Asheron's Call

I used to play WOW for about 2 years. Really in support of it. And AC is my second choice:) Sorry to say so.

Only some one who has no inrest in a real RPG and real creativity and adventure beyond the confinds of climbless hills  can say WoW is better. I am sorry WoW is a cookie cutter nothing more and it can never be any more simply for the fact that it is limited in every way .  Be it that it may look more up-to-date then AC is about the only reason AC is not more on the list of popularity... but look at the game ranks AC is still high ... higher then most at its age! the truth of the matter is the game speaks for its self  its on freedom of choice and WoW can never do that.

What are the player archetypes of these types of games?  Explorer, Socializer, Powerleveler... I forget.  Anyway, I'm an explorer.  Thats the thing that would draw me to a MMORPG.  AC1 is the only MMORPG world you can explore.  Everything else is so linear and sectioned off.  It feels like a series of rooms.  Really big rooms, but rooms none the less.  These are not worlds.

In AC1 you could run off in any direction and see what was out there.  It becomes too difficult for your level to continue exploring due to the difficulty of the creature spawns, not because of mountain walls or whatever.  And if you were careful you could still continue on, picking fights carefully or avoiding conflict all together.  It would really get your adrenaline pumping.  And the payoff was coming across a beautiful sight, or finding some random tomb hidden out there and working your way through it, hoping to find some interesting treasure.

AC2 threw all of this out.  It was a series of rooms masquerading as a world.  LOTRO is the same, and instead of having the unique lore and creatures of AC, it has all that elves and dwarves bullcrap we've experienced a billion times before.  Tolkien took a bunch of ancient mythical creatures and released stories set in a world with these creatures OVER 50 YEARS AGO.  Time to move on don't ya think?  I have no interest in exploring Tolkien's world.  AC1 was interesting.  Hoary Mattekars?  Ash Gromnies?  Hmm interesting.

The only other game that had a world that interested me at the same level was Morrowind.  It had elves and orcs unfortunately, but much of it was so alien and unique.  So interesting.  And  free form.  Then they make Oblivion which seems more typical fantasy.  Blah.  Boring.

Turbine and Bethsoft disappoint me.  :(

Eve Online at least lets you build your character how you want, just like AC1.  There isn't much to explore in that game though.  If only I could land my Rifter on some nasty swamp planet in Amarr space, and explore and pillage ruins for precious artifacts, then sneak past Amarr patrols and sell them on the market.  Or turn on manual flight controls and carefully pilot my Rifter through a giant asteroid with more holes than swiss cheese, clearing out its tunnels of nasty space worms that have been gobbling up the nearby belt and terrorizing miners.

Wish I owned my own game dev company. 

Originally posted by Burtzum

What are the player archetypes of these types of games?  Explorer, Socializer, Powerleveler... I forget.  Anyway, I'm an explorer.  Thats the thing that would draw me to a MMORPG.  AC1 is the only MMORPG world you can explore.  Everything else is so linear and sectioned off.  It feels like a series of rooms.  Really big rooms, but rooms none the less.  These are not worlds.

In AC1 you could run off in any direction and see what was out there.  It becomes too difficult for your level to continue exploring due to the difficulty of the creature spawns, not because of mountain walls or whatever.  And if you were careful you could still continue on, picking fights carefully or avoiding conflict all together.  It would really get your adrenaline pumping.  And the payoff was coming across a beautiful sight, or finding some random tomb hidden out there and working your way through it, hoping to find some interesting treasure.

AC2 threw all of this out.  It was a series of rooms masquerading as a world.  LOTRO is the same, and instead of having the unique lore and creatures of AC, it has all that elves and dwarves bullcrap we've experienced a billion times before.  Tolkien took a bunch of ancient mythical creatures and released stories set in a world with these creatures OVER 50 YEARS AGO.  Time to move on don't ya think?  I have no interest in exploring Tolkien's world.  AC1 was interesting.  Hoary Mattekars?  Ash Gromnies?  Hmm interesting.

The only other game that had a world that interested me at the same level was Morrowind.  It had elves and orcs unfortunately, but much of it was so alien and unique.  So interesting.  And  free form.  Then they make Oblivion which seems more typical fantasy.  Blah.  Boring.

Turbine and Bethsoft disappoint me.  :(

Eve Online at least lets you build your character how you want, just like AC1.  There isn't much to explore in that game though.  If only I could land my Rifter on some nasty swamp planet in Amarr space, and explore and pillage ruins for precious artifacts, then sneak past Amarr patrols and sell them on the market.  Or turn on manual flight controls and carefully pilot my Rifter through a giant asteroid with more holes than swiss cheese, clearing out its tunnels of nasty space worms that have been gobbling up the nearby belt and terrorizing miners.

Wish I owned my own game dev company. 

Wow did you nail it on the head Burtzum, couldn't agree more.  I remember when AC first came out I hit level 20 and thought I was pretty tough stuff with no magic just a pure fighter.  I decided one day to go for a run up north, I wanted to visit every little black dot on the map, just to see what was there.  It took me like 3 hours just to run around to them all, I saw creatures I never saw before, ran from creatures that I should have died to, and looted some chests in some ruins that I had found just for fun.

I don't know why more people didn't embrace the AC style of game but to me it is still by far the best mmo out there.  The PVP is still one of, if not the, best in all of MMORPG history.  The game although dated had something for everyone, before the Marketplace and the bots, and the simple magic system that it has turned out to be now.  It had a vast world that you could explore just for fun at any level, but only if you were really careful, no barriers between areas, the only barrier was portal space which took you to a dungeon where there could be 50 more people in or just yourself.  If you wanted you could stand around the lifestone in one of the major centers and sell your wares or pull the white bunny of doom to the lifestone and watch it kill everyone there.

Man the good old days, if I had the ability(the money) I would buy up the rights to AC1 and AC2 and the game engines, first use the AC2 engine and build what I would call it AC1.5.  It would be AC1 but with the original systems in tact.  No easy magic, there are reasons you should not see 100 mages, because it is a tough life.  Make some minor changes to the game, and maybe incorporate a few new attack systems, like the combo's from Cabal.  Either way get rid of all the BOTS and Macros out there and just have a good old fashioned sandbox style mmorpg.  Oh and remove that stupid market place, but create an auction house.  Either way I think the game would take off, because you would have the grind for the hard core players, and the exploration for all the regular players.

I hope Turbine's ultra secret game in production is something like this but I think if they release another AC game it will tank just as quick as AC2 did.  The soul of AC just is not there anymore.

Originally posted by Vashed

Only some one who has no inrest in a real RPG and real creativity and adventure beyond the confinds of climbless hills  can say WoW is better. I am sorry WoW is a cookie cutter nothing more and it can never be any more simply for the fact that it is limited in every way .  Be it that it may look more up-to-date then AC is about the only reason AC is not more on the list of popularity... but look at the game ranks AC is still high ... higher then most at its age! the truth of the matter is the game speaks for its self  its on freedom of choice and WoW can never do that.

I'll just say.. if you enjoyed AC1 I'm glad for you.  Anyone who enjoys a game (even) if I don't.. I'm glad they had fun somewhere.

If I was going to pick any existing MMO for someone to "clone" AC1 would be close to the bottom of that list.

That's just my personal opinion.

When you start talking about "freedom of choice" I think of the first two years of UO... not any part of AC1...(to give an example).

 Wow i have not seen an Astral Dragons Guildie in a Long time.  one of the reasons i played Ac so long was because of our guild the astral dragons.  the community was the best i have ever experanced in any game.  I miss that family feeling.  I Think the game mechanics helped make guilds in AC 100's of times better then they are in any other games.  In wow its just a group of people i don't know.  In ac they were like actual friends and some even family.  we were there for eachother in game and out.

I miss you guys!!

Warzer/Technomage Old member of Astral Dragons

Originally posted by WiccanCircle

Actually, for those that have posted above saying that they might try AC... don't do it now

It is dead. 

It was absolutely the greatest game to have been made, but it was outdated graphically and such by about 2001.  I played in post launch 99 up through about a year or so later.  I came back when Winter's Ebb opened hoping that the XP chains and garbage would be left behind on the older servers.  For the most part it was and WE was a fabulous place to play for another year.  (I was in the Astral Dragons, a really fun group and I miss that type of play these days)

Turbine made a great game... and then did NOTHING with it.  The idiots at that company didn't and still don't know what they had.  AC was different and better than the only other real MMORPG game out at the time - EQ.  However, EQ had marketing and advertizing and Turbine stunk at the concept of actually taking a product to market and pleasing its customer.  Guess what?  Though turbine fell in to making a great game, we are paying the price for Tubrine being a crappy company in every other way to this very day.

The people that were introduced to MMORPGs through EQ have a much different taste than AC players.  WoW and all the rest of the games are based on the restrcitive slot-car playstyle of EQ.  Everyone talks about WoW, but WoW isn't anything new, it is just a dumb EQ clone.

We may never truely recover from the path that the MMOs are now on.  Turbine had the chance, but blew it.  The mistakes of Turbine not killing the cheater-add-on programs, killing the macroing and killing the XP chains and the fact that they didn't even market the game to the world is exactly why we have the crap-tastic computer games today.

Had AC been the standard instead of EQ, MMOs today would be lightyears ahead of where they are now.  And worse... it is likely too late because they are now so far down the EverCrap/World of Worthless path, that gamers are not going to come back to sandbox games.

Freedom in MMOs died with AC.  It likely will never be seen again.

QFT - this couldn't have been said better.  :(

Originally posted by Burtzum 

In AC1 you could run off in any direction and see what was out there.  It becomes too difficult for your level to continue exploring due to the difficulty of the creature spawns, not because of mountain walls or whatever.  And if you were careful you could still continue on, picking fights carefully or avoiding conflict all together.  It would really get your adrenaline pumping.  And the payoff was coming across a beautiful sight, or finding some random tomb hidden out there and working your way through it, hoping to find some interesting treasure.

I can dream can't I.