Asheron's Call 2 rises from the grave

Almost seven years after it was shut down, Turbine has opened an Asheron's Call 2 server.

All current AC1 subscribers get access.

My mind is BLOWN.

Whaaaaaaa?????????

Next up SWG to be followed by COH?

Oh great, maybe now I can finally try to get my money's worth out of that expansion they put up for sale right before they shut the fucking game down.

I asked my friend who pointed me at the post if drudge play was in, and she said it was, which means yeah it should have all the content from the expansion.

I'm typing words now I thought I'd never type:

Tonight I resubscribe to Asheron's Call.

Let's get this hype train started:

Lugians Attack!

I never expected this... and I am quite impressed by it.

Will they not fuck it up this time? If they can change the face of the MMO industry with a workable ftp transition, I think they might be ready to bring this back to life in a good way.

Can you just resub to AC2?

Aw man, I can't get my old character back? Oh well, not subbing to AC1 without my old character.

I'm surprised AC1 still exists. Move on weirdos.

I wonder if this time, the chat servers will actually work. That was my personal last straw with AC2.

They do. When Turbine bought the franchise back from Microsoft, they implemented their own chat servers to replace the ones that MS made them use.

I may just fire it up again, then!

yay! Leafcull, REPRESENT!

Oh dammit, you people are going to make me dig through old emails and/or scraps of paper to find my login info. Luckily a year or so ago I paid Turbine to recover my account info, so I should have it laying around somewhere.

I resubbed and logged in yesterday after getting back from a long vacation. Turns out it's aged okay overall. I ended up playing for over 6 hours. Surprising that it hooked me a bit. It's pretty old school in a way, whereas when it came out it was considered dumbed down. Now it probably qualifies as hard core!

I'll mess around more today and see if it still holds me. I already got my moneys worth in hours. I'll even pop into AC also to check on my chars from a year ago when I resubbed for a month to see the old sights.

Anyone check it out yet? Thoughts?

I remember it as being grindy and only subbed for a month or two when it came out. How do you think it does in that regard, Chris?

It's the same game, and it definitely has that grind so far. Each town, including the starters, only has a few quests and NPC's. I've only been to the first three though. I do like (and forgot about) the monster incursions and potion quests. Those are the ones from mobs in the wild. It makes the grind more tolerable.

The crafting and map surveying for resources is pretty nifty for an old game, and the truly random items have always been the best thing about the series!

I think it'll be great for a months subscription, then I may be done. Unless I can get to the higher levels and it offers more. Or if they do some work on improving/advancing the game somewhat. I just don't feel like they did this with a plan. Though they are patching it, so someone is working on it, which is nice to know.

Is there a Mac port?

(ducks)

Okay, here's my latest feelings on it after another week and maybe 10 hours of play. I played at release for a few months and was excited to hear it returned.

I'm level 16 now, and advancing very slowly. I encountered a stretch where I couldn't figure out where to hunt. Either things were too low level, or I'd hit a spot where things kicked my butt. After a bit of research and wandering, I found a decent area for my level, but I'm not sure how long it will serve me well. I just got my human missile character to his Ranger specialization. I could have also become an alchemist or taken any of the melee or magic school skills. It's cool that I can hybrid myself and be a mage/melee or anything like that. With the 4 races, there's melee, missile, magic for each, and then two specializations for each branch. So something like 24 overall archetypes? Plus the drudge is unlocked so you can play them as one class. I'm sure many of them play similarly except for flavor.

The grind I mentioned in my last post is becoming REALLY grindy. Quests aren't worth much xp, and there aren't enough of them. Monsters rate around 20-40 xp per and I need a couple of thousand to level. Quests give a few hundred, maybe. Vaults can give a thousand or more, I think, but they are story based content and only come along once every 4-5 levels. I'm not sure I can get to the high levels at this rate. A ton of old AC2 folks powered to 50 before they fixed the hero system, and now everyone is heading to 50+ (I don't know what cap is off the top of my head). Monster incursions are few and far between and offer the same little quest xp for completing them. I did encounter my first unique monster, and took it down, which was cool. It's really old school in the rare, random spawn mechanic. No set spots, so they can be anywhere I think.

It's definitely an EQ/AC era grouping game. You won't get as far as fast solo as you would getting in a group. But even now it's hard to find low level groups since everyone ran right to the top. I'm not sure how long I can enjoy the casual play, and my days of raiding and grouping (8 hour raids in EQ back in the day) are long gone. I also can't believe how used to I've gotten to quest markers and quick travel. It must be a time thing. I don't like having to speak to everyone just to have them automatically give me a quest or tell me to go away and come back when I'm stronger.

I've started delving into crafting more, which is grindy in its own way. I love the surveying and getting resourses. You create a map for the type of resource you want, then you either go to the roughly random coordinates or have a Cartomancer portal you to the general area. Then you have to find the spot. You click on the map, it gives you a hot/cold type of thing and you do this periodically until you hone in on the exact random spot. Then you mine them. The surveying, mining, and crafting all use the same system which requires experience to level (either earned or allocated, same as skills). Using the map to survey resources also helps you explore more, it's how I found the better hunting spot. Crafted weapons can be as good or better than loot-generated ones, which is pretty cool.

The map itself is really old-school. Very few points of interest, very few dungeons, and you can't mark spots yourself to come back to something you saw that you thought was neat. The UI is badly in need of modernization, but I'm used to not having tooltips come up when I hover over a weapon. It's like 4 clicks to compare items, and it's never side by side. The landscape is sparse but if you played AC1, then you'll see lots of familiar sights. Graphics held up pretty well overall as far as scenery. Characters, monsters and other stuff haven't held up as well. I'm not finding it painful on the eyes though.

Overall it's a great trip down memory lane, and while I'm still having fun with it, I'm probably going to stick to my one-two month sub and then cancel. That is, unless the devs do some serious work on the beta and officially launch it. Ask me any questions, and I'll try to answer if you're interested. I'm also on as Alaura in-game.


TL;DR - Old school game that shows it's age but has some novel ideas. Good for a quick return visit if you were a fan, but it probably won't last long unless they invest in it heavily.

Just make a lugian tactician and join the turret farm.

I am taking back my enthusiasm for now, based on a recent update.

http://forums.ac.turbine.com/showthread.php?t=59067

The relevant bit:

There's no point in reviving this game if they're not going to update it with a free to play model.

It suggests to me that the market didn't go wild for a revived AC2 and so the money isn't there for any kind of conversion.

No matter what, it's cool that they did it and I hope it leads to an AC3 some time down the line. My interest died down pretty quick also.