Asheron's Call 2

Asheron's Call 2: Fallen Kings is a MMORPG, with a monthly subscription, that was released on November 22, 2002 as a sequel to the original Asheron's Call. The severs for AC2 were first shut down in December 2005 when the game did not have enough subscribers to continue being viable for the company to support.

Released: 22 November 2002
Platforms: Windows
Genres: MMORPG Role-playing
Developers: WB Games Boston
Publishers: Xbox Game Studios
Modes: Multiplayer
Perspective: Third person
Themes: Action Fantasy
Country: United States
Age ratings: ESRB M

About

Asheron's Call 2: Fallen Kings was a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) for Microsoft Windows which was released on November 22, 2002 and shut down on December 30, 2005 before it was relaunched as a beta for active Asheron's Call subscribers between 2012 and 2017. It is a sequel to 1999's Asheron's Call, although content, graphics and gameplay dynamics differed greatly from its predecessor.

Both games were developed by Turbine Entertainment Software and originally published by Microsoft Game Studios, until Turbine purchased the Asheron's Call intellectual property in December 2003. The Microsoft-to-Turbine transition was completed in 2005. In 2004 and 2005, Turbine entered business arrangements with Jolt Online Gaming to operate Asheron's Call 2 in Europe and with Sony Online Entertainment to distribute the game's first expansion, Asheron's Call 2: Legions, under the Station Publishing label.

Keywords

grinding
online
portals
teleportation
sequel
leveling up
polygonal 3d
color customization
character creation
player vs environment
melee
discontinued mmo

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Players chose a character that was one of three races: Isparians were humans from Ispar, one of the first races to answer Asheron's Call. Lugians came to Dereth in the same fashion as Isparians from a different home world, Tuu, and were (in the original game) quite hostile to Isparians. Tumeroks, or Tonks, also came to Dereth through Asheron's portals from their home world on Hazahtu, and were also originally treated as monsters by Isparians. These hostilities were worked out between the first game and the sequel, and in Asheron's Call 2: Fallen Kings the three races co-existed with conflict limited to those choosing player versus player content. Players that purchased the Legions expansion pack gained access to two additional races, Empyreans and Drudges.

One's race was the only limiting factor on the "class" or "profession" that could be played by player's character. In general terms, character classes were considered "damage dealers", "tanks", or "healers".

Reception

Asheron's Call 2 received generally positive reviews from critics. On the review aggregator GameRankings, the game received an average score of 83% based on 29 reviews. On Metacritic, the game received an average score of 82 out of 100, based on 22 reviews.

The game was nominated for GameSpot's annual "Best Graphics (Technical)" and "Best Role-Playing Game" awards among computer games, which went to Unreal Tournament 2003 and Neverwinter Nights, respectively. During the AIAS' 6th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards, Fallen Kings received nominations for "Massive Multiplayer/Persistent World Game of the Year" and "Outstanding Achievement in Visual Engineering".