Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Will we see a new Asheron's call ? *Poll*
Lionexx
Member UncommonPosts: 680
Just wanted to see if any of you thinks so or not 
Playing: Everthing
Played: DAoC,AC2,EvE,SWG,WAR,MXO,CoX,EQ2,L2,LOTRO,SB,UO,WoW.
I have played every MMO that has ever come out.
Comments
Maybe... It would be very cool to take part in that world again. I haven't seen my fav. monster in a long time... The Virindi.
The best bet for now would probably be to get Turbine to re-release AC2. I agree with everyone here... The game was released way too early but it was actually a very good game when they killed it. Most of the people left before Turbine fixed all the bugs, the weird Gun server problems etc. They never got to see the game actually work.
Maybe we'll see a 3rd game in Dereth some day. It's probably the most original mmorpg world ever created after all.
I can only agree, and AC2 is one of my top mmos ever that game along with DAoC UO and SWG changed me for life.
Playing: Everthing
Played: DAoC,AC2,EvE,SWG,WAR,MXO,CoX,EQ2,L2,LOTRO,SB,UO,WoW.
I have played every MMO that has ever come out.
So let me get this straight, you think a game with a magic bag that turns all loot into gold in a world where there were no vendors to spend the gold at was a good idea?
After the catastrophe that was AC2, I highly doubt you will ever see another AC related game. The very name 'Asheron's Call' now has bad juju associated with it, so developers aren't going to touch that IP with a ten-foot pole.
I hope there will be a now Asherons Call, but in that case I sure hope it will be more like ac1 than ac2.
AC1 was my first MMO, and to date the best one I have played. It would be great if they could make a new one.
Played: AC, AC2, RO, Shadowbane, L2, WoW, EVE, GW, (Plus a crapload of free MMOs and yes I realize GW is a free one but it deserves a place with the paid ones :P)
Nah, that wasn't the best idea for a game. I would have liked the towns to serve a purpose. The "magic bag" thing is no more unrealistic than the crafting system in other games though. Get some dirt and a feather, click a button and you'll have a plate mail armor.
They did add a lot of NPCs though and they could add even more... Like merchants etc. It wouldn't take a huge amount of work or time for them.
It was the rest of the game that made those kind of failed ideas less meaningful. It didn't take me long to learn to live with the "magic bag". I never stopped thinking about it as a weird thing and I would have preferred merchants but the game offered so many good things, that it would take a lot more than a magic bag to make me hate it.
Yes absolutely!
Being able to just transmute all garbage loot to gold with a push of a button was delightful! AC2 had no unnecessary time sinks like trainers and NPC merchants (who are there just so you can lighten up space in your sack). The magic "loot to gold button" was great idea! just wished all games had that possibility
And AC2 had vendors, which was build by players.. even before vendors came, we didnt really need them. Ac2 had a great community and everything was sold through /trade channel - we had to interact with other people to sell our stuff. Now everything is just put in a AH, which I think is absolutely on of the worst ideas invented in a MMO, side from stealth.
So there you have it... magically transmute crap loot to gold - keep good loot - sell via /trade channel = good. Harvesting crap/good loot in your sack - stop questing/grinding/having fun because of overload in your sack - forced to find npc merchant/AH = bad
glad I could help
That's actually a good point, BesCirga. In other games I've often had to destroy loot while on a quest. Just so I would be able to pick up something else. Getting a little gold from the crap is better than having to destroy it and a weird thing is... People never seem to complain about the "destroy" button/function. It's the exact same function as the transmute button in AC2, when you think about it. In AC2 you would just get paid a little for the junk.
The thing I missed about not having merchants, was the towns felt kinda useless. Especially in the beginning. They were just obstacles that made the run from one portal to another take longer. I would have liked to see a point to the towns even though the destruction of them was a good part of the history. I liked how to forges (or whatever they were called in AC2. I don't remember.) worked. They didn't force you to go there but provided a bonus. A highly skilled crafter wouldn't bother going there to make a robe for a newbie or something.
It was also pretty cool when people started getting them up and running. In the beginning people would just put a little bit in them, craft their item and move on. Later you would often see them running even though no one was around. It was a way to help the community as a whole. It meant a lot for the newbies when they got there. A failed crafting attempt was annoying as a newbie. You didn't have unlimited resources.
I really miss that game..
I never really had a problem with the concept of the magic bag. It was designed to prevent players from having to go sell loot. The problem was that there was no need for gold in AC2 because there were no vendors to buy anything from or to sell loot to (at least at launch, I didn't play past that). This was simply a sign of the lack of forethought that went into the game.
Designer 1 "Hey let's make a magic sorcerer's bag so players don't have to haul loot back to town to sell."
Designer 2 "Yeah but we don't have any vendors in the first place."
Designer 1 "All the more reason we need the bag so the players can get gold."
Designer2 " But without vendors why do the players need gold?"
Designer 1 "Hey, you can't have a fantasy MMO without gold."
Designer 2 "Yeah but, oh never mind."
I'm not really trying to be harsh but my take on it was that AC2 suffered from the same things that SWG suffered from. They were more concerned with the cool systems they created then making a cohesive game. With AC2 it was almost as if the world designers and the systems designers didn't talk to each other. I saw so much potential in beta and many things that were ground breaking at the time, but they just didn't pull it all together.
To Grand LC,
Yeah, I rememeber the forges used to work like that, but they changed it when Craft 2.0 came and you had to visit the spellbinding workshop to spellbind, or be at the forge to make armors etc. Naturally, the forges became a place where people met up to craft and trade and it wasnt uncommon to find weapons/armor/tools laying around, which was "up for grabs"...
I think cities were implented just fine, it was us the players who maybe didnt embrace it enough.. we had allegiance halls, forges, nexus points, NPC quest givers, Large gathering of portals, Kingdom shrines/halls, and a central placed Life Stone...later on, us the players, buildt Vendors in each city. what else we need to roleplay and make a city work as a "city"? I agree the cities felt like we where the only ones there, but wasnt that the whole point, us adventurers against the nemesis forces?
To thepatriot,
The whole economic system was based around players not npcs, so naturally it takes time to settle. And settle it did, you just had to play past launch to experience it. Your designer dialog was cute, but you dont need NPC vendors to sell nice loot, sell it over /trade channel. problem solved.
I don't understand why Turbine felt the need to eliminate vendors. I guess the idea is to save players time , but I actually enjoyed the downtime.
Nail on the head. Honestly, I played AC1, had a great time, loved the world, and wish it would come back, but it's not going to happen. I was in the beta for AC2 for a while, and despite the absolute crush on the servers from the flood of people that had all hopped into beta at the same time, it was an interesting game. I kind of liked it. I ended up getting distracted by another release at the time though and never picked it up, but I heard about the harsh launch and the game going down. After having the game tank, even if it was mostly due to technical reasons and a terrible launch, there's no way they will invest in making the game again. Unfortunate, but I don't see it happening.
Bans a perma, but so are sigs in necro posts.
EAT ME MMORPG.com!
No...you'll never see another Asheron's Call. AC was a one of a kind MMORPG that has yet to be duplicated. Not even Turbine who were the original designers or the game could reproduce it.. They tried and failed meserably in a game called Asheron's Call 2.
I really don't understand that way of thinking. Of course AC2 wasn't perfect... In some ways it wasn't even close. It had the most important thing I'm looking for in a game though... It was fun. People started whining like they seem to do in all games now. "NERF BERSERKERS!", "NERF THE SAGE!" etc. which was just plain stupid. I guess that's what you get, when you introduce a lot of PvP in a game. People want everyone to be evenly matched and that's never going to happen in any game. An archer and a swordsman was never meant to be compared. They both have their strengths and shouldn't be compared like that. If an archer attacks a melee character from far away, of course he should win. Range is his only strength. Obviously that would annoy the melee if he never even got a chance to fight back but that's kinda why class-based PvP will always be a whine-fest. It cannot be balanced and still preserve the individual class strengths.
That didn't stop the whining though, so Turbine nerfed the Reap skill and also the sage. For a while people were happy that their whining had been heard but eventually a lot of people realized that they had just made the entire PvE game harder for everyone. Without Reap the melee characters needed a lot more healing and Vigor but they had just nerfed the Sage as well. I know a lot of people who left after the Reap nerf. They played to have fun. Not to be balanced against someone in PvP. A lot of people never liked to PvP but their fun was taken away. Reap was the only viable way of soloing decent mobs at a steady pace for a lot of people.
The time they spent on listening to the whiners, nerfing the classes etc. could have been spent fixing more of the other problems or actually adding more content.
A lot of people seem to think AC2 should have been AC1 with upgraded graphics which is ridiculous. AC1 was a great game but it lacks a lot of things if you compare it to the newer games. That way of making games really only apply to the FPS genre. They often just clone the first game, give it a new engine and maybe add some new weapons. That just doesn't work in mmorpgs. Of course Turbine could choose to just do it that way but I don't believe a game like that would survive for very long. It all worked very well for it's time but you wouldn't get a popular game today with no crafting system (tinkering was a joke), a challenging game play like AC1 had, a world totally biased towards mages etc.
Turbine had to try something new if they wanted people to play their game. AC2 was great in that way. You still had the same old world, a lot of the same monsters, lore etc. but an updated game play. I think it was a good way to make it. Too bad MS wouldn't let Turbine finish the game before it was released. If Turbine would make an AC3 (or whatever they would name it) today, I would play it. They bought the AC name back from MS after the horrific AC2 launch and I think that was a good move.
Every time some company decides to make a second version of their game, people complain about it in the mmorpg world. If people expect it to be just like the first game (but with better graphics) they should probably not be playing mmorpgs. It's the gaming genre with the most changes. If Turbine, FunCom, Mythic or another company doesn't keep evolving and updating their game play, someone else will. People want to experience the latest and most revolutionary new PvP system, raiding system, quest system or whatever. I don't know any other gaming genre that moves forward as fast as mmorpgs. The FPS genre is probably the slowest moving of them all. A lot of games out there doesn't really offer anything that Quake (1) didn't. The graphics are better, there may be more weapons and they may have invented a new game style (Ie. CTF, TDM, TKOTH etc) but the basics are still the same today.
If Turbine would release a new game in the world of Dereth using the same lore etc. I think it could be a big success. The freedom of the AC games would surprise a lot of people today I think. There were no magic, invisible walls to prevent you from going somewhere. When AC2 was first released (unfinished) you could go wherever you wanted to go. If you just kept on running you could find big open places without a single monster because the game wasn't finished. Nothing prevented you from exploring new places and it wasn't so damn linear as most games are today. Especially not AC1.
I still hope they release a new AC game some day. It could be a huge success imo. They know how to make mmorpgs and now they don't have to worry about MS wanting to game out for Christmas or something similar.
Nothing has ever gotten close to the world of Dereth for me and probably never will...
"The best bet for now would probably be to get Turbine to re-release AC2"
Oh come now, AC2 was just a failed attempt to copy Everquest. That is absolutely the LAST thing they should bring out.
The original AC was a skill system not a rigid class system like AC2 and EQ. That is what they will be successful with.
Only time will tell, AC1 is still one of my favorite MMO's.
Yes AC2 had levels and classes, but it was far from rigid. You have tons of possibilities within your chosen class.
The Ac2 system was a hybrid between a skill system and a class system. I suspect when Ac1 players got the chance to try Ac2 and saw its wasnt what they expected, they didnt even give it a chance. My point is; even though is was based on classes, it was far from rigid.
For all its worth, Ac2 combat was far better then Ac1 combat, imo.
I mean, the best thing for them to do right now. They can't just make a new AC game in a couple of weeks and AC2 isn't doing them any good atm. Of course it wouldn't be a solution forever. AC1 just isn't an option for a lot of people today. If you didn't play it back in the day, chances are you will hate it. Mainly because people seem to value the graphics in games. That's why I think they should re-release AC2. The graphics are still good looking and it was pretty good near the end. It would be a way for Turbine to get more people to know about the AC world. Relatively few of the newer players in the genre know what AC1 is... And all they hear about AC2 is the crap coming from people who quit before things got fixed. Asheron's Call get's a bad rep that way... Re-releasing AC2 (maybe just for download and then $10-12 a month) would be a good way to attract some of the people who get bored of WoW etc.
)
AC1 is still my favorite but I honestly don't think we will EVER see a game like that again. The mmorpg market has changed a lot since the AC days. The average age in mmorpg games has gone down drastically. When I started playing AC1 I was like 19-20 years old and I was the youngest person by far in our allegiance. Everyone around me (Patron, Patron's patron etc) were like twice my age. Today the average age of the mmorpg genre is probably around that age 19-20. Except for WoW where the average age seems to be 12 years old.
The mmorpgs changed too. Today people just want to level as fast as possible, hit the level cap and then whine about lack of content. They don't want to think for themselves. People get lost if they don't have a quest log telling them everything in details, they need an arrow on their "radar" and oh.. A big blinking sign on their map as well.
A game today would never be successful if they didn't have a crafting system, meaningful PvP (if there's PvP in the game of course), ridiculously overpowered items to hunt for etc.
AC1 was awesome because it was a different time back then. I would love a new game based on the original AC1 but it would be so extremely hard for the devs to pull off. The AC vets will complain if it's not AC-ish enough and if it's too AC-ish, they won't get enough subscribers. AC1 wasn't about reaching the end and just do raiding all the time. I would take a lot of creativity to get all the raiders from other games to switch to a game without good end game content. (end game content is stupid concept but people seem to like it.
The skill system in AC1 was awesome but at least for now it's seems like EQ beat AC big time. We can still hope though... Maybe some day some devs decide to make their own game instead of copying everyone else. The "We want a new AC1!" group will get disappointed though. It just wouldn't work today.
I played AC1 for about 3 years. Best MMORPG ever made. I had the best time ever in that game. Never really could get into any mmorpg anymore after that.
I think one of the reasons why AC1 was such a good game is because it wasn't perfect.. It wasn't balanced , you could exploit things now and then , but it was fun as hell.
World of Warcraft is a pile of junk compared to AC1. Too bad the idiots at Microsoft never gave a damn about actually promoting the game or marketing it properly. They just wanted it for their stable of games in their little subscription service.
AC1 = Freedom to the player
Yes absolutely!
Being able to just transmute all garbage loot to gold with a push of a button was delightful! AC2 had no unnecessary time sinks like trainers and NPC merchants (who are there just so you can lighten up space in your sack). The magic "loot to gold button" was great idea! just wished all games had that possibility
And AC2 had vendors, which was build by players.. even before vendors came, we didnt really need them. Ac2 had a great community and everything was sold through /trade channel - we had to interact with other people to sell our stuff. Now everything is just put in a AH, which I think is absolutely on of the worst ideas invented in a MMO, side from stealth.
So there you have it... magically transmute crap loot to gold - keep good loot - sell via /trade channel = good. Harvesting crap/good loot in your sack - stop questing/grinding/having fun because of overload in your sack - forced to find npc merchant/AH = bad
glad I could help
Can never forget crafting did cost money ^^
Playing: Everthing
Played: DAoC,AC2,EvE,SWG,WAR,MXO,CoX,EQ2,L2,LOTRO,SB,UO,WoW.
I have played every MMO that has ever come out.