Asheron's Call 2

[Nikki.]

I've been looking over it ALOT this past two weeks. The ideas behind the game look EXACTLY like alot of the ideas I have been trying to pass along here all this time. Sure the camping may need a little work but overall its write-up for the game is AWESOME.

I was wondering how many people will be switching to AC2 this fall when it's released?

I know I will likely switch-over by then. Just to give it a try since it will be the FIRST 2nd generation game on the market. That and it looks like they are basing the game on FUN! rather than the tedious nature of all other games eventually sink to.

Either way, I would like to hear what you guys think of it and who will be switching when it comes. And NO, this isn't a threat to Funcom. This is a game I genuinely believe will be GREAT. So, let me hear what you have to say already.

P.S. I likely won't carry on the PornStar identity to Asherons Call though. I have changed personalities through ALL my games :O) Hmmmm, Maybe a rockstar lineup this time.

[___________Zeroshift]

Oh course I will be switching!

Don't forget the best part: It's run by turbine.

Yes, I know, I'm a turbine fanboy.. but with good reason.


Unfortunately many people consider AC2 a "niche" game simply because of it's low key profile.

Things will pick up as the game gets into beta. People will realise what we have known all along -- Asheron's Call rocks.

[Nikki.]

Asherons wasnt a Niche game. It was a first generation game that was hard to get into. Nothing like having to mess around with a spell system to turn off a player :OP

But they where TOPS in content.

And in the end that made up for everything.

[Cheddar]

I'm convinced AC2 will be the best of the lot. The graphics engine is state of the art. Plus, Turbine is a first class company that can move mountains with only a handful of devs.

Official beta starts soon, but some MS employees have been allowed to test early. The early word is that the game is phenomenal. Remember the early info on AO? Did not inspire confidence to say the least.

Another game to watch is City of Heroes. Unique concepts, but a shakier company.

[Ezeel]

Asheron's Call was unique to me.

The spell system was the best i've ever seen in a game, the fact that you had to stock up with components to keep those spells running was great, yes I know alot hated that part, but it created a huge social interaction around the mages that sold the best components and people just stayed there for hours chatting and showing off.

Ontop of that you had places like Subway and Arwic (before it was razed) where people stood in the 100's selling and buying items, another great place for social interaction.

That's not all, it had a great quest system, like Frore, where everyone had to get a key, and all the good items was in a chest at the end of the quest, so everyone got the items, no camping, no waiting 18 hours to get your copy of the item.

It also created a great outdoor hunting place due to it's loot system, where every monster had a % chance of dropping Ph4t l3wt.

All in all, Asheron's call is the best game i've ever played, a big reason for that is also ofcourse because it was my first online role playing game, I tried UO DAoC and AO after AC, and of all of them UO came the closest to AC in my opinion, speaking of having fun in a game that is.

AC 2 however remove alot of the things I thought was great with AC, the fact that you can no longer create xp chains and level people that way is bad, this gave people something to do, and it even gave them levels now and then, this kept many people playing that was stuck at certain spots instead of just quitting the game.

Time will tell what AC 2 will be, but I won't state now before i've tried it how much it will rock or not.

Just my opinion.

[Nikki.]

HEHEHE

Dont give turbines "Little" staff fool ya. They have the Microsoft money behind them. So, its not like they are afraid to take chances unlike other game companies without the financial backing.

Either way I LOVE their ideas on PvP, Economy, and no mule trades needed :O) Not to mention they want as few rerolls as p-ossible :O)

If they did it right it should be excellent :O)

Yet somehow Funcom doesnt want to see whats about to happen, or they CANT do anything about it. All I can say is I will definately give it a SOLID try, just like I did with this game.

Hope to see you guys there :O) Ill be the headstrong one trying to shake things up just like always!

jason-

[___________Zeroshift]

There will still be plenty of player intereraction as tradesmen and adventurers gather around the workshops (Workshops are things that give a bonus to tradesmen standing near it. Players wil have to melt down items and dump in the materials to power these forges... This will allow players to choose which towns are the biggest, and will make some towns better for certain craftsmen than others.).

Removing spell components goes along the same lines as removing arrows and other such items. Both are systems designed to be money sinks, a relic of an older system. AC2 is looking to streamline out all the downtime and their unqiue economy has no need for such artifical money sinks.

Originally posted by Illusion
Asheron's Call was unique to me.

The spell system was the best i've ever seen in a game, the fact that you had to stock up with components to keep those spells running was great, yes I know alot hated that part, but it created a huge social interaction around the mages that sold the best components and people just stayed there for hours chatting and showing off.

Ontop of that you had places like Subway and Arwic (before it was razed) where people stood in the 100's selling and buying items, another great place for social interaction.

That's not all, it had a great quest system, like Frore, where everyone had to get a key, and all the good items was in a chest at the end of the quest, so everyone got the items, no camping, no waiting 18 hours to get your copy of the item.

It also created a great outdoor hunting place due to it's loot system, where every monster had a % chance of dropping Ph4t l3wt.

All in all, Asheron's call is the best game i've ever played, a big reason for that is also ofcourse because it was my first online role playing game, I tried UO DAoC and AO after AC, and of all of them UO came the closest to AC in my opinion, speaking of having fun in a game that is.

AC 2 however remove alot of the things I thought was great with AC, the fact that you can no longer create xp chains and level people that way is bad, this gave people something to do, and it even gave them levels now and then, this kept many people playing that was stuck at certain spots instead of just quitting the game.

Time will tell what AC 2 will be, but I won't state now before i've tried it how much it will rock or not.

Just my opinion.

[Tetra]

the more i read about it the more i contemplate it... I played AC from the start till like 6 months or so and even when the game mechanics actually became painfully mindnumbing I still managed to enjoy the game. The vassal system was a great thing for the game in that the extreme amount of time I spent helping fellow allegiance members through quests, doing corpse recovery's, and hunting for phatlewt in general was made up for by a steady trickle of exp (i could get more exp hunting for it in 30-60min than i got in a day or two but doing so was almost always interrupted with something) to make up for it. one of the best things about AC was that turbine was a phenominal company that not only listened to us they spent a good bit of effort actually interacting with us in the forums/irc rather than occasionally dropping a sparkly thing in irc/forums to lower the level of anger that comes from being ignored/lied to...

I'm not sure if i'll go into AC2 or not since i purpously havent read a whole heck of alot on it but based on what my former monarch has shown in interest to it over icq and such I think it's a definate possibility.

-Sata

[_____________Metaguy]

Ah what? Nobody is bringing up the found memories of people cheating?

[Nikki.]

Metaguy

Heck I usually have more cheaters in a monopoly game then was in AC :OP

Well maybe a bit more in AC, but like all games there will be cheaters. AC though had far fewer problems then the other games did. EQ had HUGE dupe problems for the first two years. UO had HUGEEEEE dupe problems for its WHOLE exsistance. AO Had its HUGE duping problems. Really ALL games so far have fallen prey to a large amount of cheaters.

AC on the other hand had far fewer cheaters than normal. And the way Turbine dealt with cheaters was the way ALL companies should deal with the subject.

BVasically they didnt have ten million rules they never enforced and if they did someone felt singled out because of their lack of regular enforcement. Like AO they have rules against Ebay, friends playing same account, and others. Yet they are so often NOT used that when they are people feel like crap because soooo many others get away with it.

If you arent willing to enforce a rule regularly then it shouldnt be a rule at all. Its as simple as that!

Anyways I like the ideas of no spell components or other resources that only created downtime rather than a solid play experience for your WHOLE playing time. If a sword can do as much damage over time as a spell then why should spells have extra costs? There is no reason for it. Why should bow users be encumbered because of the need for arrows, when the weapon was only introduced to provide variety in weapon choice. There shouldnt be disadvantages when the damage over time is almost always equivilant to the damage forms that require no maintence.

Also while streamlining alot of timewasters they have added multiple ways to play the game while having an equal chance to advance. Multiple ways to gain experience. Multiple ways to PvP. Multiple ways to do tradeskills on ONE character. They arent taking a singular approach to the game like many others games do. They make sure you have many ways to become successful so that you dont get bored sooo soon like other games. BTW anyone want to do another miossion? heheheh like I said singular approach to game mechanics is bad.

Anyways I will be there just have to figure out how to get into beta :OP

jason-

[___________Zeroshift]

AC has a bad rep for "cheating" and macroing.

Cheating is nothing native to AC. Remember BLACKSNOW? They were doing things 1000 times worse in AO than people in AC do. The difference between AO and AC is that the cheaters just work harder to stay hidden in AO.

[Sgt. Spectre]

Great Nikki a.k.a storm is the reason I am leaving Ao and going to AC2.

Nikki, let me know which server you play on so I can pick a different one. Thanks

[Nikki.]

Sgt Spectre
NOOOO Funcom is the reason you are leaving AO. The same reason I will likely go. Lack of content breeds unrest among the people. Thats what happened here and will continue to happen until they figure out the TRUE value of content.

[Nikki.]

Macroing wasnt bad
It only proved that you didnt need an incredibly hard to level in game for it to be fun. Plus they handled the macring the right way. They didnt ban the people they just fixed the spots.

Cheating happens in all games. Just happens less cheating goes on the more fun people have. The more fun they have the less reason to buy off ebay. The less people buying off ebay means less of a reason to cheat.

Its as simple as that.

[Waffen]

Nice to see some talk of AC2.

I will be there from day one, no doubt about it.

To touch on tradeskills a bit more, everyone has a skill tree devoted to tradeskills as everything bought and sold will be between the players. A true 100% player economy. No NPC vendors.

Just one of the superb features of AC2. To read more about tradeskills and how they will work, click here.

With SWG looming around the corner to keep the interest of the kiddies, AC2 will probably have a larger base of adults - at least one can only hope.

And of mild interest to some, all test worlds and computers used by developers are AMD powered, so there should be a smaller chance of conflicts for those AMD users.

[Mysticknight]

They had problems with duping,but they took care of them as fast as they found them.they constantly worked on making the game better every month.every month saw a new patch with new content and fixes.with that kind of support you can expect AC2 to be a decent game,
wont see me there though, 2 years of AC was enough.Ill head to SWG instead.

[Nikki.]

Weeeeeeeeee

I wont be all alone in that big bad world :O)

I get so scared I might scare everyone off before they even commit :OP

jason-

[_____________Paldorr]

I was in the AC beta, had an account on day one, got Dark Majesty, and I am still playing AC - off and on. I like the removal of the spell research system that went in last month. It is definitely more solo friendly than AO. The only thing that turned me off totally was the assinine housing implementation. It is still the absolute worst I have ever seen in any game.

AC 2 is one that I have been waiting for. Definitely, I'm in - but I'm not so sure I'll dump AO. More likely I'll play both. At one time I had subscriptions to AC, AO, DAOC, EQ and UO all going at the same time. I weeded out the chaff (EQ, UO, and DAOC) but I still switch over to AC every once in a while. And every once in a while, you just need to go ridin' in a yalmaha.

[Ezeel]

Quote:

Anyways I like the ideas of no spell components or other resources that only created downtime rather than a solid play experience for your WHOLE playing time. If a sword can do as much damage over time as a spell then why should spells have extra costs? There is no reason for it. Why should bow users be encumbered because of the need for arrows, when the weapon was only introduced to provide variety in weapon choice. There shouldnt be disadvantages when the damage over time is almost always equivilant to the damage forms that require no maintence.

/Quote


You seem to forget one thing.

In AC, you had to use different kinds of swords on different kinds of monsters, because some monsters were more fragile to a certain type of damage. This resulted in a sword user having to buff 4-5 swords before a combat, incase of adds, and in AC, in the the early days, it could be a PAIN to get the cool buffs onto your weapons.

As for bow users, like myself, we only buffed our ONE bow, and used different types of arrows, one item only needed to be buffed.

As for mages, they could do all kinds of damage at any time using spells.

And if you didn't go with item magic you were umm, well what we consider gimped.

All in all every character had to buy components for magic, yet for melee it was more of a hazzle buffing it all.

So, mages had to carry more components?

So, bow users actually have to carry arrows?

Gee, why don't we just implement Solar Guns like in AO who doesn't need ammo at all, let's cut the realism out of the games totally, BUT hey, let's focus on making the grass move with the wind, have the light reflect correct on objects, nice sunsets and birds singing.

Everyone want that kind of realism but removing basic items like arrows from a bow user is just plain stupid, all they had to do was make the arrows lighter in weight, which I think they finally did.

The fact that you used natures own ingredients, components, for spell casting was great, it added more realism, a spell wasn't something you just casted, it was made using something.

Also the fact that you had to research spells was cool. I remember the day when, umm forgot his name , casted Halo of Frost for the FIRST time in AC's history, big screenshots all over the place, was on Frostfell.

I realize tho that i'm outnumbered by the people who wants everything to be so darn easy, and games are made how the majority wants it, cept in AO

Disclaimer: These are all MY opinions and i'm not speaking for anyone but myself.

[Mysticknight]

Miss my days on Frostfell
miss the thieves in arwic before it got destroyed
miss people spamming so and so is a THIEF

lvl 54 gimped mage and lvl 55 swordsman on frostfell
lvl 62 gimped archer on wintersebb former monarch with 550 followers