Goodbye Asheron's Call 2

If you're a fan of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG), then you've no doubt heard of Asheron's Call and it's sequel Asheron's call 2 (AC2) by Turbine.

Asheron's Call was serious competition for Everquest (EQ) when it launched. Turbine wooed lots of dissatisfied EQ gamers to their world by running live events and actually offering updates every month. Asheron's Call was a success.

A few years later, a jaded MMO community is looking for something new. Anarchy Online bombed. WWII online was bug ridden. Then the community heard about a sequel to AC in the works. Ads started appearing in magazines - the graphics looked awesome. The magazines touted it as the next great MMO. I, at least, was excited.

AC2 landed on peoples hard drives with a thud. I bought the game on release day, and even bought my girlfriend a copy. We installed it and played it like we do every MMO that launches. The graphics were fantastic, and it ran smooth as silk on my box. After completing a few quests, we left the newbie area and began to explore the real game - and discovered that nobody bought AC2.

The first town we ran to had 5 people in it, I'll never forget. They were all standing around playing virtual music on virtual instruments. We laughed and joined in the band, however we all knew the game was dead out of the gate.

Somewhere down the line, news from the BETA had leaked to the community. Scuttlebut on the net was that the game wasn't finished, and having played it I can tell you they were right. What a lonely place AC2 was, not just with subscribers but non-player characters too. The cities in the game were not populated at all, giving players no reason to go. The entire world felt like a ghost town.

We played for a few months and my experience with the games is one of my fondest gaming memories. The design was sound, and the world was fantastic albeit empty. AC2 was the only game I can remember to have a narrative woven deeply into the gameplay and cutscene movies that played after you completed a dungeon. Every month, content updates made seasons go by and events happen, but no one was there to see it.

Today I read that AC2 is closing it's doors on 12/30/05. It's another chapter in MMO history finished. Turbine is working on Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online (both set to be major releases), but Aheron's Call as a franchise is finished. Here's to a good game that no one played.

On a side note, MMO sequels appear to be terrible ideas. AC2 killed both AC and AC2, and more recently, EQ2 hurt EQ1 while EQ2 is slowly and painfully dying.