Last Dynasty - A Solclaim Community

by Colin Campbell
Print E-mail
Friday, 26 August 2005
Turbine has explained the closure of its MMOG Asheron's Call 2 to Next Generation, at least partly blaming the protracted transition of the game from former publisher Microsoft.

Tom Nichols, vice president of marketing, said, "One of the problems was the migration of customers from Microsoft's billing system to Turbine's. With any MMO, a lot of customers are what we call sleepers. They carry on paying even though they don't play as much any more. They have invested so much time that they are not ready to quit." He said that any "forced migration" of customers will flush out such consumers, leading to a drop in the user-base.

The original Asheron's Call was launched by Microsoft back in 1998, as a response to the runaway success of Ultima Online. Its successor arrived in November 2002. In early 2004, Turbine took over the administration of the online worlds from Microsoft.

Nichols said that Asheron's Call 1 survived the migration simply because the numbers are higher. "It's a different product with a different community," he said. "It has a larger community which was easily able to come through that transition." He stressed that the closure of AC2 would not affect AC1.

He also explained that poor sales of expansion pack Legions, launched in May, was also to blame. "A successful expansion pack can raise awareness of an MMO, and reignite interest from lapsed subscibers," he said, noting that Legion had failed in this regard. Nichols said he could not release any numbers relating to the subscriber bases for its games.

Dedicated fans

Yesterday, company CEO Jeff Anderson had posted a message on AC2's website announcing that the game would be closed at the end of this year.

Anderson wrote, "In spite of our hard work and the launch of [expansion] Legions, AC2 has reached the point where it no longer makes sense to continue the service. We will be officially closing the Asheron's Call 2 service on December 20, 2005. Until then, we plan to run live events, but we will not be adding any content or features."

He added, "We deeply appreciate the many dedicated fans of AC2 who have stood by us over the years. You have our sincerest gratitude."

Gratitude is a reaction that's hard to find on the AC2 forums today, with many loyal players expressing outrage against the decision. Some said they had lost faith in Turbine.

"We're aware of that reaction" said Nichols, 'but I think people will come to see that this is the right decision. We want to focus on the production of our new games, and consumers are just beginning to see how innovative they are."

Turbine is working on The Lord of the Rings: Middle-Earth Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online, which it plans to publish next year.

Panzerfaust wrote:Turbine has never made me feel warm and fuzzy. Frankly, I was more at ease when MS was in the picture.

Topic: Best of luck for the future
Ibn_Turbine 666 posts
collection (0) | wishlist (0)
Title: AC Online Community Relations
Posts: 666
Registered: Jul '03
8064
Date Posted: 1:58pm Subject: Best of luck for the future
Way back in early 2003, I had a plan. I had some money saved up and I'd always wanted to try living in Los Angeles. I was going to move to SoCal, whether or not I had a job waiting for me there, and see how things played out.

Then, all my plans changed when I saw the AC1 OCR job listing on Turbine's web site. I quickly applied, and decided that I was willing to sacrifice my dream of living in Los Angeles in favor of a different dream -- working for Turbine on Asheron's Call.

So you can imagine how psyched I was when I was offered the chance to continue working my dream job, IN my dream location.

And, hopefully, you can understand why -- now that I've been living here for nine months -- I've chosen to remain in Los Angeles and bid farewell to Turbine and the Asheron's Call team.

As many of you have read in srand's post, I took over as Live Producer upon her recent departure. The plan was that I would manage the day-to-day operation of the team, while our Lead Designer would continue managing the creative vision of the game. My replacement would operate out of the Westwood studio, where he or she would have the benefit of working directly with Calandryll and the rest of our excellent OCR staff. It's been pretty difficult not answering y'all when you asked what job I was moving to, but we wanted to make it part of an official announcement along with srand's depature. We'd just about finalized the messaging when we got word of the team move.

I can say with total honesty that it's been a real pleasure working with this community for the last two years. Even during the challenging times, when I had to make announcements that I knew would upset you, I've always admired the passion that this community has for the game. As I've said to folks, "What's the last thing that you did for six years straight?" And there are members of this community who have been involved with AC for even longer than that!

I've served this community as best I could, and I wish you all the best for the future. I'll still see some of you in-game (for the record, my main characters are on Leafcull), and I look forward to seeing what the Live Team has in store for us!

See you in Dereth!

-----signature-----
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC Online Community Relations
"...singers whose voices have long been silenced are raised in a chorale that nothing hears."

Ncatyl wrote:KK, Jess, Srand, now Ibn...

And, hopefully, you can understand why -- now that I've been living here for nine months -- I've chosen to remain in Los Angeles and bid farewell to Turbine and the Asheron's Call team.

Lucky Strike wrote:I have to laugh ... Turbine is falling apart.

I got a big smile from the fact that they are closing AC2 ... its a shame Turbine is making Dungeons and Dragons ... it had great potential until they got involved.