Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Still a blast to play but where have the players gone.
bezado
Member UncommonPosts: 1,127
Seems Turbine doesn't care for AC anymore cause the games populations are dwindled to below comfortable levels to sustain a great game experience, although I will continue to play, but this title has lost it's MMO tag just about. I guess having 86 people online really is terrible to some people, also wtf gives with the $12.95 a month fee still?
Man this game rocks still, but we need more people. Why do you think Turbine isn't helping, and to answer people who keep saying people are returning and such, it's just easier to see returning players come back when you barely had a population to begin with, then add in the fact everyone who currently plays has multiple accounts because we all got so much shit we have to store it on mules. Take away all the extra accounts people have and this game has worn pretty roughly even though it's one of the best games out there.
The only thing holding it back is the insanely high subscription fee which veteran players will argue is good and they will pay it no matter, that making it lower would somehow make things worse, which is a logical fail since lowering a subscription price would garner more subscribers because it would be reasonable. People need to grasp the fact this game is over 12 years old now, and is one of the hardest if not most frustrating games to get to understand and play for a new player than any other game, you have to realize that without significant change a game this old and this good will never rise up again, it will keep sinking lower and lower.
So this is my call out to Turbine, hardly think they will see this or read it, probably almost certain of it, but I get it out there anyway without having to post to the AC Turbine forums and get ridiculed by the stubborn vets who want no change because they like playing solo or with few people, but that doesn't help the game, and the game has virtually no economical contingency other than the same old useful things like mana forge keys etc.
So Turbine if you are there and have one care for AC please do something, we need players, we need a remodeled subscription fee that is competitive so people feel more comfortable to give it a go after the 14 day trials. Also remember how hard this game is for new players, keep this in mind it is why most do not survive past the free trial if we do get any new players. It should be a price point around $5.99 a month to make it competitive. F2P works as well but that probably wont happen because you got no way to generate revenue from it.
My last point is take a page from SONY, they manage to give you multiple games for one price, what say you on this?
Comments
I played AC a long time. Loved the game! Still better than most MMOs on the market, but all my friends left. With no one to play with or chat at it just is'nt that fun. The game economy was completely destroyed by tinkering as well. I could hunt for a whole 5 minutes before having to go sell all the junk mobs drop so there are mats to tinker with, LOL. When I first started, getting one magic item was special, now you get like 6 with each kill. That was my ONLY problem with the game though. No one, I repeat, NO ONE has ever done class advancement better! I still hold out hopes of a redo someday, but sadly, Turbine just sits on their laurels and pumps out "free to play" instead.
Exageration for effect I assume. DT gets up into the 500s online at once, FF doesn't do much worse. In a world where everyone chats of the same channels and you can get to essentially any spot in the world within a couple of minutes, that isn't bad at all.
Turbine has added tons to this game over the past 2-3 years so once again you aren't being honest there. They have added lots of new features and lots of new content on top of the continually monthly updates. All of these are free, no paid expansions or the like. I'd say they're doing plenty to keep it running and to keep players playing.
The game has always run off of loot. It is a game where you can kill a creature and get the best weapon/armor/etc in the game. Mana Forges put out the top tier of loot also, so the main trading commodity is MFKs because.... this game is about the loot and always has been.
The subscription price isn't holding it back, gamers who only care about eye candy and not substance are holding it back and that will never change. Gamers would rather pay $50-60 bucks every couple months on the latest shiny MMO that they get bored of in a month than play a game where the graphics are cutting edge.
loved AC for about 6 yrs, basically til the expansion came out. Tried going back, just couldnt get back into the flow of the game.
Wish AC would be remade with modern graphics, and some updated stuff
It was, it was calle AC 2 had grahpics way beyond its time but players pretty much rejected it for some reason (computers couldnt handle it very well unless you had the high end stuff for the day) and they shut it down.
sorry AC2 was nothing close to AC
If you feel like hyping the game you play I can understand that, but to blatantly disregard real numbers and how things are to get past your denial of a game that isn't doing well is plain disrespectful.
You say DT and FF both get upwards of 500 online, that is a JOKE man, the command to view online for your server or by using a plugin show how many are online, I have dozens of screenshots. You maybe confusing the online players number with the virindi bundle system that you installed which has interogator chat system and it will tell you how many players are logged in over all servers to the virindi chat system, usually it is around 600-700 for that, if you look at each server players logged into the server the numbers are around what I posted, and just yesterday we were below 200 online for FF, a Friday night!
So get your facts right before I need to start uploading screenshots of the actual server population logged into each world during peek hours.
Yeah, that was definitely not the reason it failed.
It failed because Microsoft forced an early release. It was released with a stupid amount of bugs, including some major ones like CHAT not working. It failed, because it was NOTHING like its predecessor. They eliminated some of the best aspects of AC1, and made an entirely different game that only shared the name and a few story points.
If they lowered the monthly or made the game B2P or F2P I would play again. However, considering the age of the game, the $12.95 monthly is far too steep. I played AC from December '99 to September '01 and then a bit off and on after, and while I loved the game, it's unfortunately dated. Still had some great memories with the game though.
It is interesting to look at the full game list here on this site and see how many games are either free, have a hybrid approach or item mall.
Either Turbine is actually happy with the money revenue in its current model or the game really wouldn't support a hybrid approach, or perhaps another reason, but I agree that $12.95 is on the high end for a game of this age.
Don't get me wrong, I devoted several years to AC, and loved every minute, and would be the first to sign back up if it went F2P, but I simply cannot justify that monthly cost, considering the alternatives available that are free. Even if those games aren't quite as in-depth. This is just my opinion, so don't anyone get all wound up over it.
Well, in my case the subscription price most definitely held me back. I almost gave it a go, but it just didn't seem like the title was worth that sort of price, so I never bothered.
And its not the actual amount of money, I'd pay 20.00 a month for a title I felt was worth it, more of the principal of the thing.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Asheron's Call is falling to the wayside because of, as always, poor management by Turbine. I have to give them props for their creativity years ago in creating this magnificent game. But they do not know how to run a company or market a product. It's sad that for years, the players thought Microsoft was ruining the game, but then as soon as Turbine bought the IP and gained full control, it started going downhill and shedding players when it was unable to compete with newer games.
The thing that made this game great was that its features encouraged a solid community and interaction that I've yet to see in a modern MMO. The allegiance and patron/vassal system was fantastic, as were a load of other features. Unfortunately, a game in which the community was its staple, can't survive when it has no players.
I made more friends in AC than I've ever managed to in other MMOs. People were actually friendly, didn't care about only getting that +1 to their gear, and everyone wanted everyone else to just have fun and explore the world. I just haven't found that experience since then, because features in modern MMOs keep guiding people toward raiding and instanced PvP. There's no danger to worlds. Nothing to guide players to coordinate and make friends with other people.
Sigh. It's sad that players of today couldn't experience Asheron's Call in its prime. The days when places got so crowded that portal storms occurred. Live GM-ran events happened regularly. Huge mobs of PvPers chased each other across the landscape. World broadcasts of major 'boss' kills. Just the joy of finally finding a piece of armor with the perfect color and stats that completed your outfit you'd been building for months. Or finding the last piece needed to get shadow armor after a year spent collecting shards. Even just attending an in-game wedding between two players, or attending a meeting with your whole guild and having every seat in a meeting hall filled, and then some people standing around the edges listening to your monarch give a 'state of the allegiance' report. If Turbine had done a better job marketing the game and getting it out there, AC could have made far more of an impact on the future of MMOs.
Posts like this amaze me because posts like this have been made since 2002. Posts saying the game is dying, X company is ruining it, it will never survive, no one is left etc. etc. Yet year after year it continues on just fine and year after year someone makes the same posts.
The game sill gets monthly updates, many of them quite large with new systems, for free. Each year it puts in at least the same amount of content and features that most games would call an expansion and doesn't charge any extra for it. In fact, the last couple years of updates have been very significant with a lot of great features that players love, such as new races, tailoring, dual wield, two handed weapons, void magic, cloaks, new hunting areas etc etc etc.
The game will still be here next year and the year after that. And next year someone will make a post just like this, and someone else will make one the following year as well.
Well if you can come up with a way in which that statement makes sense and would actually work then by all means go with that theory.
There is a reason companies shut down MMOs that aren't profitable, there is no benefit to leaving them running. Therefore, AC is profitable.
And it is something so easy to do that MMOs keep shutting down instead of becoming tax breaks?
And they shut down AC2 but then kept AC around as a tax break?
It is profitbale plain and simple.
Wow I never saw anyone so invested in a game and company. Are you a stock holder in the company? I ask because if I was a stock holder I too would be concerned if it was making a profit. But Ok man I dont want to upset you, the main thing is you are enjoying the game and that is great
You can't be a stockholder in Asheron's Call. You could be a stock holder of Warner Bros, but AC is a tiny tiny part of that which I would say has no impact on their stock one way or the other.
I am more of someone who loves when someone comes up with outlandish "facts" such as running a game at a loss for tax purposes when there is no proof or even solid reasoning to base it off of. Even better when that person is called out on their completly ficticious and poorly thought out statement that they then switch to personal attacks of the person who showed the holes in their statement.
LOL, I never said stockholder in Asheron's Call, please do not take my words out of context. You seem very sensitive, if you found what I said to be an insult, how do you put up with people in game who dissagree with you? I believe I ended my comment hopeing that you enjoyed the game and if you did that was great. I also complimented AC saying it was a good game, but you did not see that did you?
The fact is that many companies like Warner Bros do use subsidiaries to cut their taxes-google is your friend I suggest you use it. It is one thing to be a fan boy of a game (I have been accused of being a fan boy of SWTOR), but to be so stubborn about it that you do not consider any one's perspective but your own is to be like that person in the cartoons who stuffs his ears with cotton and covers his eyes and than says "ok show me what you have, let me hear it". Any way I will repeat again, AC is a very good game with a very small population and once again the main thing is that you are enjoying the game and that is great.
You act as if I'm oblivious to this game's history.
Sorry, but 'trudging along' is not the same as thriving. This game is LONG beyond its prime. It will never again, no matter if it even goes f2p, even remotely resemble the game it was when it was thriving. The community is what made this game, and without players it is just not fun anymore. I played for years, and loved every minute of it. But coming back, it was obvious it was a very different game. I also remember very clearly the mistakes Turbine made along the way.
I remember Ken Karl and all the pitchforks and torches when there would be announcements. I remember refusal to deal with the game's problems. Or bandaid fixes in place of solutions.
Not addressing XP chains, or bots. Not implementing features in-game and instead relying on 3rd party programs to do the work for them. They should have solved the macroing and XP chain problem before they ran rampant. Allowing the automation of tasks such as trading completely altered the social landscape, pushing people away from what made the game unique. The player interaction this game encouraged with its allegiance systems and its crafting/modifying systems was unlike any other. But they allowed exploits and shortcuts that slowly killed the parts that made the game amazing. XP chains were the worst. Abuse of the system that was put in place to encourage interactions and friendships between patron/vassal relationships. It worked amazingly for years, but devolved into nothing more than who could make the most efficient flow of XP up the chain of people. If you did any sort of PvP in the game, XP chains ruined the balance of the game.
You can tout that the game is still alive, sure. But don't act like it's still the same old game it's always been. Certain things made it what it was, but a distinct lack of players makes it something else. Something far less enjoyable. I've tried on at least 4 different occassions over the years to try and get back into the game. It's just not the same without the people that made it so good. It's not even that they're different people. Simply that there aren't enough of them. The sense of adventure is gone and it feels like exploring some long lost memory with ghosts standing around in the form of playerless characters spamming trades and buffs.
They should have merged the servers into 2 or 3 remaining ones (plus darktide on its own) a long time ago. It should have gone f2p a LONG time ago. If they had, it could have at least held onto a little bit of how it was intended to be played.
AC2 was nothing like AC1 and I played both for a few years. AC1 was king. Class trees, a chat system that did not work for over a month, misc bugs, lack of high level content, and lack of places to level (especially on darktide my guild dominated all the levelling ground and basically made most every other guild quit) killed AC2. I enjoyed AC2 but they dumbed it down so much it can't compare to AC1 at all, even though AC2 was still much better than many other mmos.
The game was release in 1999. News flash, it's 2013! Even if they would have implemented everything your asking for it wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference in this day and age.
You can grip all you want but all the games of that time era are just "trudging along" and there is not a damn thing they can do about it. No matter how much they update the graphics or how much they patch in. Games old get over it.
Yes, I do now I'm responding to a post made in January and I don't care.