Asheron's Call 2 KIA

MMORPG to Shutdown this Winter

from Stardock Forums
Turbine CEO Jeffrey Anderson has left a very short and to the point note on the Asheron's Call 2 webpage today. Anderson announced that Asheron's Call 2 will be shut down as of December 30th, 2005, meaning that the prequel has outlasted its sequel.

"In spite of our hard work and the launch of Legions, AC2 has reached the point where it no longer makes sense to continue the service. We will be officially closing the Asheron's Call 2 service on 12/30/05. Until then, we plan to run live events, but we will not be adding any content or features."

The original Asheron's Call is still up and running and according to another Turbine post, "it is our intention to continue supporting AC1." The decision was made in short because Asheron's Call 2 had ceased to be profitable, and has no doubt angered many long standing subscribers in the discussion thread. Turbine is currently working on two other MMORPGs including Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach and Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar which are both due out in early 2006. The team working on Asheron's Call 2 has been reassigned, no doubt to the aforementioned titles.
319 views 5 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Ouch, that sounds pretty crappy, never played AC1 or 2. I wonder what they did to piss off the fanbase.
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
There are simply too many MMO's to be supported in the market. I suspect more will fail before too long.
Siege of Centauri
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Check out www.mmogchart.com for some interesting stats (and the CRASH of AC2, no other game crashed that badly after a good start).
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
How much does it cost to run a MMORG anyway? Couldn't they just downsize the bandwidth and number of servers to match the user base? I guess they would still need to pay for maintenance and admins but to my naive business mind it would seem that costs were pretty scalable to match the income.
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
It costs ALOT to run them, all the servers and people who have to maintain and keep them updated. IMO (although they probably looked at doing this) I would have done what you said and then put the game in 'maintenance mode' where its just a few guys who look after the server with no more content updates. Therefore at least the people who wanted to continue still could play and it wouldn't be too much of a burden, and most importantly your customer base wouldn't hate you. Thing is they may have just shut it down because it wasn't making ENOUGH money but who knows.