Last week, Asheron's Call 2 was shut down for good. The original Asheron's Call however, continues to thrive.
Some last screenshots of Asheron's Call 2
Saying goodbye is never easy, even when the digital armageddon of a world has a timer attached. Even so, there was assorted nerdspeak in the final moments along with the traditional 'goodbye'.
This world will be shutting down in 1 minute. Please log out.
Malee Xv: "For the Quest is achieved, and now all is over. I am glad you are here with me. Here at the end of all things,", Frodo Baggins"
This world is shutting down NOW! Log out!
Ctf: so long and thx fer all the FISH!
Aken-Lotus: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"
A short history of the Asheron's Call franchise and some thoughts about the future of MMOGs follows.
In 1999, there were relatively few 3D MMOGs on the market. If it was an MMOG, it was making money. It should've come as no surprise that every game developer in the business suddenly began working on MMOGs. However, making a MMOG is not cheap. I should know. I've seen the numbers both for Diablo II and World of Warcraft. Asheron's Call was an early entry to the MMOG market by Turbine. Microsoft, however owned all the publishing rights to Asheron's Call, while Turbine owned the IP. Asheron's Call 2 then, can be seen as an attempt by Turbine and Microsoft to capitalize on the MMOG market with newer flashier graphics in order to compete with the upgraded graphics of EverQuest and then recently released Dark Ages of Camelot.
What every game developer has failed to grasp thus far (with the exception of EA, who have killed and restarted the Ultima Online 2 project more times than I can count) is that in the MMOG world, the sequels never do as well as the original game. There are lots of reasons for this, but I believe the main one is time investment. Players make friends in this online world, acquire virtual property, and gain experience levels; all of which requires a massive amount of time. It seems that after investing that much time, to begin from the bottom all over again alone isn't worth it for a lot of people, so they stay in the old world, rather than moving onto the new game, despite whatever improvements might be awaiting them, it's not the same.
AC2 released with relatively little fanfare. In spite of the barrage of MMOGs hitting the marketplace in 2002, AC2 made no move to announce their arrival, expecting that players from the first game would simply transition over. While I don't have any numbers to support this, I expect only a minor percentage switched over to the new game, while others merely remained in the old game, and others quit to try any of the other myriad of MMOGs being released at the time. Fact of the matter is, AC1 is still up and running, as is Everquest and Ultima Online.
Gamers who leave these worlds eventually wind up playing World of Warcraft. Almost everyone I knew from the old days of EQ has moved there or called it quits from MMOGs forever.
Here's the thing that interests me: shutting down an entire MMOG is a pretty big deal, for subscriber numbers to have gotten to the point where it cost more to run the MMOG than the subscriptions were bringing in is something that I find hard to believe. At $15 a month (or whatever they were charging), they would only need 250 players or so to maintain a single server (and its related bandwidth costs). Their profits from AC2 would be low, but income coming in is positive.
Their dilemma is that the fantasy-based MMOG market has been decimated by WoW, and the outlook looks bleak. With several million subscribers, the WoW juggernaut has set new standards for a MMOG, and is crushing all competitors.
Game developers working on fantasy MMOGs should take this passing of an online world as an omen and sign of things to come. In simpler terms, abandon all hope all ye who enter there.
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