OK, for the better part of the last 3 days of last week AC2 was down while the Developers worked on nailing down the stability bugs that had infected the game.
The players couldn't play. Not a big deal as IT IS BETA!!!. This is a status that the gimme players just cannot get their grubby little hands around. This is why it is a Beta. 7 years on the shelf while operating systems and hardware change and improve around the application. The entire world of Servers exist today that were only being dreamed about 7 years ago.
Turbine did bring up the game but limited the number of active connections at startup. Of course that created a whole new set of whining as people tried to log in and were unsuccessful. When I hit that wall, I just went and played some AC and watched a little TV and read a book. No sense in sitting in front of the computer and trying for hours on end to get in.
Saturday morning came and at 4:30AM there was no issue with getting into the game. I enjoyed it for some time and had to put up with some crashed. I had some errands to run and shut down for most of the morning. Saturday afternoon I got back in and completed the quests to get my little Drudge, Nonackk, his crafting. He still needs a lot of work on getting his skills up but at least now he is level 19 and is mean with a nail in a board.
Early Sunday morning I got back into the game. I worked with Sledgebow on getting his level up some. I got involved in a BloodShreth Incursion and we ran all over the place wiping out everything. I finally helped take down the 10th Shreth to complete the quest, levelled to 24 and CRASHED...
By the time I got back into the game, I was back at level 23 and still needed to kill 2 shreths. The fellow was long gone and there is no way I can take out a Blood Shreth solo. My timer ran out and now I have to wait 6 days to do it again. Oh well, there are plenty of other quests to complete.
I did solo the Slavetakers Head. I had to complete the Ranger Quests to get set up for the Illuminated Manuscript Quest. I am now well into Level 24.
I do have to rant for a few seconds. When Turbine opened up AC2 for the Beta they were very clear. IF YOU HAVE AN AC ACCOUNT, YOU ARE INVITED TO THE AC2 BETA. This is not a difficult concept. I have 2 active AC accounts, so I downloaded the AC2 Client and started playing. There are many people that wanted to play AC2. They were not committed to AC. They went and downloaded AC and set up an account in AC. This made them now eligible to partake of the AC2 BETA. They downloaded AC2 and then started to play. Still no problem. As AC2 is a BETA, it goes up and down at erratic times. The number of concurrent players are limited. There is only 1 world. There is no PVP or KVK play. There are some issues that were not resolved after the expansion 7.5 years ago. It still needs polish.
If you go to the forums, the amount and intensity of the whining is unbelieveable. These players keep insisting that they paid for AC2 and they are not getting the service they demand. They want the whole game changed to meet their vision. They want things dumbed down to match WOW.
Right now, the Developers want the game to run smooth. Crashes are top on their priority list to resolve. The world must be stable. There should not be any rollbacks. All the other desires are just eye candy right now. The demand to get the Hero functions enabled are extremely asinine. If you have level 45 players, great. Now level up another character of another race and class and try them out. No one cares if you get to 150 first.
I expect that the Priorities run something like this:
1. Get the world stable - no crashes and no need to reboot every few hours.
2. Get a second world operational - make sure that multiple worlds function well.
3. Put together a list of broken quests and functions and prioritize them.
4. Fix Number 3.
5. Now we can look at exiting BETA. Determine the model used by the game.
6. Build a list of enhancements and targets and lay out the project list.
I do not know what the future holds for AC2. Heck, last week I got a total shock at work for what the future holds there. Nothing I would have guessed. The people involved in AC and AC2 are very talented and committed to the future of these Franchises and I evpect only good things in the future.
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