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Asheron's Call 2
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Asheron's Call 2
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== Failure and Cancellation == {{Unreferenced section|date=March 2009}} On August 25, 2005 it was announced by Turbine CEO Jeff Anderson that the ''Asheron's Call 2'' service would be shut down on December 30, 2005, and no additional content updates were planned. This was a reaction to tepid sales of the ''Legions'' expansion pack, which failed to boost the number of subscription past the critical threshold of 35,000. Fans were highly critical of this reaction, blaming lack of sales on a poorly coordinated marketing campaign and an insufficient retail presence. Producer Citan ([[Eric Heimburg]]) moved on to the ''[[Star Trek Online]]'' project, whereas most other team members transferred to the ''[[Dungeons & Dragons Online]]'' and ''[[The Lord of the Rings Online]]'' projects at Turbine. Criticism of Asheron's Call 2 had always been particularly vocal from many ''[[Asheron's Call]]'' players {{Who|date=March 2009}}, who were frustrated by the radical changes in gameplay dynamics and the game world, claiming that ''AC2'' was a sequel in name only. The fact that ''AC2'' would be different from ''AC1'' was stated from the initial releases on it, but many ''AC1'' players were not happy with the sequel and stayed with the original game. This may have been a factor in ''AC2'''s disappointing subscription numbers. {{Or|date=March 2009}} Another factor in the game's failure were the programming and gameplay issues which streched over the first two years of release. One notable incident was the rebuilt-from-scratch chat server after the game went live. The developers discovered that the chat server they'd originally programmed was too buggy and unstable for a production environment only after several months of release; sometimes players would login unable to communicate with other characters outside of '/say' range, including those in their own allegiances; at other times they could only communicate in '/tell'. This went on for nearly four months while the developers built a new chat server and application from scratch. Compounding the player's frustration with the chat server issue was the strikingly unbalanced abilities between classes. Character balancing (also called "nerfs") began almost immediately after release but unlike other MMORPGs, class changes were radical and drastically changed the gameplay. Unfortunately, classes were revisted multiple times because the development team hadn't fully decided how each class would fit together, or fight together. As this process dragged out over the following months, the player base thinned and grew more vocal in their criticisms. In a forum post addressing the player's concerns Citan arrogantly expressed his disregard for the current player base and their concerns, intending all changes for the new players that would subscribe after the updates were completed and the release of the game's first retail expansion pack. With Citan's stance concerning the player base and the developer's posture of "exploit early and exploit often", many players decided to leave the game and not return for the Legions expansion. "Exploit early and exploit often" was the phrase coined to describe when a player found a bug in the game's programming which allowed for an unfair advancement of their character. Instead of restoring the character to its pre-exploit (or "pre-cheat") status, the developers officially sanctioned cheating under the guise that a bug on their part should not be held against the player.
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