Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Asheron's Call 2: Legions announced!!
Storm.
Member UncommonPosts: 256
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Storm.
Member UncommonPosts: 256
Comments
"That game, one of the most popular titles among all MMORPGs, was released in November of 2002."
Honestly, do they have to blatantly lie?
Yeah new race new continent new mobs
cant wait 
Seriously, I hope they decide to fix things so the world isn't so dead. Releasing a game with almost no NPCs made no damn sense.
_______________
EQ2 Qeynos Guild- http://www.imperium-arcanum.com
http://onlinewelten.com/gd/
Lv 62 Ranger
Frostfell
It's too bad mmorpg.com couldn't have made the announcement instead of Gamespy in light of all the effort being made on the official boards to hype the game up here on mmorpg.com and inflate the ratings.
AC2's rating isn't anymore inflated than the rest. Sorry to break it to you, if you actually think AC2 has more fanbois than any other games.
This may answer some questions!
Citan posted this on the Official boards:
They are going to be fixing things like lag, etc in the months to come...read what Citan posted:
""By now you may have seen the two big announcements. If not, here they are.
We announced an expansion pack for AC2:
http://ac2.turbinegames.com/index.php?page_id=277
And we also announced a change to our update policy:
http://ac2.turbinegames.com/index.php?page_id=278
Please go ahead and check these out. I?ll wait.
Okay! So now you can see what we?ve been working on. This first Expansion pack is a huge deal for us. We had to replace the Microsoft billing system before we could start, because the old billing system wouldn?t support a new expansion. But we?re finally ready! And we can now bring on additional core engineering to get the kinks out of our game at an accelerated rate.
The bimonthly update schedule is a mixed blessing; we all like the rush of patch day, and this will mean it comes half as often. But we also hate when updates are buggy, incomplete, or small in content. We want to be proud of our updates, and we want to show you what we can really do. The new schedule will let us do just that.
However, the Expansion will make the timing a bit more interesting in the short term. Let me explain our schedule up to the time the Expansion launches. The next major update will be in November, and will include new quests, new ways to improve towns, and consignment vendors. That will be the last major content update for a while, as the live content designers will then be focusing their effort on Legions, along with the rest of the Expansion team.
After November, the next update is slated for January. There will be little content in the January update, but that doesn?t mean it won?t be big! Our extra engineers are helping us to fix bugs for January, and we expect to have the ?big four? problems significantly addressed by then. You?ve often asked us to take some time off and just fix bugs, so we?re going to do just that. But we?re sweetening the deal and adding new GUI features and game system improvements as well. So the January update will still represent quite a lot of development time ? but it will be engineering time, rather than content time. (If we get major bugs fixed before then, however, we?ll certainly try to get them up earlier? we won?t hold back bug fixes if we can help it.)
We will not be doing a March update, as that?s when we currently anticipate shipping the expansion.
To partially compensate for the lack of new quests from December to February, we will be increasing the number and variety of live GM-run events. You may have noticed that we?ve been doing new live events this month. In the later months of the year we will have a large variety of different events, and we?ll be running them a lot more often.
One last thing ? you may have noticed that the Hero 2.0 feature is now slated to be part of the Expansion. This is a good thing. As we worked on the new systems, we realized that, to do this right, we?d need a lot more time, play-testing, and manpower than we could muster in a live monthly environment. By making it an Expansion feature, we?re going to be able to do this right. Hero 2.0 will now include a new method of advancement, new passive skills, and a new multi-person chain combo system, among many other improvements. Hero 2.0 now represents an almost complete re-envisioning of post-50 game play. This is hugely important to AC2, and it?s huge in scope ? it?s so big that it deserves the extra attention and testing that can only really be provided by an Expansion Pack. The delay will definitely be worth it.
And just so you know, the screen shots we released with the Legions press release do NOT show Empyreans. Those are humans, showing off some of the brand new armor that will be available in Legions.
I?m sure you have lots more questions. We have a FAQ prepared below, and I?ll update it as you ask more questions.
Citan
AC2 Live Producer
A: Initially the expansion will be available on store shelves nationwide. We also plan to distribute Asheron?s Call 2: Legions in Europe; we?ll make more announcements about this in the future.
Q: Will there be advertising for the expansion pack?
A: Absolutely. You can expect to see advertising and marketing efforts behind Asheron?s Call 2: Legions.
Q: Will the expansion pack contain the original game?
A: Yes, and it will also contain a free month coupon so that both new and existing players who buy the expansion will get a free month of play with purchase.
Q: Will I have to buy this expansion pack to be able to access the new content?
A: The new race and continent will only be available to people who buy the expansion. Most of the Hero 2.0 features will be available for free to all players, although the new Multi-person Combo Chains will only be available to players who buy the expansion pack (and complete a quest on Knorr).
Q: How big is the new landmass?
A: Knorr is a full size continent; it?s a bit larger than any of our other continents. The continent is broken up into five regions. The first region has content for level 30+ players; the fifth region caters to level 70+ players.
Q: Doesn?t this Expansion just force us to pay more for the same content we would have gotten for free?
A: No, not really. The Expansion team is able to create far more quests and art than the Live Team alone would be able to produce in that time frame. I?m sure the results will speak for themselves. The vast amount of new art alone is breathtaking.
Q: Aren?t you concerned about balancing a new Race and Classes, given the amount of rebalancing you?ve had to do for the existing classes?
A: As we?ve become more and more competent at class balancing, we?ve grown more confident in our ability to add new classes. Certainly there are risks involved with adding a new race, but we are certain we can mitigate those risks with considerable testing. (We will be asking for additional testers to help us out in a month or so.) Also, note that at launch the Empyreans will have three specialty trees instead of the more usual six. We?ve done this intentionally to mitigate the risk of imbalance. We?ve actually designed all six specialty trees, but we won?t add the other three until later after the Expansion has shipped.
Q: Why are you adding a new race, rather than something else?
A: One reason is to help attract new and returning players. There are tons of retired Asheron?s Call 2 players out there, and we want to give them a reason to pick up Legions and think ?hey, maybe I?ll make a fresh start with this new race.? If someone?s been away for a year or more, it can be hard to jump back in. This gives a helping hand.
Q: Are there pictures of Empyreans?
A: No, we haven?t released any pictures of Empyreans yet. Watch for screen shots in the coming weeks.
Q: Will there be new content for the other races?
A: Of course! Knorr is full of quests for everyone, and the Expansion includes new armor and weapons for every race.
Citan
AC2 Live Producer
Q: What exactly are we getting in October?
A: In October we are creating a bug-fix update to address some bugs and quest issues. There is no content in the October update. The content that would have gone into October (including the new consignment vendors) will happin in mid-November instead.
Q: What about people who are already above level 70 when the expansion ships?
A: There will be content for even level 80 players in the expansion pack, but most of the content will be for lower level players, since most of our players are in the 50-70 range.
Q:I didnt see any pictures released with the Press release! Did I miss these?
A: I'll get you links to these very shortly.
AC2's rating isn't anymore inflated than the rest. Sorry to break it to you, if you actually think AC2 has more fanbois than any other games.
What I do know is that AC2 wasn't on the radar here in the Spring. Shortly after a HUGE push by a lot of players to have people come here and register their votes for the screen, AC2 actually made it the top 3 spots or so.
It's fallen off some, but the surge was casued by an attempt to inflate.
And none of the other games have people posting on their respective message boards telling people to vote here or at least just "informing" them that this site exists. Then they just "happen" to come over and vote.
If AC2 is such a horrible game and this site isn't what I would call AC2 friendly or even a large percent of the community here is composed of AC2 players, wouldn't it stand to reason then that the rating would be just as easily deflated. Especially since this site has such a large base to compensate.
I'm not saying AC2 belongs in the top 5 or even 10 but I am saying stop trying to single out AC2 like it is a special case.
sheesh.....when did I say other games didn't do this?!?
There was no singling out on my part - merely stated an observation from what happened within AC2 a few months ago.
I compared it not to other games or communities.