Believe it or not...Asheron's Call 2 is back.

[pwilson316]

Well, sort of...

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/12/15/turbine-asherons-call-2/

Basically, it's kind of in Beta and not too stable, but I have logged in and played. Characters did not make the transition, however.

 

[mazeroth]

I played the original AC from beta until 2005. Then I started up again a year ago and played for 6 months. One of the greatest games of all-time, no question. I never tried AC2 as I was big-time into AC1. How does this compare to the first?

Also, I played on Frostfell back in the day. Yourself?

 

[Llwellyn]

Wow, I would have appreciated a little heads up from them on this. I just cancelled my AC subscription last month because I just couldn't get back into the groove of playing. I got all nostalgic and resubscribed, but it just didn't feel the same without all of my original friends and their characters around to enjoy it.

I'm not going to resubscribe just to beta test this (again). I was a beta tester for AC2 the first time, and I really loved it. Not having access to the character data is a downside, but if they can get the game playable and stable again it would be worth starting over. There is an incredible amount of lore locked up in AC2 that you get to experience firsthand, and a lot of players missed out on it the first time through. It was an amazing experience to get to play as a Tonk, and that was well before they even added the Viamont to AC, let alone even thought of letting you play as a Tonk in AC.

I suspect the issue with the characters has something to do with the way they shut the servers down though. They did a massive end of the world event, and there were lots of cataclysmic events with lots and lots of freebies and free flowing XP. It would be horribly unbalanced, if they really are bringing this game back to live, especially in an F2P model, to have those characters running around. Plus, lorewise, they're all dead-is-dead, not kiss-a-lifestone dead.

Morningthaw here, on both. I played all the characters with the name Lionheart (except Lisa Lionheart, who was a hardcore red, named after a Simpsons reference). My brother was Kaine the Dragoon, an MT legend. I don't remember my AC2 character names.

As far as a comparison between the two, AC2 was much more about the story and how you interacted with it as you went along. Lots of visually stunning effects (for the time) to go along with the storytelling, too. The best thing was they managed to get a lot of the lore based stuff into practicality and actually working in gameplay. Player Tonk Clawbearers and Hivekeepers? Player Lugians that actually threw rocks and whacked people with hammers? Oh hell yes.

 

[BlueWeasel]

AC1 Solclaim player myself. Played hardcore for about 12 months between 2001-2002. Have re-subbed a few times since then, even playing again back in 2010 or so.

 

[lupi]

my lotro guild is originally from a bunch of ac/ac2 peeps

 

[chimaxi83]

Wow, this was the first MMO I actually got into. Stopped playing after I enlisted though. It was a great game though, I remember jaw dropping graphics (for the time)

 

[akahoovy]

Oh balls no, my first addiction has resurrected its sequel? I cancelled my subscription earlier this year to AC1. I don't know how I'm going to play EVE AND THIS. Sigh.