was not it's problem, it did not alienate AC 1's playerbase because it was never supposed to be AC 1 version 2. If they wanted to do a graphical upgrade to AC 1 they would have, to sit and make an entire new game that is just an graphical upgrade to AC 1 would have been foolish.
There were many problems with AC 2, a small amount of them listed here and ofcourse it was supposed to be the WoW of it's day. That is the goal of every gaming company that is making a product to generate as many subs as it can by being diverse enough to attract all types of gamers which is most MMO's today.
Considering AC 1's limited success I would say it was a no-brainer with your comment that MS thought they could make something better then AC 1. AC 1 never was that successful, it was 3rd of the 3 big mmo's out at the time. And after Turbine completely blundered it's launch they killed what playerbase they did have.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
This was the problem whether you know it or not. AC2 did alieniate AC1 for that exact reason. If a game is called AC2 it is logical to assume that its a continuation of part 1. Thats why all the beta invites came to mostly AC1 players. I was in that group and accepted the game for what it was. Most of the other AC1 players ripped AC2 a new a-hole and it was immediately rejected by its core group of fans that were supposed to be the foundation of the community. Not only did they alieniate current AC1 players and divide the community, they completely confused players.
The game was also rushed out early and was completely ripped by all the new players that played it. Broken chat, exploits and class nerfing caused all the new players to run away from the game and give it terrible work of mouth. Now if your core group is still around, you can use that base to keep the game going and eventually get the game back on its feet if the core of the game is good. AC2 did not have a core group left because AC1 players did not embrace the game. DDO seems to have done the same thing but it did appeal to enough D&D fans to still have decent subscription numbers.
A continuation is a far cry different then a remake with modern technology. Please get your terms right and if you thought AC 2 would be a remake of AC 1 you were foolish with alot of the other players. I played both games at launchtime for both and I didn't make any such assumptions for what I thought would be obvious reasons.
It would have been even more foolish for Turbine to make a game that was appealing only their exhisting player base. They needed a newer system that would attract new players not just excite the people already paying them.
- Scaris
"What happened to you, Star Wars Galaxies? You used to look like Leia. Not quite gold bikini Leia (more like bad-British-accent-and-cinnamon-bun-hair Leia), but still Leia nonetheless. Now you look like Chewbacca." - Computer Gaming World
I worked on AC2. I was the last Lead Designer on the game (there were several). I'm not going to recount any horror stories or make any excuses. Mistakes were made and learned from. And there's the point I want to make abundantly clear:
That was almost four years ago.
This is not the same Turbine.
LOTRO has a huge team, with highly experienced developers, stable and powerful technology, not to mention the best license on the planet. We're self-funded. We're independent. We've got the time we need to do this right. We've got a lot of new blood in the company, and the veterans have learned a ton and are just itching to prove it. And ultimately, the game will speak for itself.
Nik Davidson
Lead Game Systems Designer
Turbine, Inc.
Following post elaborating on the dev's post
Turbine was a developing AC2 for Microsoft, who decided things like how beta would be run, when the game would launch, whether it would be delayed or not for more fixes and more content, what the service-side policies were. As far as I could tell, the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd priorities for Microsoft were the ship date - they announced that it would ship in November when they announced the game in late February, and meant to stick to that.
One example: they invited 9,000 people into the beta at a point where there was only one server running, and it could only handle 900. Instead of waiting for several more weeks until things were more stable and they had better capacity, they got all sorts of people excited - and then very disappointed, presumably so they could stick to their schedule.
Another example: when Microsoft propped the beta 1 bits, they neglected to warn the folks at Turbine at all. I saw the announcement on the alpha newsgroup and told one of their developers... who didn't know whether to laugh or be mad. He hadn't been expecting that for 3 more weeks, and things were very broken at that point. Everyone at Turbine had to scramble like mad to plug holes.
Third example: Microsoft wrote exactly one major piece of AC2... the chat server. It was majorly sporked throughout beta, was broken when the game launched, and remained intermitently broken until Turbine rewrote it.
The good news... Microsoft isn't in this picture anymore
Khafar
People got tired of Rubber banding all over the screen? Never had so much technical problems with a MMORPG ever before in my life. I mean just do a search for Rubberband and AC2 and see how many hits come up.
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You see, every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with their surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You spread to an area, and you multiply, and you multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet.-Mr.Smith
I really enjoyed my 3+ years with AC...but I don't see them doing it right with LotR.
they fixed this.. i had no problem with this after the fix. and this problem for me, was only on the Omishan island