Breaking News.
The Evil Company, Warner Brothers, struck again at the negative posts they received. Yesterday when I looked, they were over 97,000 1 star negative reviews and I expect it went higher.
I just looked a few minutes ago and the Comments and Discussions for Warner Brothers is gone.
Way to go for a company to expect that deleting posts will just make them vanish. I believe that is known as the Ostrich Principle.
Like so many of the snowflakes these days, opinions are only worthwhile if the opinion is one you agree with.
Now the risk is being elevated with the communications cut off.
Friday, September 22, 2017
Thursday, September 14, 2017
A Company that cannot be trusted with an MMO Game
I go back a long way with the game of Asheron's Call. As my son and son-in-law both started playing the game in November 2000. I was convinced to give it a try in December 2000. I was hooked as soon as I entered to world. The monthly event that month was the one where the rain came down red and the rivers ran red.
I persevered through all of the following months and years that Asheron's Call was alive. I went through the great patches, the poor patches on the monthly cycle. I saw Microsoft involvement and the split from Microsoft and Turbine going it alone. I even tried Asheron's Call 2 even though it was not a sequel to Asheron's Call.
Then along came the deep pocket company to buy Turbine and eliminate its tight budgets. For a while, this new marriage seemed to be solid. It even looked OK when Turbine announced that development was ending and everyone sould continue to play without updates or monthly charges. As a bonus, Turbine would deliver the capability for us to have Private Servers.
OK, this was something we could live with. We understoon that it might take months to repackage the system into something presentable. After 6 months, players started to question if this would happen. We were told it was in development and would arrive.
Almost 2 years after this change, the bombshell occurred. We were told that the game was shutting down in 2 months and there would be no private server solution. Along with this stab in the back, Turbine was no longer behing Asheron's Call and they moved LOTRO and DDO to a new company called Standing Stone Games. This included the developers. Turbine was still with the company, however, their focus would be phone games.
Come noon on February 28, 2017, the Asheron's Call servers were shut down, the forums were taken offline, and the game ceased to exist.
With this situation, several very talented players started to work on a new server replacement for the missing system. There has been diligent effort put forth to get a playable Asheron's Call operational. It turned out that the necessary work to get a viable server environment was not that difficult. It appears that it was just another lie perpetuated by the big company.
OK, big companies lie all of the time. We could continue to develop our small private servers and at least play this excellent game for a long time.
Well, the hammer came down from the big company around September 7, 2017. Only the principals know the details while the players feel the impact. The primary developer for PhatAC suddenly shut down all of the Private Servers and indicated that he would explain what happened when he could. This may be next week or 10 years from now.
For a game that has been in existence for almost 20 years, this is a mean, underhanded blow to a whole generation of MMO Gamers and aids in destroying our faith in the life of a great game. No MMO that has come along since Asheron's Call has been built with the same structure and difficulty.
All we can hope for is that the big company will make some sort of move to either bring back Asheron's Call or allow the player community the ability to do it themselves.
I persevered through all of the following months and years that Asheron's Call was alive. I went through the great patches, the poor patches on the monthly cycle. I saw Microsoft involvement and the split from Microsoft and Turbine going it alone. I even tried Asheron's Call 2 even though it was not a sequel to Asheron's Call.
Then along came the deep pocket company to buy Turbine and eliminate its tight budgets. For a while, this new marriage seemed to be solid. It even looked OK when Turbine announced that development was ending and everyone sould continue to play without updates or monthly charges. As a bonus, Turbine would deliver the capability for us to have Private Servers.
OK, this was something we could live with. We understoon that it might take months to repackage the system into something presentable. After 6 months, players started to question if this would happen. We were told it was in development and would arrive.
Almost 2 years after this change, the bombshell occurred. We were told that the game was shutting down in 2 months and there would be no private server solution. Along with this stab in the back, Turbine was no longer behing Asheron's Call and they moved LOTRO and DDO to a new company called Standing Stone Games. This included the developers. Turbine was still with the company, however, their focus would be phone games.
Come noon on February 28, 2017, the Asheron's Call servers were shut down, the forums were taken offline, and the game ceased to exist.
With this situation, several very talented players started to work on a new server replacement for the missing system. There has been diligent effort put forth to get a playable Asheron's Call operational. It turned out that the necessary work to get a viable server environment was not that difficult. It appears that it was just another lie perpetuated by the big company.
OK, big companies lie all of the time. We could continue to develop our small private servers and at least play this excellent game for a long time.
Well, the hammer came down from the big company around September 7, 2017. Only the principals know the details while the players feel the impact. The primary developer for PhatAC suddenly shut down all of the Private Servers and indicated that he would explain what happened when he could. This may be next week or 10 years from now.
For a game that has been in existence for almost 20 years, this is a mean, underhanded blow to a whole generation of MMO Gamers and aids in destroying our faith in the life of a great game. No MMO that has come along since Asheron's Call has been built with the same structure and difficulty.
All we can hope for is that the big company will make some sort of move to either bring back Asheron's Call or allow the player community the ability to do it themselves.
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
The end of the AC/AC2 World
Well, I have finally had some time to adjust to the pre christmas announcement from Turbine/WB.
For the few people that do not know about this announcement, here are the main points.
1. Standing Stone Games Company was created.
2. Developers from LOTRO and DDO were laid off from Turbine.
3. Developers that were laid off were hired by SSG.
4. AC and AC2 MMOs are still under the control of Turbine.
5. Turbine is now focused on phone games and not MMOs.
6. It was announced that AC/AC2 would shut down on January 31, 2017.
7. There are no private servers.
This hit like a bombshell. Everyone has been waiting for almost 3 years for Private Servers. We were told that they were coming and there were updates every so often indicating progress.
Like many others, I did not take this news well.
1. Turbine still controlled AC/AC2 however, they no longer had any AC staff.
2. SSG now controlled LOTRO and DDO. AC/AC2 was all part of those MMOs.
I presented an option to AC for maintaining the servers that was ignored.
I send Sev a private message offering some alternatives that would allow the game to be kept alive. No response yet.
The AC community is extremely upset over the situation. Where there used to be about 1200-1500 players logged on all of the AC worlds, now there are about 300-500. Many players have just left in disgust.
I, for one, plan on continuing to play until the worlds shut down.
We have no info on the reasons behind this decision. All we can do is speculate.
Maintenance costs cannot be a factor. The last time effort was spent on this was after Turbine moved the Data Center from Boston the New Jersey. That was a corporate decision.
Monthly costs for resource usage could be greatly reduced by dropping to one world.
Plain old fashioned Customer good will would be gained by keeping at least 1 world open. While I love AC, I also have 3 lifetime accounts on LOTRO and 2 Accounts on DDO.
At least my blog isn't going anywhere.
For the few people that do not know about this announcement, here are the main points.
1. Standing Stone Games Company was created.
2. Developers from LOTRO and DDO were laid off from Turbine.
3. Developers that were laid off were hired by SSG.
4. AC and AC2 MMOs are still under the control of Turbine.
5. Turbine is now focused on phone games and not MMOs.
6. It was announced that AC/AC2 would shut down on January 31, 2017.
7. There are no private servers.
This hit like a bombshell. Everyone has been waiting for almost 3 years for Private Servers. We were told that they were coming and there were updates every so often indicating progress.
Like many others, I did not take this news well.
1. Turbine still controlled AC/AC2 however, they no longer had any AC staff.
2. SSG now controlled LOTRO and DDO. AC/AC2 was all part of those MMOs.
I presented an option to AC for maintaining the servers that was ignored.
I send Sev a private message offering some alternatives that would allow the game to be kept alive. No response yet.
The AC community is extremely upset over the situation. Where there used to be about 1200-1500 players logged on all of the AC worlds, now there are about 300-500. Many players have just left in disgust.
I, for one, plan on continuing to play until the worlds shut down.
We have no info on the reasons behind this decision. All we can do is speculate.
Maintenance costs cannot be a factor. The last time effort was spent on this was after Turbine moved the Data Center from Boston the New Jersey. That was a corporate decision.
Monthly costs for resource usage could be greatly reduced by dropping to one world.
Plain old fashioned Customer good will would be gained by keeping at least 1 world open. While I love AC, I also have 3 lifetime accounts on LOTRO and 2 Accounts on DDO.
At least my blog isn't going anywhere.
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