But fact is that the game experienced a mass exodus during the last 2-3 weeks. And I don't mean the board trolls who say "I cancel my account" repeatedly but stay anyway. I mean people are really leaving AC2.
One reason is the "vision for the rest of the year" that Turbine published, suggesting that AC2 will follow the "EQ way of forcing group play in high levels". Well - Ok - I guess even AC1 forces group play (Queen Quest, VoD, .....) but at least you do not get it bashed on your head by the developers
But the main reason for the exodus is that AC2 still is more or less in Beta, although already being charged for.
The highest reachable level is 50. Up there you have nothing to do other than to hunt the very same few creatures in the very same areas. Turbine's only comments on that are "Well - we did not think that people would reach that level cap so fast" and "there will be no real content or a raise of the cap before autumn".
Not only to me that sounds like poor design and poor timeline planing.
Constant outages of the "non-game servers" let you play for yourself most of the time, but you cannot do /tells, fellow-, or allegiance-chats which makes it very lonely to play. Especially since you need a group to do most of the quests as long as their reward is useful for your level.
"Funny" effect : You stand in front of someone, /tell him/her something and get the anwer ".... is not online right now".
This has been going on for weeks now - and the "We apologize for the inconvenience" by Turbine/MS is nothing more than an additional provocation now.
Each month they are changing some or even many of the class skilltrees - Turbine calls it "Class Balancing" which is already considered a "dangerous threat" by the players.
Things that should have done during design and real Beta of the game are done now, alienating people who have invested lots of hours to develop a toon based on the skilltree - just to read before or find out after patch that one or more skills are suddenly working completely different, most of the times nerfed.
If you ever were an AC1 Life Mage and thought that the Life Magic changes were rude........
Furthermore Turbine has announced to move to sort of "one content patch every two months", as opposed to the "monthly patch" you have assigned for when opening the account. The "other" month they want to use for bug fixes.....see how confident they are in their own coding capabilities ?
And now they are offering free download and free trial of the game. Before they fixed any of the server issues harming the play of even the small remaining number of customers.
And without reimbursing those who stayed and payed despite all those shop-stopping problems - which in return makes many of us "stayers" additionally angry.
The clan I am in AC2 is not unknown - "Bandits Reborn" of Faile Bashere.
Experienced, honorable players who do not bash or rant easily.
Yet many of them have already left AC2, including Faile himself and Zeral, my former KoA monarch and once prominent LD member.
Some went back to AC1, even more turned to Anarchy Online at least as a temporary solution until SWG, Horizons or other MMORPGs come out....
I still play AC2 - but I would never consider it my "main" online game. If you only can afford one account - my advice is to stay in AC1, at least until September (one Milestone month mentioned in the "Visions").
Buffy might disagree with me now - but ask her again in a few weeks
Does that sound bitter ? Yes, it does.
Should you try AC2 ? Yes, you should.
Should you expect much of AC2 ? No, you should't (as of now).
Should you leave AC1 for AC2 ? No, you shouldn't (right now).
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