When an MMORPG Dies

Posted on January 6, 2006

Asheron Call 2 (AC2) was shut down on December 30th. As the end approached Ellen Ripley recorded the final minutes as the world ended. Collission Detection summarized the end nicely in this post:

Ellen Ripley, a longtime resident of the world, showed up for the grand finale and recorded screenshots and the dialogue as the end times approached. My favorite parts? The totally surreal warnings from that flashed onscreen -- "This world will be shutting down in 1 minute. Please log out" -- and the banter of the remaining residents, which mixes deeply heartfelt good-byes with howls of anguish and nerdcore quotings of The Lord of the Rings and Douglas Adams' ouevre

Turbine, the publisher of AC2, points out that it is never easy to say goodbye to a world:

As of December 30, 2005 the AC2 service is no longer available. Turbine and the AC2 development team would like to express our thanks to the many players who've been part of Asheron's Call 2 over the years. We hope you've had as much fun playing the game as we did creating it for you.
It's never easy to say goodbye to a place you've called home, but we hope to see all of you in Turbine's other worlds.

The end of AC2 reminds Kotaku about the end of Ultima Online beta:

I still remember the end of the Ultima Online beta. There was plenty of warning so people had time to do a lot of goofy stuff. I ended up leading a rebel army against Lord British's castle, which was a lot of fun. To make things interesting I got everyone to dye their clothes yellow and then we marched across the countryside. By the time we got to town we were so large the guards couldn't handle us. Although I managed to get inside the castle, but I found it empty. It wasn't until months later, in the real game, that someone managed to off the tyrannical Lord British.

A GameSpot article says that the original Asheron's Call is still running despite the closure of AC2.

MMORPG