Any... uh... AC2 nostalgists out there...?

[Scold]

Turbine is relaunching the game because who-the-fuck-knows.

Download the client here, log in with any active AC1 account. New server starting from scratch.

http://ac.turbine.com/clientdl/ac2/AC2Install.zip

Edit: article link.

[HaemishM]

What the... I don't even... WHY?

[Arthur_Parker]

The game itself was great, pvp on Darktide handled a lot better than WAR with lots of players on the screen.  But the loot was crap, there was very little content, the mobs were really dumb and there was no penalty for dying.  Instead of fixing any of that they tried to super balance the few fun classes to be as unfun as the others.

If they can generate content quickly now with tools from LOTRO, they might make some money out of this.

[Ingmar]

You have to be subbed to AC1 to use it too, which limits the audience a bit I imagine.

[Rasix]

The lag, man, the lag.  AC2 had the worst rubberband lag.  I'm not sure how Turbine perfected the most annoying lag ever, but they did.  And before people bitch about TSW's chat, Turbine nailed the shitty, unreliable chat server.

Darktide was interesting.  Like 95% of the people leveled rapidly with exploits (including me).  Either you were standing on rocks slowly killing mobs that could 2 shot you, or you sitting two zones away waiting for group mates to finish a dungeon that would instantly give you like 15 levels.  God, it was absurd.  If you tried to level legitimately, it was one of the worst experiences  you can imagine.  Luckily, both classes I picked were gimps so I spent long periods of time unskilling and reskilling into something that could actually hurt others.

Still, I think I killed some of you there.  If I didn't Nija or LC did.  

edit: I was pretty bad, so it likely wasn't me.  Still, the group I was with had a decent early showing before we realized how bad the game was.  I think I managed to sell my account for an OK amount.  However, my memory is a bit foggy.

[Arthur_Parker]

There was a quest to level you from 1 to about level 14, you only needed to join a group and other people could complete the quest and you got the reward without even going.  I thought that was a pretty good idea but they fixed it.  The other dungeon, I forget the name could level you from level 3 to level 41 but you had to go there.

Memory is hazy too but I only remember bad lag during beta when archers could fire their bows like an Uzi, the chat servers were the new ones that Microsoft designed, the old basic chat worked ok, then the new ones went in and it was broken for weeks.

[Paelos]

Scold's last two threads have made me chuckle.

[Nija]

This is the game with the least amount of things to do at max level. Hell, 15 levels before maxed level.

That said the PVP was pretty fun/funny. Run casting, friendly fire, amazingly overpowered builds, and the ability to dodge projectiles. I have screenshots (videos were rare back then) of killing mulitple level 40+ people when I had a character in the 20s.

No idea why they are bringing it back and even less of an idea why they are making you have an active AC1 subscription. I'd download it and play a little if it was free. That's it.

[Hawkbit]

Just ;last week I was just looking at the status of the emu server that some group has been trying to build.  I think I'm going to throw money at this.  I really liked AC2, but the lack of the promised monthly content will be a problem.  That was one of the awesome parts to it.

[Nevermore]

Scold's last two threads have made me chuckle.

He must be a time traveler from 2004 or something.

[Numtini]

It was a terrible game, plain and simple, even when it was running smooth and the chat server was up. Just a terrible awful game.

I would love for there to be something to build enthusiasm for an AC 3 because I love Dereth, but AC2 just deserved to die.

[Scold]

No idea why they are bringing it back and even less of an idea why they are making you have an active AC1 subscription.

They keep tossing around the term 'beta' -- my guess is that whatever they're doing next with it does not involve AC1, but that AC1's playerbase is the best open testing pool they'll get for this until it's ready for the next step.

[UnSub]

I wonder if Turbine is really in such bad shape that they are searching down the back of the couch to find rent money. Because relaunching AC2 seems like nothing more than a quick grab at some nostalgia money.

[Stormwaltz]

And before people bitch about TSW's chat, Turbine nailed the shitty, unreliable chat server.

Credit where it's due: that was GUN, Microsoft's chat server, which someone, somewhere in the org, was coding for Mythica. They required Turbine to use it. Turbine would forward bugs on the chat to MS, and they'd blackhole to god knows where. When they were permitted to strip out and replace GUN, the chat was fixed for good the very next patch.

As for why, I suppose because it's cheap. I can't think of another reason to indulge in nostalgia. If they bundle it as an all-AC pass, maybe subscriptions will go up a bit. Or decay more slowly.

[Falconeer]

Meh. Someone bring back Shadowbane. (And don't start with sb.exe, that had been fixed for years)

[Soukyan]

Hi. I am one of two people here who loved playing AC2. So, yay! Happy holidays, indeed.

I, too, suspect it is being brought back into beta to either gauge interest in the net iteration of Dereth's story, boost/mitigate AC1 subscriptions, or gauge interest in making it a F2P offering in their portfolio.

Regardless of their plans, I'll happily play on a beta server forever if they want to leave it up.

As for SB, I'd play it again if I had unlimited time to do nothing but game. Alas, wife/child/life prevent that from happening.

But again, HOLY COW AC2 IS BACK! WOOHOO!

Carry on...

[Scold]

This begs the question -- has anyone else seen their favored MMO resuscitated like this, after a years-long period of shutdown? Did that pre-NGE StarWars EMU ever get off the ground?

[Soukyan]

No and yes. I believe SWG emu is still up and running.

[Nonentity]

Meh. Someone bring back Shadowbane. (And don't start with sb.exe, that had been fixed for years)

I'm in.

Ubisoft isn't exactly in the MMO business these days, though.

Also, Stray Bullet Studios. Whatever happened to them?

[Venkman]

It's been long enough though, a span including two whole Windows upgrades and a bunch of hardware changes, they couldn't have just dusted off some old Perforce archive they had of this though. This required some effort. Sure not as much as a whole game, but enough they need a plan beyond free money because really, all this is right now is a money sink.

AC2 was terrible. Chat was a problerm, but not the only way. Aside from rubberbanding and derth of content, their bohemian concept of no-coins just forced the emergence of other units of exchange. And the whole world felt dead, on launch day. Iirc, that actually was the feel they were going for. But there's a difference between "dead" and "where the hell is everyone else"?

I really looked forward to it too.

Of course, I also really looked forward to Mythica. Years later we got instancing with "permanent" environmental changes. Until you re-enter the zone.

On and Darktide. God, I remember all the arguing about PvP with Darktide being held up as the mother of all why PvP is the best thing evar and everyone should love it. I can still here the echoes...

[Arthur_Parker]

It had no item drops on death and the loot table was terrible so pvp was never going to be any good as there was nothing worth fighting over.  I remember AC2 being marketed with the revolutionary idea of no npc's so you never needed that boring trip to town.  You just transmuted items to gold or whatever it was, then you couldn't do anything with that apart from use it the awful bare bones crafting system.

[Cheddar]

AMAZING.  I really enjoyed this- may check it out after I get bored of GW2.

My mind is blown- I wonder if this is part of the output in Turbine going solo.

[Phred]

Aside from rubberbanding and derth of content, their bohemian concept of no-coins just forced the emergence of other units of exchange. And the whole world felt dead, on launch day. Iirc, that actually was the feel they were going for. But there's a difference between "dead" and "where the hell is everyone else"?

I believe they said they used the engine as the base for LoTRO too so they may be able to fold all the fixes they made to LoTRO back in.

[Rake]

Had some fun times in this game, but most of that got Citan'ed out over time and once run casting got nailed out there wasn't anything left to keep me.

Some of the ideas the original Devs had were awesome.
The way the music changed as the danger levels rose added a lot to the atmosphere.
Being able to play music was nice and not as fluffy as it sounds.
The mix of different skills for one character was interesting and the ability to use XP to untrain a skill was great even though you had some weakness for a short while during the change phase, but you didn't need to roll an alt and could keep your identity.
The allegiance to another player. Gave helping a newer player some purpose as they could swear to you and grant you some XP so you help them out.
The PvP was good in a couple of flavors. Darktide style; evryone is red you can attack anyone, or not. I played this way first.
Another style was the Kingdom vs Kingdom, which was actually 3 factions. I actually think this was the best way to play the game, and for a while there was some great fun being had on Coldeve.
The Instanced Dungeons were nice for advancing the storyline and some of the group dungeons were fun even to repeat, especially when you got ambushed by the enemy.
Portal system was convenient once you had it mapped. Portal ganking was not so fun though.

Could have been a great game if the exploits that allowed a few of us to hit max level fast had been sorted before launch. And not so much nerfing of the fun out of the game once it was live.

I wonder if this is leading to a new game, or just grabbing some subs of nostalgic ex-players.

[SurfD]

The biggest thing that killed AC 2 for me was the braindead idea of launching a game full of buildings that were 99% completely cosmetic.  WTF is the point of fully modeled houses if you cant ENTER them....

[Stormwaltz]

You should have been around at the phase where Someone was saying (paraphrase), "Since there's no time to make NPCs any more interactive than they were in AC1, remove all NPCs from the design. They'll make us look bad compared to competitors."

[Margalis]

It's pretty obvious that the fiction the game was to paper over a lack of resources. A dead world that you rebuild over time - great idea when you can't have NPCs or towns!

[UnSub]

Aside from rubberbanding and derth of content, their bohemian concept of no-coins just forced the emergence of other units of exchange. And the whole world felt dead, on launch day. Iirc, that actually was the feel they were going for. But there's a difference between "dead" and "where the hell is everyone else"?

I believe they said they used the engine as the base for LoTRO too so they may be able to fold all the fixes they made to LoTRO back in.

I've seen other people say that, but I suspect that it won't be that simple. If the code base for AC2 stopped being updated in 2005, there's 7 years of changes to that engine to catch up on. That's 5 or so hardware cycles, at least 2 major OS updates and lots of little things in between. Plus you'd hope that the AC2 code was well documented, but I doubt it given how the rest of the industry operates.

And even then, it doesn't change the art and animations.

[Hawkbit]

Had to have a 'come to Jesus' with myself about this.  As much as I'd love to see it continue, I really don't have the time for these games anymore.  Ah well. 

[Hutch]

I actually played this game at launch (on a PvE server), and I lasted for about 3 (maybe 4) months. I went back and played AC1 for longer than that, after quitting AC2.

They had some neat ideas, and they kept a bunch of town names and creatures, but I didn't feel like I was playing in Dereth. I felt like I was playing in the golf course version of Dereth.

I do wish someone would steal the music system. Sitting around a lifestone and jamming was fun. That was the one unique thing about AC2 that I missed after leaving.

[Furiously]

Part of me wonders if it was one dev in his free time playing with the source code just to see if it could be done.

[Scold]

It's been long enough though, a span including two whole Windows upgrades and a bunch of hardware changes, they couldn't have just dusted off some old Perforce archive they had of this though. This required some effort. Sure not as much as a whole game, but enough they need a plan beyond free money because really, all this is right now is a money sink.

AC2 was terrible. Chat was a problerm, but not the only way. Aside from rubberbanding and derth of content, their bohemian concept of no-coins just forced the emergence of other units of exchange. And the whole world felt dead, on launch day. Iirc, that actually was the feel they were going for. But there's a difference between "dead" and "where the hell is everyone else"?

I really looked forward to it too.

Of course, I also really looked forward to Mythica. Years later we got instancing with "permanent" environmental changes. Until you re-enter the zone.

On and Darktide. God, I remember all the arguing about PvP with Darktide being held up as the mother of all why PvP is the best thing evar and everyone should love it. I can still here the echoes...

From what I recall, they added a bunch of content after launch that nobody played and then a well-reviewed expansion pack that nobody played. I'm sure the game will still suck, but the reasons for its sucking may be very different than what those of us who tried it in its initial launch form remember.

I do wish someone would steal the music system. Sitting around a lifestone and jamming was fun. That was the one unique thing about AC2 that I missed after leaving.

Pretty sure they used it for LOTRO.

[Arthur_Parker]

The new content involved a huge grind with 150 levels for no apparent reason.

I seem to remember one of the devs heavily involved with the music in ac2 went on to join the guitar hero people.

[Venkman]

From what I recall, they added a bunch of content after launch that nobody played and then a well-reviewed expansion pack that nobody played. I'm sure the game will still suck, but the reasons for its sucking may be very different than what those of us who tried it in its initial launch form remember.

Yea, I don't remember how long I played after go live. Maybe a month? I kinda didn't hate it in beta. It had the virtue of new things I hadn't seen. Plus SWG was still in early dev.

[Cheddar]

I bought the expansion.  I remember really enjoying the game- though I did not get it at launch.

From what I recall, the specs needed to run the game were incredibly high for its time.  So I missed launch and didn't bother picking it up until a couple months before expansion.