Asheron's Call 2

Infobox VG| title = Asheron's Call 2


developer = Turbine Entertainment Software
publisher = Turbine Entertainment Software
designer =
engine =
released = November 22, 2002
genre = MMORPG
modes = Multiplayer
ratings = ESRB: Mature
platforms = Windows 98SE/2000/ME/XP
media =
requirements = 2 GHz CPU, 1GB RAM, 128MB DirectX 9.0-compliant video card w/ T&L and vertex shaders, 56K Internet access, sound card
input = Keyboard, mouse

"Asheron's Call 2: Fallen Kings" was a fantasy MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) for Microsoft Windows-based PCs that was released on November 22, 2002 and shut down on December 30, 2005. It was a sequel to 1999's "Asheron's Call", although content, graphics and gameplay dynamics differ greatly from its predecessor.

Both games were developed by Turbine Entertainment Software and originally published by Microsoft, until Turbine purchased the "Asheron's Call" franchise in December 2003. The Microsoft to Turbine transition was completed in spring 2005. In 2004 and 2005, Turbine entered business arrangements with Jolt Online Gaming to operate AC2 in Europe and with Sony Online Entertainment to distribute the game's first expansion, "Asheron's Call 2: Legions", under the Station Publishing label.

Updates

As with other MMORPGs, "Asheron's Call 2" was a subscription-based game, cost $12.95 USD/EUR per month to play. The "Asheron's Call" franchise was unique in providing complimentary monthly content updates or "Events" that added new quests, skills, landmasses, monsters, gameplay dynamics and bug fixes to all subscribers. Epic storylines linked multiple episodes to form distinct "story arcs".

A major expansion pack for "Asheron's Call 2" titled "Asheron's Call 2: Legions" was announced in October 2004 and was released on May 4, 2005. It included a new playable character race — the mythical Empyreans, and a major new landmass, Knorr. Players who pre-ordered the expansion were granted access to a second new character race, the Drudge at the time of the "Legions" launch. High-level gameplay was also revisited with the Hero 2.0 system and plentiful new content. The subsequent (and final) content update was one of the largest ever, featuring two new types of monsters, dozens of additional quests, as well as other content additions.

Game setting

Both "Asheron's Call" and "Asheron's Call 2" were set on the (fictional) planet of [http://ac2.warcry.com/scripts/columns/view_sectionalt.phtml?site=6&id=414&colid=6333 Auberean] . The "Call" of "Asheron's Call" refers to the urge followed by people on several different "home worlds" to enter portals to Auberean, created by the Empyrean mage, Asheron. "Asheron's Call 2" took place following a major cataclysmic event on the planet, resulting in massive changes to the topography of one continent on the planet ( [http://ac2vault.ign.com/cartography/dynamic/DerethMap.php?lowres=true Dereth] ). The three races inhabiting the continent at the time of the cataclysm high-tailed it into the safety of shelters hidden in portal space until it was safe to emerge. The basic premise of "Asheron's Call 2" was that the players represented people emerging from the shelters to reclaim the world their ancestors left behind. The three warring factions that brought about the original cataclysm were still present, and still fighting for power. In addition to these three warring factions, there were other, older and perhaps more powerful forces also fighting for control of Auberean's fate.

Game play

Players chose a character that was one of three races: Isparians were humans from Ispar, one of the first races to answer Asheron's Call. Lugians came to Dereth in the same fashion as Isparians from a different home world, Tuu, and were (in the original game) quite hostile to Isparians. Tumeroks, or Tonks, also came to Dereth through Asheron's portals from their home world on Hazahtu, and were also originally treated as monsters by Isparians. These hostilities were worked out between the first game and the sequel, and in "AC2" the three races co-existed with conflict limited to those choosing player versus player content. Players that purchased the "Legions" expansion pack gained access to two additional races, Empyreans and Drudges.

One's race was the only limiting factor on the "class" or "profession" that could be played by your character. The following chart shows the classes available to each race. Each class was quite distinct from the others within "AC2", and each class was also quite distinct from those available in other fantasy MMORPGs. In general terms, character classes were considered "damage dealers", "tanks", or "healers".

Characters could choose one of the above specializations when they reached the 15th level. Characters also had the opportunity to choose to proceed un-specialized, though eventually the difficulty level of the content in the world made it important to specialize to continue advancement. For each level between 1 and 50, characters gained a credit that could be used to train skills used in combat. After reaching the 45th level, players could begin the "Hero Initiation" quest to become a Hero of Dereth and unlock character advancement beyond level 50. The level cap for Heroes of Dereth was 150. The character development system for Heroes was one of the major updates to the game released with the Legions expansion pack, but was open to all players, regardless of whether they purchased the expansion pack. More information on the post-Legions Hero system, Hero 2.0, is available here.

Levels were gained by completing activities that gave your character "experience points", or "XP". XP was also used to increase the skill rating, or power, of each skill trained. Characters gained XP in a wide variety of ways: hunting monsters on a solo basis or with groups of other players, completing quests, or even just turning in items that can be traded for. Most quests (but not all) could be repeated for multiple rewards after the passage of time. There was significant variety in the quests offered in "AC2": some were centered on simply combating an overpopulation of a certain type of monster, some involved entering a dungeon or cave to destroy a powerful "boss" monster, some involved running errands for NPCs, or escorting NPCs to safety, in addition to the epic style quests that involved the major NPCs in the current or past story arcs. Quest rewards also ran the gamut: some offered temporary buffs or summonable pets to increase the character's power, some offered simply an XP reward, some offered gold, some offered weapons, armor, or trinkets, still others unlocked movie "vignettes" offering insight into the game's backstory.

"AC2" also had an extensive crafting system that operated almost completely independently of the level-based advancement system. In contrast to the XP system, the craft system placed no hard-set limitation on the number of skills one could master, but each skill was fairly narrow (for example, Tumerok Martial Weapons was one vocation, while Empyrean Armor was another). There were no level requirements to unlock craft skills: the craft skill alone was what mattered. For all but the most single-minded of crafters, players generally strove to master a single vocation, or to become adept enough in several to create items for a wide range of low- to mid-level characters. Players could craft weapons and armor up to level 100 (as of July 2005) that were highly sought after, and highly customizable. Enchantment effects could be extracted from weapons and armor generated by the treasure system.

"AC2" did not have a "faction" system by which the player improved (or worsened) his character's rapport with various NPC factions. Players can instead chose to join one of three "kingdoms" and could then participate in player-vs-player conflict, and gain access to some quest content that was centered on competition between the kingdoms — broadly referred to as "kingdom-vs-kingdom" content. As the player completed KvK quests and/or successfully defeated characters of other kingdoms, he gained "kingdom points" which allowed him to train additional skills granted by his chosen Kingdom. These skills were unlocked in a strict hierarchy; players were not able to pick and choose which kingdom skills they could train. In addition, there were certain quests that could be completed to strengthen each Kingdom's fort (which had to be defended against predation by members of the opposing kingdom).

Player vs player combat in "AC2" was always consensual, and was not considered necessary for advancement of your character. For most servers, regions of the landscape were identified as "peaceful" or "conflict" zones, and PvP fighting was only allowed in conflict zones between members of opposing kingdoms. For Darktide, the "conflict server", PvP combat was possible in all regions of the world, and was not limited to conflict between different kingdoms. Quests that were not in some way related to increasing the power of one kingdom over the others generally avoided conflict regions on the map, thus allowing players who chose to avoid PvP combat to do so without limiting their activities significantly.

Critical reaction

Fallen Kings

"AC2" is generally considered the first "second-generation" MMORPG, and its graphics continued to be among the best in the genre, even to the point of its termination in December 2005. Many tedious aspects of first-generation MMORPGs were eliminated while maintaining complex gameplay and combat systems based on a hybrid class-skill system. The free monthly (more recently, bimonthly) updates, a service unique to Turbine software products, have also been widely praised.

While "Asheron's Call 2" received widely favorable press reviews, many players were disappointed with the initial retail release of the software, which followed a brief open beta testing phase. The game was initially plagued by server instability, lack of content, high system requirements, engine flaws, lack of balance and many broken combat skills. The developers underestimated how quickly players would reach the initial maximum level of 50, which occurred after just a few weeks. To add to the problems, the chat system was unreliable and the subject of something of a turf-war between Microsoft (publisher at the time) and Turbine. It took months for Microsoft to hand over responsibility for the chat system to Turbine, adding to the frustration of its player-base.

These shortcomings were largely addressed throughout 2003, but many players had quit by that time, resulting in the consolidation of several servers and a comparatively low total player population. Especially the player versus player server Darktide and the kingdom versus kingdom server Coldeve experienced extremely low populations. [http://www.mmogchart.com/ MMOGCHART.COM] estimates that "AC2" peaked with about 50,000 subscribers, but at the end of its life had only 10–15,000.

Many players agreed that the game significantly improved over time. Included in these improvements were a new crafting system aptly named Craft 2.0 which greatly changed the in-game economy for the better. Also the level cap was raised to a new 150 max. Avoiding the earlier misstep of players being able to level too easily, Turbine toughened the leveling when Hero 2.0 allowed a player to pass the original cap of 50.

Legions

Player reactions to "Legions" were almost universally favorable, citing performance improvements, excellent design of the new landmass and plentiful new content. The character development system for mid- and high-level players received another major revision, referred to as Hero 2.0, which was received quite favorably by the player community, though as with any MMORPG, it was not without its detractors. "Legions" did not draw a significant number of new players to the game, however, so its appeal was limited to the existing player base. Therefore, its sales were not stellar and Turbine announced "AC2"'s end of life shortly after its release.

Failure and Cancellation

On August 25, 2005 it was announced by Turbine CEO Jeff Anderson that the "Asheron's Call 2" service would be shut down on December 30, 2005, and no additional content updates were planned. This was a reaction to tepid sales of the "Legions" expansion pack, which failed to boost the number of subscription past the critical threshold of 35,000. Fans were highly critical of this reaction, blaming lack of sales on a poorly coordinated marketing campaign and an insufficient retail presence.Producer Citan (Eric Heimburg) moved on to the "Star Trek Online" project, whereas most other team members transferred to the "Dungeons & Dragons Online" and "The Lord of the Rings Online" projects at Turbine.

Criticism of Asheron's Call 2 had always been particularly vocal from many "Asheron's Call" players, who were frustrated by the radical changes in gameplay dynamics and the game world, claiming that "AC2" was a sequel in name only. The fact that "AC2" would be different from "AC1" was stated from the initial releases on it, but many "AC1" players were not happy with the sequel and stayed with the original game. This may have been a factor in "AC2"'s disappointing subscription numbers.

External links

* [http://www.turbinegames.com/ Turbine Games homepage] - developer of the "Asheron's Call" franchise
* [http://ac2vault.ign.com/ AC2 Vault] - forums, quest and player guides
*moby game|id=/asherons-call-2-fallen-kings
* [http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2005/12/_wired_news_jus.html What's life like in online world that's about to end?] - 19 December 2005 Wired article by Clive Thompson exploring "how people behave in a world where the end is actually nigh."
* [http://www.killtenrats.com/?p=554 The End Begins (And Ends)] - One player's account (with images) of the last moments of playing Asheron's Call 2.