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.
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Thursday, December 17, 2015
The Lonely Mage
Day 1
I am The Lonely Mage. I was created as a Battlemage in Asheron's Call. I will accept buffs from Holtburg and will use Rydia for Salvaging and Imbuing, but I will go my own way in this world.
I went through, doing the usual tasks and quests to get a character started in AC.
At the end of my first day's journey, I attained lavel 28 and now had to go visit some Olthoi.
I am The Lonely Mage. I was created as a Battlemage in Asheron's Call. I will accept buffs from Holtburg and will use Rydia for Salvaging and Imbuing, but I will go my own way in this world.
I went through, doing the usual tasks and quests to get a character started in AC.
At the end of my first day's journey, I attained lavel 28 and now had to go visit some Olthoi.
Trann Blademaster - A new beginning
My name is Trann Blademaster. I started life today on a world called Leafcull in a town called Sanamar.
I intend to be a heavy weapons master and lay waste all over Dereath with whatever weapons I come across.
Once I entered the world and met with a few characters, got acquainted with the ways of the world and picked up some armor, I was ready to see what awaited me.
The first dungeon I ventured into was the Penguin Cave. It appeared to be full of these little penguins with a very short attention span. I ran to the end of the dungeon and grabbed a necklace out of a chest that a gentleman had lost in town. I returned to town and presented it to him and received a nice reward for my efforts.
I then talked to a lady nearby that indicated that a Beacon needed to be replaced at the top of some ramps. I grabbed it and headed through the portal. These ramps were occupied by Phytos Wasps. They were not happy to see me. I slashed my way through them and a couple of Water Golems and attached the replacement Beacon. Again, I received a nice reward.
Now it was time to hit Holtburg for a couple of items. I needed to get myself buffed up and go into the Drudge Dungeon. It seems that the Drudges had stolen a bunch of sacks of seed from a farmer and he wanted them back. He also wanted the head of the Dungeon as a trophy. I headed into the dungeon and retrieved 3 sacks of grain and the head of the boss and gave them to the Farmer for a nice reward.
I intend to be a heavy weapons master and lay waste all over Dereath with whatever weapons I come across.
Once I entered the world and met with a few characters, got acquainted with the ways of the world and picked up some armor, I was ready to see what awaited me.
The first dungeon I ventured into was the Penguin Cave. It appeared to be full of these little penguins with a very short attention span. I ran to the end of the dungeon and grabbed a necklace out of a chest that a gentleman had lost in town. I returned to town and presented it to him and received a nice reward for my efforts.
I then talked to a lady nearby that indicated that a Beacon needed to be replaced at the top of some ramps. I grabbed it and headed through the portal. These ramps were occupied by Phytos Wasps. They were not happy to see me. I slashed my way through them and a couple of Water Golems and attached the replacement Beacon. Again, I received a nice reward.
Now it was time to hit Holtburg for a couple of items. I needed to get myself buffed up and go into the Drudge Dungeon. It seems that the Drudges had stolen a bunch of sacks of seed from a farmer and he wanted them back. He also wanted the head of the Dungeon as a trophy. I headed into the dungeon and retrieved 3 sacks of grain and the head of the boss and gave them to the Farmer for a nice reward.
A year has gone by
I posted in February that the players had started to get restless.
That restlessness continues. Still no word from Turbine.
Oh well, they are the ones in control. When it is ready, it will be ready.
In the meantime, I have been testing out theories on how to deal with characters when Decal is not part of the scene. I have built sone characters that do not use buffs and live or die predicated upon the armor they have or can obtain.
I am still experimenting but it seems like a War Mage with Void instead of War is a good starting character. A Bowyer with an xbow is also a good vassal character. I do drop the Finesse Weapon and Shield from the resulting character.
Creating the 2 characters at the same time and swearing to the Void Mage works very well. I want to keep them within 5 levels in order to maximize the XP passup between them.
That seems to work pretty well. I can push the Mage with the xbow. The xbow has MD to help stay alive. The mage can kill fast
I have no qualms against using the Fac Hub. It is part of the game now. I just try to avoid anything Decal related. It is not part of my game.
As there are no patches and nothing is changing from one month to another, it is a bit difficult to write about new stuff. .
That restlessness continues. Still no word from Turbine.
Oh well, they are the ones in control. When it is ready, it will be ready.
In the meantime, I have been testing out theories on how to deal with characters when Decal is not part of the scene. I have built sone characters that do not use buffs and live or die predicated upon the armor they have or can obtain.
I am still experimenting but it seems like a War Mage with Void instead of War is a good starting character. A Bowyer with an xbow is also a good vassal character. I do drop the Finesse Weapon and Shield from the resulting character.
Creating the 2 characters at the same time and swearing to the Void Mage works very well. I want to keep them within 5 levels in order to maximize the XP passup between them.
That seems to work pretty well. I can push the Mage with the xbow. The xbow has MD to help stay alive. The mage can kill fast
I have no qualms against using the Fac Hub. It is part of the game now. I just try to avoid anything Decal related. It is not part of my game.
As there are no patches and nothing is changing from one month to another, it is a bit difficult to write about new stuff. .
Long Day of Maint
Well, all of the Turbine games have been down since 3AM. Not sure when they will return. This has something to do with improving the servers or operating systems.
We got an added bonus this afternoon. Sev left some forum info about the testing of he player servers and it was positive. A minor glitch but there is hope.
I saw some forum info about a classic group of players forming on Frostfell. I think I will start up a character or 2 and I may join them. No buffbots, no special equipment. More like when we first started.
I think I will start our with a war mage and a 2 hander. The 2 hander can help push the mage and they are very good against the right critters.
We got an added bonus this afternoon. Sev left some forum info about the testing of he player servers and it was positive. A minor glitch but there is hope.
I saw some forum info about a classic group of players forming on Frostfell. I think I will start up a character or 2 and I may join them. No buffbots, no special equipment. More like when we first started.
I think I will start our with a war mage and a 2 hander. The 2 hander can help push the mage and they are very good against the right critters.
AC is being destroyed
I was really hoping that I would never have to write this post.
The facts of the matter is that Asheron's Call is slowly being destroyed. It is dying from a multitude of reasons. There are plenty of reasons causing its demise.
1. WB Apathy. Since the takeover of Turbine, WB has only been concerned with the $$$$ coming into its coffers.
2. Turbine Apathy. No one is left at Turbine that will stand up to management and get at least a small amount of support. The best that is received is a reboot of the servers upon occasion.
3. Stupid and Willful Players. These fools used to exist mainly on Darktide. As long as they left the normal worlds alone, they were tolerated. It was a pain to other Darktide players, but such was that world and they had the ability to self police.
4. Broken Promise. Coming up on 2 years ago, Turbine announced that they would release the compiled code, databases and instructions to the gaming community so the players could create private servers. This is a feature that we are still waiting on. With all of the bugs, duping, landblock crashing that currently exists in AC, we need the ability to fix these issues, not just police against them. It is time that the source code is also released. After 15 years, whatever special functions exist in AC's source code, is meaningless to newly created games.
Currently, the player community is voicing its problems with extreme lag on several worlds. This lag appears to be created by the above fools trying to dup items and crash landblocks. They want to create items that they can then sell to other idiots for real money. They do not care about what this does to the world and its availability to be used for its intended gaming.
Turbine no longer is providing resources to observe, ban and delete these fools. They continue to dup and destroy the game with impunity.
This is really a final plea for WB and Turbine to release the source cone, exe code, and whatever instructions that they may have to allow private individuals to create a private server and run the game as they see fit.
I know I wanted to play AC until the servers shut down, however, due to the erratic gameplay, I find myself avoiding entering the worlds.
One small item that WB needs to keep in mind is that their handling of AC reflects on the quality of WB as a trusted organization. I, for one, will find it hard to send money WB's way due to the way they treat their gamers and games. Like many that left Sony is disgust in the past over their poor handling of gamers and games, I no longer spent my funds on anything Sony.
The facts of the matter is that Asheron's Call is slowly being destroyed. It is dying from a multitude of reasons. There are plenty of reasons causing its demise.
1. WB Apathy. Since the takeover of Turbine, WB has only been concerned with the $$$$ coming into its coffers.
2. Turbine Apathy. No one is left at Turbine that will stand up to management and get at least a small amount of support. The best that is received is a reboot of the servers upon occasion.
3. Stupid and Willful Players. These fools used to exist mainly on Darktide. As long as they left the normal worlds alone, they were tolerated. It was a pain to other Darktide players, but such was that world and they had the ability to self police.
4. Broken Promise. Coming up on 2 years ago, Turbine announced that they would release the compiled code, databases and instructions to the gaming community so the players could create private servers. This is a feature that we are still waiting on. With all of the bugs, duping, landblock crashing that currently exists in AC, we need the ability to fix these issues, not just police against them. It is time that the source code is also released. After 15 years, whatever special functions exist in AC's source code, is meaningless to newly created games.
Currently, the player community is voicing its problems with extreme lag on several worlds. This lag appears to be created by the above fools trying to dup items and crash landblocks. They want to create items that they can then sell to other idiots for real money. They do not care about what this does to the world and its availability to be used for its intended gaming.
Turbine no longer is providing resources to observe, ban and delete these fools. They continue to dup and destroy the game with impunity.
This is really a final plea for WB and Turbine to release the source cone, exe code, and whatever instructions that they may have to allow private individuals to create a private server and run the game as they see fit.
I know I wanted to play AC until the servers shut down, however, due to the erratic gameplay, I find myself avoiding entering the worlds.
One small item that WB needs to keep in mind is that their handling of AC reflects on the quality of WB as a trusted organization. I, for one, will find it hard to send money WB's way due to the way they treat their gamers and games. Like many that left Sony is disgust in the past over their poor handling of gamers and games, I no longer spent my funds on anything Sony.
Friday, August 21, 2015
Darktide is acting like Darktide
Once again, Darktide is down for an undetermined amount of time.
First, we had them dropping stipend rewards on the ground and then picking them up and getting to 275 in a short time. This issue boiled over onto other worlds and made Turbine address the issue. It was causing the worlds to crash.
Now we have them duping anything and everything in order to sell the special items for real cash.
Lots of Paragon weapons, special Orbs and whatnot. They then sell these items to other fools for real money.
Somehow, I am having a difficult time understanding which one is the bigger tool.The person crashing the world and duping or the tool that pays real money for a virtual item. Just another indicator of how stupid the world is getting.
Unfortunately, some of this is appearing on the other worlds and causing them to also crash. That is my biggest concern. Too many tools trying too many stupid things and causing Turbine and WB to just say - too hell with private servers. Only time will tell.
In any event, I am still playing and trying out various characters to see what I can do should private servers come to pass. I now have 14 accounts and characters on most worlds. It is really starting to become an administrative nightmare. What armor and weapons are on what mules??
I did kind of like Tings and its database, however, it is not real stable and doesn't quite do the trick. VT is a bit light also.
Several players are talking about 9 man fellows all in their accounts. That does sound like an awesome setup but I expect it takes quite a bit of horsepower.
I may geve a 4-5 person fellow a try. With all mages, they would clean house.
First, we had them dropping stipend rewards on the ground and then picking them up and getting to 275 in a short time. This issue boiled over onto other worlds and made Turbine address the issue. It was causing the worlds to crash.
Now we have them duping anything and everything in order to sell the special items for real cash.
Lots of Paragon weapons, special Orbs and whatnot. They then sell these items to other fools for real money.
Somehow, I am having a difficult time understanding which one is the bigger tool.The person crashing the world and duping or the tool that pays real money for a virtual item. Just another indicator of how stupid the world is getting.
Unfortunately, some of this is appearing on the other worlds and causing them to also crash. That is my biggest concern. Too many tools trying too many stupid things and causing Turbine and WB to just say - too hell with private servers. Only time will tell.
In any event, I am still playing and trying out various characters to see what I can do should private servers come to pass. I now have 14 accounts and characters on most worlds. It is really starting to become an administrative nightmare. What armor and weapons are on what mules??
I did kind of like Tings and its database, however, it is not real stable and doesn't quite do the trick. VT is a bit light also.
Several players are talking about 9 man fellows all in their accounts. That does sound like an awesome setup but I expect it takes quite a bit of horsepower.
I may geve a 4-5 person fellow a try. With all mages, they would clean house.
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