Asheron's Call 2 Demise Q&A

August 30, 2005 7:39 AM

There's a Q&A with Turbine's Jonathan Hanna on MMORPG.com, asking the Director of Community Relations about the shutting down of Asheron's Call 2 (story).

Maarten Goldstein

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Pneum0

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August 30, 2005 9:00 AM

Hanna tries to blame it's demise on the fact that it's a sequel. To me it was obvious it failed because they neutered/changed the gameplay to a degree that anyone who appreciated the first game would be turned off by it. It also didn't help at all that there wasn't anything fun to do. No NPC's/places to visit of interest. At least in AC the gameplay was interesting enough so it was fun just to go out and hunt.. in AC2 the core gameplay sucked, it was a failure from the start, and I really question how a developer cant recognize that. It was easily obvious to my friends and I.
- Wombat Woo
  
   reply
  August 30, 2005 10:47 AM
  
  Agreed. I was suprised by what he said too. IMO sequels are good. Changing the core gameplay into some basterdized mixture of EQ and AC == bad. Not to mention they did a piss poor job at the mixture too. WTF were they expecting. There is 1,001 knockoffs of EQ gameplay. AC was very unique and had something going for it, hence why people still play it. WoW, EQ2, FFXi and DAoC have nothing on AC combat gameplay.
  
  Also very little content didn't help, but then again EQ2 and WoW are the only mmorpg's to have been released with a massive amount of content.
  
  I do find the whole thing sad though. AC2 had a beautiful world/artwork going for it. Very little content but I fondly recall all the dungeons I explored.
  - vynnski
    
     reply
    August 30, 2005 1:42 PM
    
    Ya, what she should have said was that releasing a sequal for an already failing game will only split an already very small community.
    
    Sequels can be very successful if the original game is successful. The lesson they should have learned was to not make a sequel for a bad game.
    - Pneum0
      
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      August 30, 2005 3:07 PM
      
      maybe your not paying attention, but asheron's call hasn't failed.. in fact it's still going strong enough to outlast it's sequel. The combat system for spellcasters blows away anything ANY mmorpg has ever done.. it was hardly a bad game.