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How can the apple fall so far...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 25, 2002
Author: Amazon User

...from such a great tree.

- skill design is unbalanced and restrictive

- some skills are different in name only but sold to players as "different" skills

- combat amounts to pressing autoattack and then waiting like Pavlov's dog for the monster to go vuln so you can be a good little monkey and press your special attack button and get a treat.

- chat system is painful to use

- inventory organizational ability is nonexistant

- crafting weapons is fine until you get past the first few levels and discover that you have to go and camp a mob a fifth your level to get a rare item drop.

- crafting armor is pointless due to the fact that each tier of armor crafting only returns armor with a protection value equal to that level. So tier 3 armor will make armor level 3. That's fine but the ingredients you'll use to make that armor will have armor levels in excess of 10, so there's not much point.

- I'll stop here and say that on a good note AC2 is the most beautiful game I've ever seen and it should win any and all graphics awards for gaming. That doesn't change anything though.

Boring....

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 19 / 52
Date: September 27, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I play Asheron's Call, and I love the game. So when offered the beta test for Asheron's Call 2, I jumped at the chance to try it out. One word describes the game....BORING. I have never been so bored when trying to play any game. The graphics are pretty but....the game play is horrible. I gave up on playing the beta because I saw it as a complete waste of time. I know it is definately not worth the price they have set for it for when it comes out.

All you have to look forward to if you buy this is...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 18 / 22
Date: December 29, 2002
Author: Amazon User

... the cool box art. Because someone forgot to include a game.

I was a beta 0 player for AC1 and played it for over 2 years as well as 3 of my friends and had very high hopes for its sequel. We all played Asheron's Call 2 beta for at least a month and we all came to the same conclusion.
We could not have been more dissappointed.

How could 3 years of constant feedback and play experience of thousands of players be ignored in order to created a severely stripped and dumbed down Everquest/DAOC clone?

We expected them to add the present complexity of Asheron's Call with better implemented items, quests and details. (AC1 had hundreds of some of the most well designed dungeons ever)

In the original there are 3 main classes with very different feels of play, each can be tweaked and modified by taking additional skill to match with the primary attack skill giving an extremely varied style of play as well as strengths and weaknesses. This had limitations that we all expected AC2 to address but that never happened- they actually ruined the highly tuned and balanced mechanics that took 3 years of evolution to create.
AC2's 3 classes for 3 races feel remarkably similar to play, so similar in fact, the only 2 things to really distinguish them is speed of attack and range. Not to mention spell variety, AC1 had hundreds AC2 fewer by a factor of 10 or more.

We expected them to build on the stunning graphics engine Turbine has been working on for the past 3 years as well as increase the number of variations as far as character design is concerned.

They did deliver on the graphics engine, some scenes are just downright breathtaking. But everyone looks the same.

In AC you had easily 90 different facial designs to choose from, add hair color and race to variations and everyone had a distinct different look.
I could pick friends out of a crowd in AC without clicking on them- I can't do the same with AC 2 where you would expect more customizations to be available considering there are 3 races.

We expected improved and more varied NPC and enemy AI and a vast world with almost limitless exploration. AC was massive for its time; you could literally run for hours from one area to another without dealing with zones(or take portals), if you could see it you could usually go there. The world felt real because so much detail went into the lore of the land and quite a bit of the world was built around it. Many early players can remember dodging blasts of magic from the Immortal Lord Rytheran in the Mage Academy, to wandering the hidden nest of the olthoi nobles in the Lair of Death to the stunningly complex design of the Disaster Maze or battling legions of undead (well it was a legion at the time) for the legendary Sword of Lost Light...

All of it, gone in AC2, and nothing much to speak of in its place.

More islands to work with but the world feels so much like a sand box or a beach resort- More of a graphic demo shipped with the dx8 sdk than real terrain from a real game.

Lore and Trade PCs are to be generated by the players, which there are so few of because well... there are no lore and trade PCs.

Indeed in AC I remember a player filling the tradesman role, (Julia Child) but that's it, Only 1 player dedicated 100% of her time to playing the role typically allotted to computer management.

There are no hero's because player interaction is so stunningly behind the times in comparison to say DAOC or Everquest. The entire concept feels like a failed experiment that should have been tested large scale before implementation.

I hope everyone else takes notice. It failed. Additional player participation is always good but the economy shouldn't be completely player based, we can't be in game all the time, we can't automate our avatars to perform routine tasks of mining, crafting and selling and until that's available AC2's present structure will be a failure.

Feature wise such as storage, horses, transportation spiffy character costumes, and weapon designs all lacking.

I could go on and on as to how bad this game really is in comparison to everything else out there including its 4 year old predecessor but I will stop here.

To sum it up this game lacks the incentive to move, to exchange, to interact, to play.
It's a waste of time, and money to venture into a Dereth till the damage has been repaired.

Till then, Asheron can leave a message.

update June 2003 after a trying out one of them fangled trial accounts- This sucker still isn't fun at all.

Simpleton's Call 2

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 15 / 32
Date: October 19, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Lets see... AC2 is the best upcoming level treadmill you can buy! It's extremely dumbed down and boring. If you've enjoyed any previous mmorpg before, you won't like AC2. And because you don't, some very dumb people will say you're holding on to the past too much and call you a mean ugly troll. Riiiiight, more like we don't accept a piece of ... just because it's new. Here's what the supposed to be second generation game has to offer:

General:
-no content, except leveling
-a world empty of humanoid npc's, although there's the occasional talking stone head
-no place to buy even the most basic equipment
-great looking player/monster models that require a rather high end system to run at all-everyone looks the same since everyone is wearing the same equipment
-no helmets in the game?
-bad and uninteresting loot system, quest items aren't worth getting
-equipment options in general is bland. little variety in what there is to use.

Interface:
-non customizable (ie resizable windows / movable etc)
-hard to read, can't change text colors
-group window doesn't show important information and updates very slowly
-no group seeking option
-no pet controls
-missing several standard "/" slash commands like /who

Combat / Play:
-simple and boring (hit 2 buttons over and over)
-no specific group roles, groups chaotic
-no group loot sharing options
-horrid monster / pet AI
-no damage tactics, ie slashing damage or piercing damage. (ie its very dumbed down)

Characters:
-no depth, extremely dumbed down
-little ability to customize, everyone is the same
-no stats or race bonuses / all have same health and vigor
-diablo style skill tree forcing cookie cutter characters
-everyone is equally good at fighter/archer/mage
-very poorly balanced skills, most pick the few same skills that actually work.
-poor equipment balance, people fight naked since armor is basically useless and you can attack faster w/o it
-few specific numbers, you just don't know what's really happening with buffs or abilities.

-comes with a rabid pack of fanbois that swear its the best game ever because they just can't come to grips with reality.

and the list goes on and on. I highly recommend playing solitaire over AC2, it has more content and difficulty than AC2 will ever achieve. This game just shows that game companies are clueless about what players really want, and continue to uphold the idea that a game can be finished 6 months after release.

Boring

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 15 / 18
Date: February 08, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Well, for starters; Turbine should have pushed back the release date of this game by a good six months. The game is unfinished. It was released with character skills that don't work, buildings that don't even have interiors, mobs that don't move or work properly, pets that wonder around aimlessly without any type of control, no merchants, no banking, no trade-skills (except for one-crafting), no helmets or any kind of head-gear (except for an earing), broken quests, no houses, no mounts, the weakest economy in MMORPG history, only one functional chat channel (others are still broken), no "uber" mobs with "uber" loot, and absolutely no fun after the first week or two.

I have played the following MMORPG: UO, EQ, AC1, AO, DAOC, and now AC2. AC2 is by far the most boring game I have ever played. I say that while being fully aware of the gankfest pvp-griefing interaction of UO, the lag issues of EQ and AO, Camping in EQ, the bugs in AO, archer balancing issues of DAOC, the lack of high-game content in DAOC, the love-hate feelings of KvK of DAOC, the lack of content of AC1, and the poor graphics of both UO and AC1. Taking all this into account, I can still say that Asheron's Call 2 is most boring MMORPG game I have ever played. In fact, it is one of the most boring games I have ever played.

For a reason that I can't fathom, Turbine decided to dumb-down the player-interface, gameplay mechanics, and content to a point that any three year old child could sit at the computer and do reasonably well while wondering the barren land in Dereth. There is no ammo for missle weapons because every weapon comes with unlimited ammo. There is no food to eat or water to drink. You don't have to manage any stats to try to improve you character. In fact, there is very little to do except kill mobs, loot, check out your experience bar, then repeat. The crafting in the game is nothing more then a clickfest and that is the limit of the trade skills. One trade skill in all of Dereth.

In conclusion, most people will find this lifeless game very boring and a smack-in-the-face to the entire genre. Most of the people you find playing this game are the power-levelers and campers that have worn out their welcome from other, more established games. It is a close community of people who play videogames all day. For a typical or casual gamer, I'd say you would find very little in common with the dedicated videogame lifers that inhabit the second world of Dereth. After all, with so little to do except kill things and monitor experience as if it is the thread-of-life, who else would be playing this unfinished experience treadmill.

The Dark Age of Asheron's

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 16
Date: January 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

When Asheron's Call players heard that Turbine was releasing an AC2, expectations were high, and rightly so. For months players were baited with fantastic screenshots and movies as well as tons of articles on what they could expect.

And then there was beta. You could almost hear the sounds of hopes being dashed. Yeah, it looks pretty, there's no denying that. It's the best looking game you're going to see for the next few years, Turbine outdid themselves with the game engine {as long as you don't look at the character's run animation}. But that's about all that can be said for it. Even after giving it the standard run of Beta and a few months of "let's see what happens not that it's gold", people are still flocking back to the namesake Asheron's Call Dark Majesty.

In Turbine's mad dash to please players by removing "tedious" things, like fletching arrows and running to town to sell things, they've completely elimintated social functions. It's a crazed race for people to kill stuff so they can level and do the only thing there is to do in the game, quest.

This game is as close to a FPS as a MMPOG can get without including railguns. And it begs to be run by macro players with it's simplistic "select, attack, walk away for a while" battle-style. You don't even need to be bothered with making a character, you can go to E-bay already and buy a freshly-leveled one.

If you feel the need for a game that is a series of killing stuff to level so you can do something cool, I'd suggest Everquest. At least there you can say cool things like "I'm going to kill orcs to gain faction,". In AC2, you're killing those same thousand creatures so you can get into a cave and if you do it right, to see a little movie.

If you want to play a game that shows what Turbine is really capable of {IE fantastic, sprawling, engrossing and addictive gaming!} and is really worthy of the game engine they put together, go play the father of Fallen Kings, Asheron's Call Dark Majesty.

If you just want to give your computer seizures and get a new set of ...coasters, go ahead and buy Asheron's Call 2.

AC2 - A Review.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 11 / 22
Date: October 19, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I am a freelance writer and I write reviews and articles on the online game industry - mainly massive multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPG's). Now I have written reviews and articles on such games as AC, EQ, DAoC, Lineage II and many other MMORPG's. I have been playing and writing about these games since I played my first one (MMORPG that is) on AOL, way back, before the big three were even being considered. Therefore, I think I have some ideal what I am talking about and I will not say anything that is not the truth. This is my opinion - nothing less - nothing more on the game of Asheron's Call 2.

If you have been waiting with great anticipation for AC2 to be a game that would a big improvement of what is all ready on the market - be prepared for some disappointment. We are asked by Amazon to rank this game on a scale of 1 to 5 for its fun factor. I give it a one. Here is why. This game is not fun. It is at best a FPS placed in a world of swords and sorcery and is in no way, shape, or form, an MMORPG. In fact, it is one of the saddest attempts at an MMORPG I have yet come across. You can literally stand in one spot and gain levels, kill mobs, and craft without ever having to move.

Character creation is a snap. No character attributes are given for players to tweak. Just pick your race (three to choose from -Human, Lugian and Tumerok), gender, tweak your character's looks (hair, face, height, cloths colors, etc, etc, (very limited as it is in beta right now)) and enter the game. You then proceed to level and learn new skills via a skill tree system. A skill tree that is very similar to the one you find in Diablo 2 only less balanced and linear. You can game some experience to raise your level the skills you choose via quest or by joining a monarchy, however, a very large (in many players cases who decide to play the game) portion will come from one thing - killing mobs. Most AI for mobs is poorly executed and many mobs will even aggro on players even though the mob is all ready engaged with another player or players. Some mobs aggro distance is so great that you don't even have to be close to them for them to zero in on you and start attacking.

Player skill trees are not balanced yet, and many skills that are available to players are either not working right or need a hefty smack with a nerf bat. Pets in game are good to have at times, but you better have a good sense of humor and have a lot of patience, because the pets available for players in AC2 are some of the stupidest creatures to ever grace an MMORPG.

The so called, unique to each player or group, vault dungeon quest that players can go on are not unique and they are more-or-less a wait in line to kill the boss mob (creature) at the end of the dungeon. Your reward for completing the vault dungeon quest - experience points and a slide show. In fact many of the quest you go on are unimaginative, repetitive and lack any kind of real reason for a player to even participate in them - other than too gain "Quest Points". Some quest are given by large Tiki Head type monoliths that ask players to go slay a certain number of mobs. Others are given to players through the consumption of elixirs to do something very similar. Even at the higher levels in the game the quest are dull and simple, and not worth the effort to do.

The game will have elements of PvP and KvK (player vs. player and kingdom vs. kingdom) of which players will be able to participate. From my experience with the PvP (KvK is only just now really being tested so I can't say how well this will actually work) if you want to rule-the-roost, sorta speak, play an Archer/Enchanter. You will have range and power that cannot be beat.

This game is not all hack-and-slash though. Players can opt to be crafters - though you will learn that in order to craft you will have to go and kill mobs. Though the GUI used for crafting (tedious and repetitive) is lacking in many areas, however, it is well worth a player's time to learn to craft their own weapons, armor and such. Player crafted weapons and armor are more powerful (in most cases), for your level, than the ones you can loot from mobs you have killed.

The game, as it is in beta right now, and the one that is going to be released soon, has a very poorly designed GUI. Chat system and inventory control are the worse I have encountered in any game of this type ever. The graphics are good (if you have a system capable of running it in high detail), however the animations are sub-par for characters and there are many unexplained objects that float - whole city buildings, creatures, tree's, even parts of the ocean that surround the islands that players play on.

Now given that the game is not out of beta yet, this opinion of mine is not worth much, however, the games basic mechanics are in place and the developers have said that what beta tester's see now is pretty much what will be shipped. Turbine has a proven record of accomplishment with AC and its monthly updates, and AC has turned into a decent game. However, there are many things that will be in the initial release of AC2 that will need some major rework before their newest game (IMHO) will even be half as fun to play as their current game on the market is.

AC2 is a big disgrace to Turbine's AC franchise

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 12
Date: March 11, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I'd been playing AC1 for 2 years, then moved to AC2 from its very first days of beta, and all seemed to go well until the game went live. First of all, AC2 has undoubtedly the best graphic I've ever seen, but other than that, expect it to hold your interest in no more than 2 months or so. Most of the early generation of players had already quit the game by now, the ones who are still enjoying it are the newer players, and some hard core old timers. AC2's downfall is that it has NO high level content, whatsoever, absolutely nothing. People reached level cap (currently 50) within first month of release, and Turbine is NOT raising the level cap any time soon, and it's been well into the 3rd month of release. It is EASY to gain xp and level up, you can repeat quests every couple of days or so, and they have two or three quests that gives a substantial amount of xp, so even if you are a very casual player, and you don't powerlevel AT ALL, you just gotta re-do these quests over and over and you still gain xp at a decent rate. Getting to 50 is inevitable in this game, but after that, what else is there to do? Nothing. They have NO high level/boss monster, there are only TWO kinds of high level monsters that are worth killing for xp and loot, the "shreth" and the "armoredillo". You will start killing these around level 30 or so, and you will be killing the exact SAME shreths and dillos by the time you hit 50, there is NOTHING else challenging to entertain you after 50. Go read Turbine's site if you don't trust me, they are literally telling you once you hit 50, go reroll another toon and go through the same things all over again, or go raise your crafting skill up. Crafting, as it turns out, is another failure of AC2. They recently "nerfed" the crafted items once again, and NOBODY even bothered to craft weapons and armor any more, since it would cost too much money to craft a weapon, and they don't have high-end crafted items, so once you got to around level 30 or so, all crafted items would become obsolete compared to the loot-generated ones. If you don't feel like rerolling over and over till you have all five characters on your account to 50, and since the crafting system is a total joke, what else is there to do once you hit cap? Some people turned to pk'ing, and they have a pk "zone" right in the middle of a route to the highest level hunting ground, forcing everyone who wants to hunt for the most xp possible to have to risk their lives for it. Pk'ing, therefore, is NOT optional in AC2, whether you like it or not. Which led to hordes of utterly bored level 50's converging in that zone to gank hapless players hoping to hunt for some xp. Portal camping is rampant, when you will get nuked and killed right before you get out of portal space, when you have absolutely NO WAY to defend yourself, there is NO pvp grace period like in Anarchy Online when you have a couple seconds of immunity after zoning. AC2 is no fun, AC2 has no content, although they recently added the mounts, but look around, which game out there that still doesn't have mount now? It's not that big of a change, content wise. AC1 was a big success, and is pretty popular still. Except for the outdated graphics, AC1 is vastly superior compared to AC2, content wise. If you want some eye candies for the first month or two, and you have 50 dollars to waste, go for it; otherwise, hang on to it and wait till SWG is out next month, seriously.

If I can save one person from buying this game...

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 10 / 13
Date: May 29, 2003
Author: Amazon User

[...]

System Specs
P4 1.9
256MB Ram
GeForce 4 64MB IT
Cable Internet
Not exactly top of the line but I had to turn all of the graphical options to very low or off.

System Specs
P4 1.8
512MB Ram
GeForce 4 IT 128 MB
Cable Internet
This one has a better video card and more ram but I was able to bring the settings up to High. In group combat (9 players vs. NPCs) however, server lag kills.

Pros:
- Breathtaking graphics
- Monthly updates
- Able to unlearn spells

Cons:
- No real content. Story quest limited to 13. After which you can get a scarce quest here and there.
- No NPC venders. NPCs are only there for quest.
- No use for money except learning smith and whatnot.
- Breathtaking graphics if you have a 128mb video card (Radeon 9700)
- Monthly updates are always an anticlimax.
- Authentication problems when logging on.
- Massive lag if you are fighting with a group of 9.
- Groups are limited to 9 players [...]
- PKers are able to camp zone spots.
- MOST of the game's population has a character at level +40
- The level cap is limited at 50 and will not be removed until September at the earliest.
- Lack of In-Game Admin support.
- No point in towns because there is nothing to do there.
- NPC mobs all look the same but are given different names and strengths.
- Waste of [$$$]

expected so much more

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 31
Date: October 21, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Microsoft had one heck of a job to do when creating a sequel to AC1, my all time favorite mmorpg ever.
I anxiously anticipated the release of this game and thought I was going to die of anxiety while waiting to get into Beta. Then I log into the new and improved lands of Dereth and needed to take some aspirin to relieve my headache of the graphics. The landscapes are very pretty and so are the character avatars if you adjust your camera view (zoom way in) and adjust all your settings (high)to pose for a screen shot , but you can't play that way for optimal game performance. What a disappointment, it looks like the Saturday morning comics with shadows and texture.

They did fix some of the negative issues in AC1 with this sequel and made a lot of improvements, but unfortunately at the sacrifice of some of the best features AC1 had.

I remember fondly the good times standing in Eastham or Ayan camping the shops for the treasures the higher levels had sold. The constant crowds of people and social atmosphere in the towns due to the frequent trips you had to make to town "for milk runs" that are no longer required. Those times are gone in AC2.

I also got an immediate reminder of how AC was the worst game ever for "kill stealing", this has not changed and still as aggravating as ever.

So after much anticipation, I will sadly be leaving this game on the store shelf.

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