The problem with AC and AC2 has always been advertising. They took out a few magazine ads, and that's it. No online banners, or website promotional materials. They are starting to learn their lesson with advertising for DDO and AC can now be purchased for download. I actually saw a television commercial for DDO with gameplay footage, the Turbine logo, and everything. Maybe they were stockpiling their ad budget all these years to throw into DDO.
AC could have been an EQ killer if it was advertised heavily enough. AC2 wasn't killing anything unless it was released a year or two after the actual release date.
AC2 had many problems during it existance, but the major problem was Turbine management, the Turbine that ruined AC2 and closed the servers is the same that is doing DDO and that is working on LOTRO, you know why AC2 really failed? because Turbine only cared AC2 while it was good for beta testing their future games and training some devs that were recruited for bigger projects after AC2 death.
AC2 had 6 ppl working on expansion, they worked almost 24/7 to produce a quality product, if they really wanted AC2 to work they would have put more resources on it, but no the priority for Turbine always was DDO and LOTRO, they almost did no adverstising to the AC2 expansion, and they announced death of the game 3 months after expansion launch, wouldnt get you pissed if you buyed an expansion and had the game end its expectancy 3 months later?
I'll give you this example if EVE online management had closed the servers when things were going very wrong and gave up, Eve would never reach the success of today, geez check Saga of Ryzom too, there's companies that care about their fanbase, Turbine isnt one of them. Making a mmorpg reach relative success sometimes requires time and patience and good direction, and AC2 was in good direction after the expansion, with a few more quality patches and serious support from Turbine the game would improve and be relative success.
1) None of the classes at start were completed / tested. Skills were broken or useless. Some classes had no direction. (Hivekeeper skills did not work) Zealots skill line messed up, etc.
2) Changes to classes and fixes took too long / people dislike having to respec over and over on classes that where changing constantly.
3) Ranged arrows mechanics was a major exploit. Sit on a rock and kill mobs all day without risk.
4) Chat server crashes.
5) Game crashes in which you would loose more than an hour of work / XP (<-- That did it for me)
6) Mario like jumping in one of the 'dungeons' was a total letdown.
7) Developers not listening to players, Developers not delivering and making false promises with no timeline explained to users. When you launch a game that isn't baked yet, at least have the brains to lay out a road map.
8) Sourfire quest? There were several looholes in which you can team with a higher lvl player and gain over 10 levels a quest run. Quest took literly 15 minutes.
9) "Exploit first Exploit often" was the catchphrase as there was no banning for people who abused holes.
10) In a destroyed world where they promised players can make a difference, there were absolutly no tools to re-create towns as they had promised.
11) Selling an expansion pack a week before the close for good (WTF is that?)
Don't get me wrong, AC2 had some VERY good positives.
Positives: 1) Quest system rewarded whole group accomplishments 2) They had a nice quest voice when completing a quest 'quest complete' 3) Musical instruments were groovy. 4) Nice graphics, looked very nice.
It was another push it out the door and fleece the customer base as we try to fix the bugs.
[quote]there's companies that care about their fanbase, Turbine isnt one of them.[/quote]
Gotta disagree on that rsaint. I chalk up most of their problems to incompetence, not apathy. AC and AC2 have had community managers who hit the message boards often to update people and discuss ideas. I know a few of my ideas that I posted on the boards were actually put into AC, such as the monster overhauls. I've also seen other ideas get used directly from the message boards such as keyrings, and fast buffing. I'm actually impressed at just how well they listen in many cases. They are just incompetent where marketing is concerned, but they are getting better.
Grape, I think some of your info is a little wrong here.
1) Most classes were not completed / tested, but not all. Generally, you are right on this.
2) Some people liked respeccing, some didn't. Overall, this was bad for the game.
3) Almost all the monsters had a ranged attack, so it was rare to really find a safe spot. The real exploits early on were the tyrants who got stuck on a hillside and froze up. People killed them without even a fight and hit level 50 within weeks.
4) Yeah, it took them well over a year to fix chat.
5) This is called a rollback, and it happened a lot in this game due to buggy patches.
6) I don't know about Mario jumping, but it sure was hard to jump carefully due to imprecise movements.
7) Agreed. The devs had it in their head what they wanted to do, but it was mostly Microsoft calling all the shots.
8) Lots of quest exploits where people could shoot up in levels. The nerfs sometimes were worse than the exploits.
9) The quote is "Exploit early, exploit often" and it was said many years ago about AC by a dev who doesn't work for Turbine anymore. I saw a lot of people banned for exploiting quests, even if they didn't know what they were doing was wrong.
10) Yeah, towns had no purpose. No reason to go to a town.
11) Yeah, the expansion was actually great, then they come out with a great patch, and then they shut it down. They could have at least left one server up. They shouldn't have let SOE distribute the expansion. I went to many stores and couldn't even find it! They should have chosen a publisher who wasn't a direct competitor. SOE did a poor job of getting game boxes out.
Originally posted by Falconoffury Grape, I think some of your info is a little wrong here.
1) Most classes were not completed / tested, but not all. Generally, you are right on this.
2) Some people liked respeccing, some didn't. Overall, this was bad for the game.
3) Almost all the monsters had a ranged attack, so it was rare to really find a safe spot. The real exploits early on were the tyrants who got stuck on a hillside and froze up. People killed them without even a fight and hit level 50 within weeks.
4) Yeah, it took them well over a year to fix chat.
5) This is called a rollback, and it happened a lot in this game due to buggy patches.
6) I don't know about Mario jumping, but it sure was hard to jump carefully due to imprecise movements.
7) Agreed. The devs had it in their head what they wanted to do, but it was mostly Microsoft calling all the shots.
8) Lots of quest exploits where people could shoot up in levels. The nerfs sometimes were worse than the exploits.
9) The quote is "Exploit early, exploit often" and it was said many years ago about AC by a dev who doesn't work for Turbine anymore. I saw a lot of people banned for exploiting quests, even if they didn't know what they were doing was wrong.
10) Yeah, towns had no purpose. No reason to go to a town.
11) Yeah, the expansion was actually great, then they come out with a great patch, and then they shut it down. They could have at least left one server up. They shouldn't have let SOE distribute the expansion. I went to many stores and couldn't even find it! They should have chosen a publisher who wasn't a direct competitor. SOE did a poor job of getting game boxes out.
I you call a server crash, unannoucned downtime, and oh sorry a rollback than I guess your right on #5. What fustrated me at no end is loosing XP because their back end database stunk and character saves were every hour or so.
As to #3, I soloed to 50 sitting on a rock pelting mobs with horrible pathfinding.
I really did like this game though, it just lacked polish the commitment
Plus in AC you could set something down in the world log out log back in and pick it up . AC2 was trying to be WOW where nothing in the world is yours.
I still have a lot of fond memories of AC2. It looked drop dead gorgeous. I'd even go so far as to say I've yet to find a game where I love it so much to walk around and breath in the atmosphere and beauty of the surroundings.
Besides that I think they never quite recovered from launching a half finished game. The potential was there, but it indeed needed 6 to 12 months more work. That and a major city on each continent
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.
AC2 did alienate AC players - by pulling so many players from AC and then turninf them away from Turbine products, they killed two games with the launch of one. That and it's always good in a multiplayer game to be able to actually communicate with other players.
Late to the discussion, I see, but nonetheless. AC2 failed for three reasons:
First, Microsoft screwed Turbine over so very badly. The marketing for the game was poor beyond belief. AC2 actually got decent reviews, but the poor marketing didn't supply a fresh set of players. In fact, Microsoft targeted AC1 players instead of "any and everyone," which was a doomed strategy from the start.
Second is an addendum to the first. Microsoft wanted the product rushed out in order to become the first "third gen" MMO released. And it got rushed alright -- so much so, that I think the entire "post-apocalyptic" setting was actually never complete. One of my sharpest memories of AC2 was going to an old "grand place" like Shoushi or Arwic, and seeing literally no NPCs. Just houses.
[BTW, I speak with secondhand knowledge here (though there are bits of evidence in Turbine's releases dating from 99-02), some might find it interesting to know that the AC2 (or "AC2.0") engine was initially intended to be *just* an intense graphical upgrade for AC1. In many ways, I tend to think AC2 was more rushed than people can imagine.]
And lastly, the game failed to deliver on the idea of permanence. The precis of the game - to be able to "change the world" - was never fully realized. Players never really had any sort of permanent effect on the world. The promise of such did draw new people in, but with lacking permanence, they left for other, more "meaningful" games like SWG or EQ2.
It's a shame. I have a special kind of love for Turbine as both the underdog and the innovators.
-- xpaladin
[MMOz] AC1/2, AO, DAoC, EQ1/2, SoR, SWG, UO, WAR, WoW
The funny thing is that people blamed Microsoft for years that they were holding AC back. Yet now that MS is out of the picture, Turbine has been destroying the original image of the game that was so fun so long ago. No matter how much I loved the game, Turbine is a terrible company. I have no faith in them to put out a good game.. I feel that they're using these big licenses to try to lure people in and save their company from failing, yet they've already proved with DDO that they can't produce a big-hitting game even with such a huge license.
Originally posted by Sheista The funny thing is that people blamed Microsoft for years that they were holding AC back. Yet now that MS is out of the picture, Turbine has been destroying the original image of the game that was so fun so long ago. No matter how much I loved the game, Turbine is a terrible company. I have no faith in them to put out a good game.. I feel that they're using these big licenses to try to lure people in and save their company from failing, yet they've already proved with DDO that they can't produce a big-hitting game even with such a huge license.
Yep but they will continue to blame Microsoft for the demise of Turbine. And Craig made a very good point awhile ago in a similar discussion. Advertising was not AC 2's problem, there was alot of advertising and it still flopped. I remember full page adds in game magazines even. I knew it was coming before it was out due to advertisement.
Turbine just doesn't know how to make a fun game, that is all there is too it. They have however learned to make a stable game it appears from DDO, now they just need to work out that whole "fun" concept.
- 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
Originally posted by Sheista The funny thing is that people blamed Microsoft for years that they were holding AC back. Yet now that MS is out of the picture, Turbine has been destroying the original image of the game that was so fun so long ago. No matter how much I loved the game, Turbine is a terrible company. I have no faith in them to put out a good game.. I feel that they're using these big licenses to try to lure people in and save their company from failing, yet they've already proved with DDO that they can't produce a big-hitting game even with such a huge license.
Yep but they will continue to blame Microsoft for the demise of Turbine. And Craig made a very good point awhile ago in a similar discussion. Advertising was not AC 2's problem, there was alot of advertising and it still flopped. I remember full page adds in game magazines even. I knew it was coming before it was out due to advertisement.
Turbine just doesn't know how to make a fun game, that is all there is too it. They have however learned to make a stable game it appears from DDO, now they just need to work out that whole "fun" concept.
Maybe AC2 wasn't the most fun game for you, but I found AC2 to be the most fun MMOG I've ever played and was sad to see the game go. What over MMO had a dungeon that had a room with little gravity? Or a mount race with checkpoints?
I'm sad to see the game go. Unfortunately AC2 was released about a year too soon and didn't receive the proper testing or debugging it needed. By the time most of the bugs were ironed out, it was already too late. If AC2 was released the right way, it would still be around today.
It's a shame they closed AC2, because as crappy as the mmorpg market has been the past couple years I would have been willing to try it again.
I wish turbine would have never gotten these damn liscense deals. You know they are just going to be more WoW clones. Turbine you need to make more games like your original AC1...SKILL BASED SYSTEM WITH AMAZING RANDOMIZED LOOOOOOOT!!!!!!
I have been waiting for another skill based mmorpg since........2001 I'm getting SICK of waiting.
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.
Cool.... if you can change that much, then go just a little bit further and CHANGE YOUR NAME!
I see the word 'turbine' on a game and i'm not buying it, period. Cause imo, the name 'turbine' = "money-grubbing-swine-selling-crap"... Why loose sales because of a bad history? I mean, if you loose sales because of bad products or practices, that's understandable. But if you've turned around that much, then just loose the old stigma all together, loose the name, and give yourself a chance.
As an original AC1 player, I was dismayed to learn that AC2 would have done away with the experience to skill point system to settle for a more static level based one. AC was the anti-establishment tinkerer's game and AC2 was just another EQ clone, even though it looked greeat. Too bad they couldn't slap those great graphics and music emotes into the original.
Comments
The problem with AC and AC2 has always been advertising. They took out a few magazine ads, and that's it. No online banners, or website promotional materials. They are starting to learn their lesson with advertising for DDO and AC can now be purchased for download. I actually saw a television commercial for DDO with gameplay footage, the Turbine logo, and everything. Maybe they were stockpiling their ad budget all these years to throw into DDO.
AC could have been an EQ killer if it was advertised heavily enough. AC2 wasn't killing anything unless it was released a year or two after the actual release date.
AC2 had 6 ppl working on expansion, they worked almost 24/7 to produce a quality product, if they really wanted AC2 to work they would have put more resources on it, but no the priority for Turbine always was DDO and LOTRO, they almost did no adverstising to the AC2 expansion, and they announced death of the game 3 months after expansion launch, wouldnt get you pissed if you buyed an expansion and had the game end its expectancy 3 months later?
I'll give you this example if EVE online management had closed the servers when things were going very wrong and gave up, Eve would never reach the success of today, geez check Saga of Ryzom too, there's companies that care about their fanbase, Turbine isnt one of them. Making a mmorpg reach relative success sometimes requires time and patience and good direction, and AC2 was in good direction after the expansion, with a few more quality patches and serious support from Turbine the game would improve and be relative success.
but no Turbine have DDO and LOTRO...
1) None of the classes at start were completed / tested. Skills were broken or useless. Some classes had no direction. (Hivekeeper skills did not work) Zealots skill line messed up, etc.
2) Changes to classes and fixes took too long / people dislike having to respec over and over on classes that where changing constantly.
3) Ranged arrows mechanics was a major exploit. Sit on a rock and kill mobs all day without risk.
4) Chat server crashes.
5) Game crashes in which you would loose more than an hour of work / XP (<-- That did it for me)
6) Mario like jumping in one of the 'dungeons' was a total letdown.
7) Developers not listening to players, Developers not delivering and making false promises with no timeline explained to users. When you launch a game that isn't baked yet, at least have the brains to lay out a road map.
8) Sourfire quest? There were several looholes in which you can team with a higher lvl player and gain over 10 levels a quest run. Quest took literly 15 minutes.
9) "Exploit first Exploit often" was the catchphrase as there was no banning for people who abused holes.
10) In a destroyed world where they promised players can make a difference, there were absolutly no tools to re-create towns as they had promised.
11) Selling an expansion pack a week before the close for good (WTF is that?)
Don't get me wrong, AC2 had some VERY good positives.
Positives:
1) Quest system rewarded whole group accomplishments
2) They had a nice quest voice when completing a quest 'quest complete'
3) Musical instruments were groovy.
4) Nice graphics, looked very nice.
It was another push it out the door and fleece the customer base as we try to fix the bugs.
Gotta disagree on that rsaint. I chalk up most of their problems to incompetence, not apathy. AC and AC2 have had community managers who hit the message boards often to update people and discuss ideas. I know a few of my ideas that I posted on the boards were actually put into AC, such as the monster overhauls. I've also seen other ideas get used directly from the message boards such as keyrings, and fast buffing. I'm actually impressed at just how well they listen in many cases. They are just incompetent where marketing is concerned, but they are getting better.
1) Most classes were not completed / tested, but not all. Generally, you are right on this.
2) Some people liked respeccing, some didn't. Overall, this was bad for the game.
3) Almost all the monsters had a ranged attack, so it was rare to really find a safe spot. The real exploits early on were the tyrants who got stuck on a hillside and froze up. People killed them without even a fight and hit level 50 within weeks.
4) Yeah, it took them well over a year to fix chat.
5) This is called a rollback, and it happened a lot in this game due to buggy patches.
6) I don't know about Mario jumping, but it sure was hard to jump carefully due to imprecise movements.
7) Agreed. The devs had it in their head what they wanted to do, but it was mostly Microsoft calling all the shots.
8) Lots of quest exploits where people could shoot up in levels. The nerfs sometimes were worse than the exploits.
9) The quote is "Exploit early, exploit often" and it was said many years ago about AC by a dev who doesn't work for Turbine anymore. I saw a lot of people banned for exploiting quests, even if they didn't know what they were doing was wrong.
10) Yeah, towns had no purpose. No reason to go to a town.
11) Yeah, the expansion was actually great, then they come out with a great patch, and then they shut it down. They could have at least left one server up. They shouldn't have let SOE distribute the expansion. I went to many stores and couldn't even find it! They should have chosen a publisher who wasn't a direct competitor. SOE did a poor job of getting game boxes out.
As to #3, I soloed to 50 sitting on a rock pelting mobs with horrible pathfinding.
I really did like this game though, it just lacked polish the commitment
It looked drop dead gorgeous. I'd even go so far as to say I've yet to find a game where I love it so much to walk around and breath in the atmosphere and beauty of the surroundings.
Besides that I think they never quite recovered from launching a half finished game. The potential was there, but it indeed needed 6 to 12 months more work. That and a major city on each continent
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.
AC2 did alienate AC players - by pulling so many players from AC and then turninf them away from Turbine products, they killed two games with the launch of one. That and it's always good in a multiplayer game to be able to actually communicate with other players.
First, Microsoft screwed Turbine over so very badly. The marketing for the game was poor beyond belief. AC2 actually got decent reviews, but the poor marketing didn't supply a fresh set of players. In fact, Microsoft targeted AC1 players instead of "any and everyone," which was a doomed strategy from the start.
Second is an addendum to the first. Microsoft wanted the product rushed out in order to become the first "third gen" MMO released. And it got rushed alright -- so much so, that I think the entire "post-apocalyptic" setting was actually never complete. One of my sharpest memories of AC2 was going to an old "grand place" like Shoushi or Arwic, and seeing literally no NPCs. Just houses.
[BTW, I speak with secondhand knowledge here (though there are bits of
evidence in Turbine's releases dating from 99-02), some might find it
interesting to know that the AC2 (or "AC2.0") engine was initially
intended to be *just* an intense graphical upgrade for AC1. In many
ways, I tend to think AC2 was more rushed than people can imagine.]
And lastly, the game failed to deliver on the idea of permanence. The precis of the game - to be able to "change the world" - was never fully realized. Players never really had any sort of permanent effect on the world. The promise of such did draw new people in,
but with lacking permanence, they left for other, more "meaningful" games like
SWG or EQ2.
It's a shame. I have a special kind of love for Turbine as both the underdog and the innovators.
-- xpaladin
[MMOz]
AC1/2, AO, DAoC, EQ1/2, SoR, SWG, UO, WAR, WoW
Yep but they will continue to blame Microsoft for the demise of Turbine. And Craig made a very good point awhile ago in a similar discussion. Advertising was not AC 2's problem, there was alot of advertising and it still flopped. I remember full page adds in game magazines even. I knew it was coming before it was out due to advertisement.
Turbine just doesn't know how to make a fun game, that is all there is too it. They have however learned to make a stable game it appears from DDO, now they just need to work out that whole "fun" concept.
- 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
Yep but they will continue to blame Microsoft for the demise of Turbine. And Craig made a very good point awhile ago in a similar discussion. Advertising was not AC 2's problem, there was alot of advertising and it still flopped. I remember full page adds in game magazines even. I knew it was coming before it was out due to advertisement.
Turbine just doesn't know how to make a fun game, that is all there is too it. They have however learned to make a stable game it appears from DDO, now they just need to work out that whole "fun" concept.
Maybe AC2 wasn't the most fun game for you, but I found AC2 to be the most fun MMOG I've ever played and was sad to see the game go. What over MMO had a dungeon that had a room with little gravity? Or a mount race with checkpoints?
I'm sad to see the game go. Unfortunately AC2 was released about a year too soon and didn't receive the proper testing or debugging it needed. By the time most of the bugs were ironed out, it was already too late. If AC2 was released the right way, it would still be around today.
I wish turbine would have never gotten these damn liscense deals. You know they are just going to be more WoW clones. Turbine you need to make more games like your original AC1...SKILL BASED SYSTEM WITH AMAZING RANDOMIZED LOOOOOOOT!!!!!!
I have been waiting for another skill based mmorpg since........2001 I'm getting SICK of waiting.
I see the word 'turbine' on a game and i'm not buying it, period. Cause imo, the name 'turbine' = "money-grubbing-swine-selling-crap"... Why loose sales because of a bad history? I mean, if you loose sales because of bad products or practices, that's understandable. But if you've turned around that much, then just loose the old stigma all together, loose the name, and give yourself a chance.
it's true that it sucked for other reasons as well, quests were sparse and broken, gameplay was shallow and lag was a major problem
i would love to see an AC3, as long as turbine don't piss all over it like they did with AC2, DDO and LotRO (probably)
Asheron's Call (3 Years)
Asheron's Call 2 (3 Months)
SWG (3 Months)
FFXI (1 Day)
WoW (6 Months)
DDO (1 Month)
Vanguard (off & on)
Crossfire
LotRO (3 months)
Warhammer (3 days)
GW2 (1 month)
CIV I-IV (20 Years)