Jellitastic Goodness and the Trials and Tribulations of AC Fandom

Sometimes it's hard being a fan. Back in the early 80s, dare I say 1983, there was this guy named Steve Yzerman who started playing for a second rate team called the Detroit Red Wings. They had had their glory in the past but when you looked at the Red Wings then, well, they weren't doing too well. That said, with Steve Yzerman in the line up you knew good things were going to come.... eventually.

Being a fan isn't about cheering for the winningest team at any given point in time, it's about cheering for for the people that you believe in. By the way, if you can't tell where this is going by now, lay off the smack, crack and cannubis - unless you're Canadian - then the cannubis is ok, but damnit pay attention, I'll talk about food you can munch on later.

It was rough being a Turbine fan during late 2002 and early 2003. Most of us knew that there were lots of very capable people there but there really seemed to be a lack of vision with the game. The AC2 project could not have been a very fun thing to work on during that time. There were problems beyond the team's control and I imagine many of them were crushed seeing something that could have been so much pushed out far too early against their impassioned cries. Granted, the evil capitalist pig dogs do need to make their money so that developers can be paid and purchase the copious amounts of Mountain Dew necessary to get our economy out of recession. Nevertheless, it was hard for fans of AC2 both inside and outside of the development team to watch what was happening.

It was hard.
It was hard watching people go.
It was hard to stop writing sentences beginning with it was hard.

It ain't hard no more baby. I started playing AC2 again about 3-4 weeks ago and it's a completely different world. Perhaps the most beautiful thing about the game at this point in time is the community that's chosen to populate the world. You could easily dismiss the people as fanbois and people living in denial but you'd be wrong. There's been a real paradigm shift and there's a genuinely positive and optimistic mood on the servers. This bloodletting has leeched most of the people that ... how do I say it delicately ... endanger the future of humanity by threatening the global gene pool ... from the gameworld and it's beyond a shadow of a doubt the most friendly player community I've encountered in any MMORPG community.

I'm liking the changes to the game to. There's new content, and new class balance. Granted, some of the more recent content is repetitive, but it's challenging and it requires balanced and effective teams of players to confront. Having played a defender since release I was initially, how shall we say, skeptical (or was it screaming in opposition to? ... can't remember) of the balance changes that had been implemented on my bent over class. However, there's no debating that I'm enjoying my defender now more than ever. He has a unique role that he excels at and he needs others just as others need him. Even Martha Stewart would say it's a good thing. I love the changes, they were needed and they've been for the good. Now, I'm sort of hoping that some of the more repetitive aspects of the quest of perpetual temple thrashing will slowly be phased out ... I'm just not that pious ... as more content is developed and becomes available. For now, it's a great quest to keep people busy and engaged.

But even more than that, it's apparent that Turbine has really returned to its grass roots strength - developer/community interaction. They're sharing vision - and they have a vision! They're incorporating feedback and doing all the right things, even the right things that I don't agree with . Many of those 'right' things that I didn't agree with were philosophical in nature and were communicated to us from Ken Karl. I'll miss "Mr. Quazzar" and I do wish him the best in whatever he's moved on to. I loved that name for anyone that doesn't know anything about quasars they spin very fast and seem to flash, and Ken was definitely spinmaster flash. It was always hard to tell whether he was calling the shots or having the shots called on him thereby morphing him into a human dartboard. I'll guess we'll see in the coming months whether there are any paradigm shifts on the worlds of Dereth. If he happens to be reading this, he has my gratitude, and respect - a disgruntled service customer base and (most likely) a limited fixed budget is not a situation I'd wish on anyone, never mind throwing lawyers into the mix (no, not you Jeff - you've crossed to the other side - you're officially "sort of almost ok" now).

About the only thing that's really annoying me with AC2 right now are the server populations. With all the emphasis that's been added to kingdom and group based combat it's damn hard trying to find people to, you know, do the cool stuff with. I'm anxiously looking forward to the upcoming server merge. With the mood that's surrounding the upcoming merge it's apparent that this really is going to be what the patch calls it - a ressurection - and if you're just perusing the boards seeing what's going on with AC2 now that you've moved on I strongly recommend that you listen to Mr. Cleese and "bring out your dead!" and join us.

The months ahead are full of reason for cautious optimism. With secure storage, bugses to squish, housing, bugses to crush, another 70 levels of advancement, and bugses to impale - you remember the olthoi don't you - all on the horizon it's looking like Asheron's spirit is finally beginning to infuse this strange new world.

It would have been wonderful if they could have released the game 6 months ago where it will be 2 months from now without breaking the space time continuum. Damn you capitalist pig dogs! We're getting there though. Sometimes a work of art is not best left alone. Sometimes it's good to say, geez aspects of this really suck, let's keep the canvas... and the artists... and draw something that works better on it.

I'd say AC2 is like a box of chocolates but I'd get sued by Tom Hanks, so I'm going to say that AC2 is like a jelly donut. In fact, it was like a jelly donut with no jelly, but what a jelly donut without jelly it was. The surrounding engine and graphical perfection of that outer jelly donutness was and still truly is the bestest outer jelly donut ever. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of jelly inside. But that's changing. Apparently when you lock up Citan, Jessica and others up in a room for 400 consecutive hours reading all those wonderfully postive posts over at the AC2 insider things start happening and the jelly maker starts cranking out really quality jelly.

The paramount example of jelly donut perfection is beginning to reveal itself to the MMORPG world. It's coming with all of its squishy goodness to crush the MMORPG free diet we've been forced to resort to in the absence of a really good game.

Join with me brothers and scream at the top of your lungs "AC2 NOW HAS JELLY!"

...Sometimes it's not so hard being a fan, I don't know about you but I'm headed to KrispyKreme.