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MightyUnclean
Member EpicPosts: 3,531
When I played AC2 at launch, there really wasn't much to do other than craft and grind mobs. Crafting wasn't really used much from what I saw, as there was no real market for crafted goods. Did this change over time?? Thanks!
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to try to help, i played for about 2 hours yesterday and i ran some quests, explored the world, and found people actually doing drum circles. Many seemed to be socializing more than playing, which isn't necesarrily a bad thing. Some of my best mmo memories come from standing around talking to others while not playing the game
they said on the forums if nothing goes wrong, im assuming exploit wise, they do not plan on wiping
This ^^. I have never played Asherons Call 2 before but I went out on a limb to try it now, and I am thoroughly enjoying it. It doesn't hold your hand, but it gives you just enough information about things. You don't have NPC's with quest arrows above their heads but if you talk to every npc you end up with a plethora of quests to do, I'm sure they run out eventually because people said there aren't too many but I have seen people wanting to group for dungeons (or just group areas not sure haven't done it yet). I also walked into a town and there was 3 people playing lutes ( I think?) and they had a group dancing in front of them and they were just chatting. It's a very social game from what I have played so far, and it is really a refreshing experience compared to most other MMORPG's out.
Supposedly they will not wipe, but can not 100% promise there won't be one.
If you only did crafting at launch, be aware they totally changed it with Crafting 2.0. It's pretty involved. Lots of resources required for any items but the lowest levels, both from finding nodes (wood/iron/silver, etc) and butchered resources like bone, sinew, hide, etc. You can certainly craft usefull weapons and armor, but it's a grind levelling the skills. You can also move enchantments from one item to another ("spellbinding"), so if you are outleveling your weapon with a good enchantment on it, you can pull it off and stick it on a new weapon. Here's an explanation of Spellbinding:
http://ac2vault.ign.com/?dir=guides&content=spellbinding
And what you saw is just a taste of the kind of community AC2 had, and that you could also find in most 1st and 2nd Generation (read: old-school) MMOs.
When folks like myself and others talk about how newer MMOs foster and nurture a "lone-wolf" approach to things, and how we long for the days when MMOs had real server communities.... it's not just "rose colored glasses" or "nostalgia goggles". We're not exaggerating or romanticizing it into something it never was.
What you saw is a small example of exactly what we've been talking about. Just a small one, mind you. When it really sinks in, is when you realize that you know or at least recognize most of the people on your server - if not "personally", then by name.
It's why people coming back now will see people they played with, or otherwise knew from their server over 7 years ago and haven't seen or spoken to since, but recognize them by name, and pick right up where they left off. I've seen this happening in General and in local/say right around me in-game. I've seen people in chat discussing fun times they had, funny situations they got into and epic fights they pulled through on. Things that took place almost a decade ago, they recall in detail like it was yesterday. It's an amazing thing to witness.
That's what community - TRUE Community - in a MMORPG is, and what it should be.
People who say "join a guild" and think it's a sound suggestion have no idea what an actual vibrant MMO community is, what it can be, or what it can do for its respective game. It elevates a MMORPG from being "just a game", to being an entire social setting. Like a virtual neighborhood in a much larger town, where everyone knows each other, and everyone gets along.
I only hope it keeps up and continues to grow and thrive. The genre needs that, badly, and I would love to see more MMO gamers who came to the genre later on get to experience that for themselves.
Another spot on post! Agreed wholeheartedly.
The social gimmicks die fast and whole beta was full of people just drumming, however whole drumming was old in start and most people just ignored it simply because it had no purpose. Otherwise my experience on AC2 start was pretty bad, chat was broken, constant crashes, lack of content, Evercrafting clone, constant lags and so on.
I find it intresting that Turbine even bothered to bring AC2 back. I doubt they ever make it F2P unless AC subs boom.
Rose tinted glasses. Mostly those "communities" were horrible places with sub-urban syndromes. Fact was that games were so boring that MMOs were more a glorified chat rooms where you would go just grind and chat, sometimes this monotinized rythm was broken by "raiding" that involved large groups of player clusterfucking together and having drama queen competitions. Community aspects are still there in games, you're just so jaded to see them in modern games. Instead of all dressed in beige, players have much more to do and less time for useless chats or gimmicky social stuff.