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No warm fuzzy feelings from Turbine! Blame game?

MorriganMorrigan Member Posts: 242
in Asheron's Call

taken from Next Gen

Turbine Blames AC2 Closure on MS Migration

by Colin Campbell
Print E-mail
Friday, 26 August 2005
Turbine has explained the closure of its MMOG Asheron's Call 2 to Next Generation, at least partly blaming the protracted transition of the game from former publisher Microsoft.

Tom Nichols, vice president of marketing, said, "One of the problems was the migration of customers from Microsoft's billing system to Turbine's. With any MMO, a lot of customers are what we call sleepers. They carry on paying even though they don't play as much any more. They have invested so much time that they are not ready to quit." He said that any "forced migration" of customers will flush out such consumers, leading to a drop in the user-base.

The original Asheron's Call was launched by Microsoft back in 1998, as a response to the runaway success of Ultima Online. Its successor arrived in November 2002. In early 2004, Turbine took over the administration of the online worlds from Microsoft.

Nichols said that Asheron's Call 1 survived the migration simply because the numbers are higher. "It's a different product with a different community," he said. "It has a larger community which was easily able to come through that transition." He stressed that the closure of AC2 would not affect AC1.

He also explained that poor sales of expansion pack Legions, launched in May, was also to blame. "A successful expansion pack can raise awareness of an MMO, and reignite interest from lapsed subscibers," he said, noting that Legion had failed in this regard. Nichols said he could not release any numbers relating to the subscriber bases for its games.

Dedicated fans

Yesterday, company CEO Jeff Anderson had posted a message on AC2's website announcing that the game would be closed at the end of this year.

Anderson wrote, "In spite of our hard work and the launch of [expansion] Legions, AC2 has reached the point where it no longer makes sense to continue the service. We will be officially closing the Asheron's Call 2 service on December 20, 2005. Until then, we plan to run live events, but we will not be adding any content or features."

He added, "We deeply appreciate the many dedicated fans of AC2 who have stood by us over the years. You have our sincerest gratitude."

Gratitude is a reaction that's hard to find on the AC2 forums today, with many loyal players expressing outrage against the decision. Some said they had lost faith in Turbine.

"We're aware of that reaction" said Nichols, 'but I think people will come to see that this is the right decision. We want to focus on the production of our new games, and consumers are just beginning to see how innovative they are."

Turbine is working on The Lord of the Rings: Middle-Earth Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online, which it plans to publish next year.

One player's great game is another players derisive snort!
http://www.darthmyr.com for free guild forums

Comments

  • logangregorlogangregor Member Posts: 1,524

     

     Turbine did not blame ac2 closure on Migration. I think you were reading way too much into what they did say---cause they didnt say that. They said ac2 split the community between ac1 and ac2. Without them saying that I could of told you that. And they also said that they didnt have enough subscribers for ac2.

     

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  • ZenodiceZenodice Member Posts: 56

    AC2 was an abomination anyways, it's quite obvious that Microsoft made them dumb down the game to appeal to the Diablo crowd. Unfortunately they took away everything that made AC1 great. IMO, THAT is why the game is now cancelled, because the majority of people came back to AC1 after playing the beta for AC2, period.

    The fact that it took them this long to shut down the servers is astounding, the majority of the playerbase has been calling this one for years now.

  • MorriganMorrigan Member Posts: 242

    I didn't blame it, I reposted the article, that is the title :)

    The fact is, they didn't advertise. Much like they did not advertise the AC1 expansion. Unless you would call banners and a few links posted through out various gaming sites as advertising an expansion.

    I don't see where it is said due to a split either. AC2 and AC1 are two different games entirely. Those of us in our group from AC1 (quite a lot of us) left at or right after the server merge in AC2 and returned home to AC1. Watching AC2 forums, many of those that stayed, it was their first MMORPG. We all havea special spot for our first :)

    One player's great game is another players derisive snort!
    http://www.darthmyr.com for free guild forums

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