Nostalgia For An Age Yet To Come: AC2

Into the Unknown!

So, after much to-ing and fro-ing with automated email replies, solutions to problems I didn't have, password resets to get into an account for which the password already worked perfectly well and confirmation that my payment never went through and if I wanted to play I'd have to buy the game again, finally I was able to log in to Asheron's Call 2 and make a character.

Whether I actually have an account and if so how much of the "free" 30 days I have left is anyone's guess. It's a moot point since I neither have the time nor the patience for more than a quick, curiosity-satisfying glance but at least I can now say I have been there. Wherever "there" is.

Hold on, haven't I been here before?

I know nothing about Asheron's Call, even though I did play it a little once up on a time. My vague, fragmentary memories of my brief visit well over a decade ago don't include any details of races, classes (I don't think AC has classes) or indeed content. I remember a lot of buildings with no doors, huge expanses of grassland, some portals and a long, long time spent running about with not much happening.

To be fair, running about with not much happening could also describe much of my experience with Anarchy Online or Horizons. Back in that pre-WoW world, running about with not much happening was kind of what we did. And anyway, this is AC2, not AC.

No Ticket, No Ride

Having looked at all the races available at character creation and picked the weirdest one it was off to the tutorial. As I may have mentioned once or twice, Tutorials and I generally don't get on and I duly didn't get on with this one. Not as usual because the hand-holding wasted my time and insulted my intelligence but because I couldn't get out of the blasted thing !

It took me about 90 minutes to do the ten-minute Tutorial. I got to the exit portal easily enough in just a few minutes. I killed the mobs that dropped the shard I needed to use the portal with no difficulty at all. Only problem was, I couldn't use the Portal because I didn't have the shard and I didn't have the shard because I couldn't loot it off the Drudge who did have it, even though I'd killed him and I could see it there, clutched in his rigored little paw, because I didn't have the quest.

That's gotta go somewhere, right?

Why didn't I have the quest? Because I couldn't find the second guy I needed to talk to, that's why. After much (much) running around he turned out to be right back where I started, only of course by the time I found out I needed him I was a lot further down the tunnels and I thought he would be too so why would I go back there to look for him?

Boy. did it take me back. Back to a place I'm not at all sure I want to go. Strip out the nostalgia that makes revisiting an MMO you played and enjoyed back in the rose-glow past so heart-warming and what really do you have? If there'd been MMOs back then with the quality-of-life enhancements most of us now take for granted (and some of us rail against for dumbing the whole genre down) would anyone have played any that didn't have them? Is it any wonder that when experienced players finally get around to trying an old MMO they missed then, as both Syl and Massively's Matt Daniel found recently when they visited Vanguard, they find little reason to hang around?

Hello clouds! Hello sky!

AC2 really does come from another age. Graphically it looks like a souped-up Everquest, which isn't at all bad and frankly I've seen worse in MMOs a quarter of its age. It's not AC2's looks that are the problem. It's the UI and the lack of those features we've come to expect. I'm very happy that there are no big ? hanging over the guys I need to speak to, but getting instructions on what to do and where to go in a barely-readable font at a microscopic point size in a transparent window that I can't move or re-size just reminds me why those ? were added in the first place. I'm also delighted to see useable armor and weapons dropping off mobs right at the beginning of the game but less delighted that I can't find a quick and easy way to see the stats and no way at all to compare one item with another.

Every game needs a windmill

And so on. It's an old game and more to the point it's an old game that I never played when it was a new game and therefore one for which I have no affinity or nostalgia. It does look interesting. People clearly are playing it and enjoying it - chat was humming with people forming groups, doing quests and generally exhibiting all the symptoms of MMO players invested and immersed in their current game of choice. I wish them and the game well.

Aw, he's kinda cute for a vermin

I won't be leveling up to join them. I feel about the same about AC2 now as I did about AC then. There's a lot of grass and it's very green but it's not the greener grass on the other side of any fence I feel like jumping. I might pop in again and have another run around before my 30 days are up (whenever that is). I might not.

I'm very glad to have had this opportunity to go time-traveling, though. If nothing else it helps clarify what it is that I do want, which would seem to be a good helping of old-school gameplay heavily spiced with up-to-the-minute usability. Someone get on that, please.

Getting Out Of First Gear: GW2, AC2

It's still all Guild Wars 2, all the time Chez Bhagpuss.

My good intentions of revisiting The Secret World have so far gone as far as getting the thing patched up but not as far as logging in. I don't think Rift is even patched.

Plans to step back into Norrath for Frostfell have as yet come to nothing. That has to happen, though. Have you seen those scarves?  I resisted the siren call of Triple Station Cash yesterday because I already have thousands stashed on two accounts from previous bargain days but when I really stop to think about it there's almost never anything in the store that I want to spend it on, so no matter how much of a bargain it is, hording SC is a bad idea. It's a shame they put a stop to buying expansions with it because I'm starting to get an itch for Chains of Eternity. Only the certain knowledge that I don't have time to do it justice is keeping my credit card in my wallet.

Would that my rational mind had been on such active duty several evenings ago, when in a fit of rioja-induced enthusiasm I paid $9.99 for access to Asheron's Call 1 and 2. Obviously it was only AC2 that I was interested in but so far I have seen nothing of either. Both downloaded perfectly and promptly and my account page shows me fully paid up until January 18th but the log-in screen resolutely refuses to accept my password.

Turbine's arduous customer service process has yet to provide me with any response beyond unhelpful, automated emails. I'm now at the point of asking them simply to refund my purchase because I have no confidence in their processes. If I don't get a response soon I guess I will be forwarding the correspondence to my payment provider and calling on U.K. consumer law, which is rather strong in this regard. That's if I can be bothered over a loss of about £7.00. I might just write it off to experience but if so it will be the last money Turbine ever get from me.

Much more positively, GW2 remains a joy. I now have four level 80s - Ranger, Engineer, Warrior and Necromancer. Next on the assembly line is Guardian. At this rate I should have the full set before Easter.

I am intending to play my Necromancer in WvW, so she can't just go into retirement dressed in whatever mismatched set of blues and greens she hit 80 with. I've had two runs at the Trading Post so far and done some research and quite honestly I begin to lose the will to live. I really don't want to spend time "gearing up". It's very, very boring.

Buying gear because of how it looks is fun. Comparing endless stats really isn't. It also costs a fortune. I could make the money flipping stuff on the TP easily enough, but that's even more tedious than comparing stats. I really wish their was just a "gear me up to average standard" button I could press. Like choosing from Talent trees and assigning skill points, all this is stuff I could do without, and for my normal playstyle I often do, but I will just have to grit my teeth and bull through this time because in WvW gear does matter and I like being effective there.

I wish I'd read the farming guides before I dinged 80. I could have done the last ten levels in certain spots and gathered enough gossamer to see me through to a full set of Carrion Exalted. Remember that for the next four times! I'm hoping to do some Fractal dungeons to complete my monthly so maybe something will drop there - I guess there are drops? One way or another, gear will be gotten.

On the subject of dungeons, doing all the Tixx instances has had the pleasant side-effect of allowing me to remember why I used to like doing dungeons. Everyone in the pick-up groups has been at worst silent and at best good company; no idiots, no time-wasters, no snark. They are very easy dungeons, which may help, but it bodes well for the Fractals.

Enough - time to go think about which mini-pets I'm going to make with my cogs and what Endless Tonics I need. Mrs Bhagpuss spent much of yesterday running around the Frontier as a Princess Doll with a Princess Doll pet, recreating the closing credits of The Benny Hill Show with Ehmry Bay as extras and I want a go!