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how did AC2 gently caress up so bad?
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Mar 21, 2009 17:11
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 05:46 |
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poo poo, I remember resubbing like 5 years ago and 90% of the people playing were bots. I can't imagine how bad it is now.
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Mar 21, 2009 18:31
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Check out the old trailer! (The really, really old trailer...) Such sweet stock music we used! http://www.notnice.net/asherons.mpeg Oh, the halcyon days of AC.
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Mar 21, 2009 19:29
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OneArmedScissor posted:how did AC2 gently caress up so bad? The game was starting to get better near the end, but so many people had already written it off as a poo poo game that it was beyond saving. I came back after they released that expansion for it, and actually had a pretty good time with it. I ended up quitting because there were so few people playing, I could play for hours without running into a single person.
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Mar 21, 2009 19:36
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Also, I don't think splitting off from Microsoft helped, the game wasn't promoted at all after that.
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Mar 21, 2009 19:41
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VirtualReality posted:Also, I don't think splitting off from Microsoft helped, the game wasn't promoted at all after that. It was a lose/lose for Turbine. MS wouldn't let them do what they wanted and without MS they couldn't get the attention they wanted. I played towards the end I agree that it was a pretty good game, at least worth saving. But as has already been said, the damage was done at that point. I find myself wishing they would release the source code or something.
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Mar 21, 2009 21:31
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AC2 was an EQ style mmorpg set in the AC universe. That's what went wrong. People playing AC1, the games core audience, were playing AC1 because they didn't like what EQ had done.
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Mar 22, 2009 01:50
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Rainbow_Horse posted:AC2 was an EQ style mmorpg set in the AC universe. That's what went wrong. People playing AC1, the games core audience, were playing AC1 because they didn't like what EQ had done. I don't think this is why AC2 failed.
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Mar 22, 2009 01:59
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Overwined posted:I find myself wishing they would release the source code or something. The source for AC1 or 2 would make rockstar programmers cry tears of blood. Evil bloody blood, not nice religious tears of blood.
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Mar 22, 2009 03:51
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Here's a nice AC2 Development Tools Postmortem. With AC Postmortem tossed in for good measure. Captain Candiru fucked around with this message at 04:01 on Mar 22, 2009 |
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Mar 22, 2009 03:57
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The Remote Viewer posted:I don't think this is why AC2 failed. That's why it failed for me, everyone I know who played it, and a thousands of other people who never emigrated to AC2. Well, there's also the technical issues, so you're right in a way if that's what you were getting at, but since you didn't post any kind of rebuttal I can't give you any credit. Rainbow_Horse fucked around with this message at 04:03 on Mar 22, 2009 |
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Mar 22, 2009 04:01
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Captain Backslap posted:
I've read it before, but goddamn I love that article.
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Mar 22, 2009 06:07
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The Remote Viewer posted:I don't think this is why AC2 failed. I played AC2 for about two months while still playing AC1, it was a horrible disaster. I would say the biggest complaint I had about it was the combat was just stupid and boring. Everyone had pretty much the same stupid auto-attack bullshit green blobs you would shoot at mobs, and there was little to no character development from level to level. You never really progressed or felt like the game had any flow. It just dragged along. It was like watching a horrible train wreck of a movie, only there was no popcorn or laughter to lighten the mood.
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Mar 22, 2009 06:45
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Man, I must be one of the few that really really liked AC2. I played it for a few months and got deployed in the Navy. Six months later I come back to it and the servers were starting to merge and the game was pretty much a wasteland. I thought it was awesome though. I thought AC was great too. I liked how huge the world is. I could find spots in the mountains and spend time grinding for days and not see a single person unless I wanted too. It was always great to go exploring and find little cabins out in the middle of nowhere with an awesome hunting spot.
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Mar 22, 2009 06:46
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I like AC2. Graphically, it's still not that bad. Animation wise I think its great, I'd play PVP game now that looked like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7ceTO-XpXQ I liked AC2 towards the end. I loved AC1 and Darktide. I had too many characters.. flu. uzi. flu ibn uzi. were my main dudes.
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Mar 22, 2009 07:00
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The best part of AC1 was that skill could win over levels, any day. At 110 on my BM mage I got killed by a level 70'something mage who was pretty drat good and got the best of me a couple of times. In other games, this is unheard of. You're at a disadvantage, sure, but you're not helpless as a lower level than someone else. Especially if you get a lucky crit and take advantage of it. Also, since it was fairly balanced, we would hold PK tournaments with a huge purse prize. You'd do a series of 1v1 battles and move up tiers until someone won. We'd have way too much fun with this, and even recorded a lot of the fights.
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Mar 22, 2009 07:21
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One thing I really liked in AC2 was the vault dungeons that gave you the lore videos about what happened to Dereth after you finished them. I never got far enough in the game to see them all, I wish I could find them online somewhere.
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Mar 22, 2009 15:25
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Squared posted:The best part of AC1 was that skill could win over levels, any day. the main problem was you couldn't reallocate skill points, so you could be a level 126 like TimTheEnchanter and completely suck because you didnt know what you were doing when you made your character at launch, compared to a level 50 who started off when everyone know what templates worked and was specialized in drain magic/life magic or whatever the cool thing was back then, I forgot. The 126 had no chance. I don't think that was necessarily the best part of AC1 and I'm glad that MMO's have moved away from allowing you to "gimp" your character in such a way without allowing you to reverse your errors.
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Mar 22, 2009 16:38
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I liked it. It meant you had total control. If you wanted to be a sword wielding cook mage who ran really fast you could do just that.
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Mar 22, 2009 17:39
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Blacknose posted:I liked it. It meant you had total control. If you wanted to be a sword wielding cook mage who ran really fast you could do just that. Ahh cooking, I had like a level 20 cook with zero combat skills trained near Hebian-to that I would use to make chocolates. For no other reason than you found the beans all over the place and the process was really long and cool.
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Mar 22, 2009 19:43
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VirtualReality posted:the main problem was you couldn't reallocate skill points, so you could be a level 126 like TimTheEnchanter and completely suck because you didnt know what you were doing when you made your character at launch, compared to a level 50 who started off when everyone know what templates worked and was specialized in drain magic/life magic or whatever the cool thing was back then, I forgot. The 126 had no chance. Tell us about TimTheEnchanter
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Mar 22, 2009 20:21
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VirtualReality posted:the main problem was you couldn't reallocate skill points, so you could be a level 126 like TimTheEnchanter and completely suck because you didnt know what you were doing when you made your character at launch, compared to a level 50 who started off when everyone know what templates worked and was specialized in drain magic/life magic or whatever the cool thing was back then, I forgot. The 126 had no chance. You must not have played for long, because they did change it so that you could "respec" everything about your character. Only, they did it the right way. Instead of just taking a bunch of money and then spitting out a character with no Spec at all, like WoW does, they forced you to do the changes over a period of time. Every 2 weeks you could reassign 10 Attribute points and Unspec, Untrain, or Spec a skill, if you had the skill points to do so. So it might take you 2 months or 6 months to fix your character, but it rewarded time and effort, not just having 100 gold. EDIT* Also, gently caress carebears who cry about "gimping" a character. By level 50 you should know what is gimp and not. I probably played about a dozen guys to level 50-100 before making a "good" character. So what, they were all fun to play. Not everyone needs to be on the fast track to max level to have fun. AC1 was about PvP, PvE, and really confusing quests in dungeons with no maps, levers, switches, lockpicking skills needed, and other awesome stuff that had nothing to do with making a "perfect" character. nipple clumps fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Mar 22, 2009 |
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Mar 22, 2009 20:43
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The great thing about AC is if I did have to start over I wouldn't be going back to Goldshire or whatever. There was usually dozens of places to hunt at any level. Sure, people quickly found ways to maximize their exp, but that's going to happen in any game. It was still great to have the choice. The best part of AC, though, was just not knowing how everything worked and the mystery that added. I was 13 or 14 then, and I can't imagine my now 24 year old self ever really feeling that way with an MMO or any game again.
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Mar 22, 2009 22:08
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If anyone is serious about starting anew in DT or SC, give me a shout and I can throw up a buff/debuff bot in a dungeon or w/e to help expedite the process. The fond memories of AC of yesteryear are NOT still there.. This is a new AC, one where "being the best" means knowing how to break animations, manipulate the antiquated physics, use macros, ect.
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Mar 22, 2009 22:20
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On a nostalgiac note I remember playing on frostfell and darktide in 7th grade (2001?) and it was quite the occurrence if the servers' playercount ever went above 2500. I still remember loving up Tuskers up at "BSD", scamming people at sub (or "hub"), having longjump contests off the mansion belltower, and powerleveling to keep the XP chain afloat  Viper2026 fucked around with this message at 19:09 on May 10, 2009 |
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Mar 22, 2009 23:37
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I loved this game for the weird openness of the world. I remember I had a particular tiny dungeon in the middle of nowhere that served as a base for all my characters so I could drop crap on the ground and be reasonably sure no one would nab it (as I inadvertently did one time) before a mule came around for it. I just liked running around and seeing the world. It was expansive and had a lot of things that existed for the sake of existing which I find a depressing lack of these days. WoW was mapped, annotated, and modded within months. I think it took a long time for anyone to eventually stumble across Babe in AC. Not too mention the rabbit that players leveled up into a killing machine. I guess I just miss the freedom of AC. I don't miss the clunky controls though. I remember when I made the perfect composite bow...my whole guild was there and I was soon exiled in the mountains to grind tuskarrs. I'll bet old Trimordicus the mighty archer is still up in those mountains somewhere.
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Mar 23, 2009 01:21
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I'm thinking about AC Darktide 2002 when I'm playing Darkfall  shhhh...
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Mar 23, 2009 02:22
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Squared posted:You must not have played for long, because they did change it so that you could "respec" everything about your character. Why should a new player have to play the game twice or more to create a good character? Not everyone wants to create a dozen characters before learning how to make a decent character. And you must have played way after I left, because nobody gave a poo poo about max level back then and level 100's were oddities. And you can't say AC1 was about PVP and nothing about making a "perfect" character. Every month after patch day there would always be a rush of new alts to create the new flavor of the month spec character. blippyblop fucked around with this message at 02:30 on Mar 23, 2009 |
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Mar 23, 2009 02:28
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Zoopy posted:I'm thinking about AC Darktide 2002 when I'm playing Darkfall Wasn't Darkfall started way back when by a bunch of guys that played on DT?
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Mar 23, 2009 02:34
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VirtualReality posted:Why should a new player have to play the game twice or more to create a good character? Not everyone wants to create a dozen characters before learning how to make a decent character. And you must have played way after I left, because nobody gave a poo poo about max level back then and level 100's were oddities. It's called a learning curve, why should it be so cookie cutter that you CAN'T make a bad character? If everyone is uber good then what makes you unique or original. A lot of bad specs still taught people something, and left the evolution of characters in the players hands, and not the devs. And seriously, "way after you left"? You really have no clue about the evolution of the game if you weren't around when people were hitting 126+, respecs were available, and PvP went under rebalancing. You probably never even saw a level 7 spell cast if you left before any of this stuff... so you never really played true end game stuff. And yeah, hitting 126 was a HUGE deal after a while. It's the only game I know of that had a HUGE loving FIREWORKS DISPLAY when you hit max level. Everyone wanted to see that.
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Mar 23, 2009 03:04
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Squared posted:It's called a learning curve, why should it be so cookie cutter that you CAN'T make a bad character? If everyone is uber good then what makes you unique or original. A lot of bad specs still taught people something, and left the evolution of characters in the players hands, and not the devs. I'm not saying characters should be cookie cutter like in AC2 where you can't make a bad character. On the contrary, I loved the AC skill system. I'm saying you should be able to "fix" a bad character in faster than 2-6 months. I'm not sure what casting level 7 spells has anything to do with that. (Which had just come out before I left)
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Mar 23, 2009 03:17
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You can now, they give you all the respec tokens you will ever need to fix a bad character. I found this out a couple months ago when I was going to fix my superbad extreme UA spec, went down into the spec dungeon and turbine had bumped the default token count to like 15. So 15 unspecs and 15 specs. That could literally change a BM mage to a sword user, as well as redesign his innate attribs to be viable. We have level 8 spells now, we have fellowship-wide spells now. We have "dailys" and quests repeatable on a daily, weekly, monthly basis with progressive rewards (kings quests) Xp chains no longer work. This almost broke AC. I managed one of the biggest XP chains on SC. We could literally take a level 20 character and max him at 126 in a matter of weeks. A HUGE feat back in the day. You can grind high xp dungeons and go from level 1 to level 140+ in a matter of 2 weeks tops. I think my mage was working in EO making 200m/hour and he has all of his attributes, spec'd and trained skills maxed.
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Mar 23, 2009 03:39
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Also, Arwic getting destroyed was the coolest poo poo ever, I wish more MMO's had the balls to just destroy a major city completely out of the blue. The game had a great story and the world actually felt like it was evolving, instead of just having more poo poo piled on top of it while everything else remains the same like every other MMO at the moment.
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Mar 23, 2009 05:43
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evelyn87 posted:You can now, they give you all the respec tokens you will ever need to fix a bad character. I found this out a couple months ago when I was going to fix my superbad extreme UA spec, went down into the spec dungeon and turbine had bumped the default token count to like 15. So 15 unspecs and 15 specs. That could literally change a BM mage to a sword user, as well as redesign his innate attribs to be viable. I was in Ruthless on SC. I played Kounterfeit, PAIN, and my friends played Fokus, Dave Mustaine, Howard Hill... Do you remember any of us? We had a huge XP chain going in Ruthless, and we macroed a whole lot of dungeons at the time lol.
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Mar 23, 2009 07:02
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VirtualReality posted:Also, Arwic getting destroyed was the coolest poo poo ever, I wish more MMO's had the balls to just destroy a major city completely out of the blue. The game had a great story and the world actually felt like it was evolving, instead of just having more poo poo piled on top of it while everything else remains the same like every other MMO at the moment. Believe it or not, people still, to this day, bitch about it. I brought it up when I came back to try the game again (and paid to transfer my old MSN Gaming Zone account over). I didn't stay mostly because the playerbase has become a bunch of whiney douchebags. Which is a shame, because part of the reason I paid out that money was to keep my original character with all his special items and now it's probably all gone because I tossed that all in an apartment and I don't know what happens to your storage when you lose your housing.
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Mar 23, 2009 07:52
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Captain Backslap posted:Believe it or not, people still, to this day, bitch about it. I brought it up when I came back to try the game again (and paid to transfer my old MSN Gaming Zone account over). It all stays in your chest, ready to be bought by the next person. And at this point, I'm guessing that...every single apartment in the game is probably available. Your stuff might still be there.
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Mar 23, 2009 08:02
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we get another asherons call thread every 5 or so months and theres always the same people saying the game is dead or brag about their non existant lvl 275 chars. Does anyone remember that high level player on DT named "Baelezebub" or something like that who posted funny poo poo on his website, like him killing everyone at a wedding, completely naked, with a hollow weapon, while spamming "IM GAY, IM GAY, IM GAY!" (to ruin the screenshots). Also remember the sho prostitutes. Anyone have a link to that site or archived please??
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Mar 23, 2009 08:50
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Chakron posted:It all stays in your chest, ready to be bought by the next person. And at this point, I'm guessing that...every single apartment in the game is probably available. Your stuff might still be there. I'm talking about a brief stint late 2008, and I had picked an apartment complex and wing in the complex that was the quickest to get to. Things probably haven't changed too much since then. Sweet, so someone inherited a chest full of obsolete weapons and armor and special gifts like rare pack monsters and clothing that were one-offs.
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Mar 23, 2009 09:18
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oh man I remember those little dolls, I had the whole set.  this thread is sad because I really miss the game but I know I can never return
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Mar 23, 2009 09:31
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| # ? Apr 26, 2024 05:46 |
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How's the recruitment looking? I have an ancient character from when the game first came out on Darktide. He was a level 56 something Mage with unarmed skill named Vincent Mercury. I don't have a super lot of time to play, but with my new job I work nights so can consider joining back up to mess around if we got enough people.
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Mar 23, 2009 11:16
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