Soapbox #1: Asheron's Call 2: Will The Curse Continue?

Asheron's Call 2: Will The Curse Continue?
By Woundtwister

I have been playing Asheron's Call 2 since beta hoping that each monthly episode in retail would bring hope for a new beginning of epic quests and features only to find I have got my hopes up for yet another month. Many times I have thought oh well I know it will get better next month and try to keep a positive attitude thinking things will get better. Perhaps maybe after all this time I have continued to play AC2, I have succumbed to the curse. How much longer will this curse continue?

Here are a few of the issues. Some have plagued the game since beta and have placed a continuing curse on the game.

I. Authentication Issues/Access Denied.

Well all I can say is this one has been around since day one even during beta. If I had a gold piece for every reason I couldn't log on, I think I would be the richest player in AC2. If your customers can't even log on, they will usually go somewhere else after a while and as we have seen with the server populations, most have. The curse of the authentication system continues.

II. Chat Issues.

Man this is one that we can all know and love. Remember during beta when chat wasn't functioning? Tells and other messages were chopped off and garbled in with combat messages and messages saying chat server not available? Heck we figured, nah it's just beta they will have all this fixed. We saw many beta patches telling us it was fixed then it wasn't then it was and so on. Many asked on the beta message boards, please fix chat and make it so players could customize it. Finally end of beta and retail came around chat worked for allegiance, fellows and tells and in the Emergence episode, players could finally customize the chat interface. Then came the new chat channels and here we go again with the episode Cacophony, how ironic. This has essentially become the nail in the coffin for most players of AC2.

Since January we have had somewhere around a dozen updates to hopefully fix chat only to find out that the curse of the chat system continues. We recently found out that the authentication problems and chat problems are tied to another system that is causing the problem. This is now going to be looked at for further fixes at the higher risk of causing more problems. I guess we will have to wait and see but something tells me the curse will continue.

III. Monster Rebalancing/Skills Rebalancing.

Here we go again, at the expense of content each month we have gone through an almost non-stop rebalancing of monsters and skills since retail. It's funny reading back on some of the first episodes; they actually made mobs easier to kill and increased experience rewards accordingly because they were too tedious to bother with. Now with this grouping kick they are on, we have gone through almost 4 months of nerfs to all classes and have made all mobs extremely difficult to kill. Some of this was due to few source control problems causing they game to be almost unplayable to many classes. Hopefully this will be fixed shortly but I'll have to wait and see since this curse will almost likely continue in the near term.

Summary

One has to ask if you remove all the issues and problems facing AC2 and ask what is left. Maybe all you have left is some nice graphics, a little content, and a game system that is a work in progress. So where is the interest in the game, well at this time once you hit level 50 there isn't any. We keep hearing about the Hero's Class dynamic to be the end all solve all of turning the game around but again we will have to wait and see. It is apparent that at some point the game lost direction of it original intent, perhaps due to the fact it was rushed out to market for who knows why. Now that there is some apparent direction albeit different than what was originally intended, maybe they will be able to turn things around.

Now having said all that, many of us have heard the same old thing wait, it will get better next month. I am beginning to think there is a parrot somewhere repeating next month, next month. It's now time to either turn this game into something with a niche in the MMORPG industry or set it a fire and send it out to sea never to be seen again. I think the magical side effects from AC1 have left a residual curse with AC2. Maybe those few thousand of us left playing will continue to see the curse continue only time will tell.