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Oh dang, bummer this is shutting down. I haven't thought about AC in years, but I now have an overwhelming urge to play it. AC was my first mmo. I bought it in November 1999 from Software Etc at my local mall. I had never played any online game before. My first experience was really bad. At the time I didn't even understand what monitor resolution was and during character creation I couldn't see any of the sliders (they were off the screen) to add stat points so my character was created without adding anything. I remember running around for about an hour and had no idea what was even happening. I ended up taking the game back to Software Etc and returning it for Everquest. I knew the guy who worked there so he let me return it even though I had already used up the free month code, we honestly didn't realize it couldn't be reused. We thought the code was good for 30 days x 24 hours and I only used at most 2 hours. A few weeks later I got a phone call from some guy who was super pissed at me. It was the guy who purchased my returned copy. He told me Microsoft gave him my phone number and told him to call me and work something out. Turns out all the guy wanted was an apology but it scared the poo poo out of me. Including that first purchase I've bought AC 3 times and put maybe 200ish hours into the game. The thing I loved the most about AC is it is an actual huge world. I love the simple sound effects, love the day/night cycle, the stars, the land size. I loved finding random (to me) dungeons. It's the kind of game you could wander out during nighttime and find a spot to stare at the stars and feel small. There was a massive sense of adventure to the game. Many unknowns, things to learn and explore. The thing I could never get past is the massive grind. I've put thousands of hours into mmo's since my first attempt at AC and I always hit a wall in AC where it was easy enough to calculate how many hundreds of hours I'd need for a tiny increment, and I just could not do it. AC is the game I always wanted to put more time into, just never felt like I was making progress. It was just too easy to gently caress up your character as well and have all that time be lost. I'm feeling a little sad though now that it's going away. I have enough income now where I could maintain a monthly subscription just to hop in occasionally and run around. It really sucks that it's closing down. I am learning now that it went into maintenance mode and they haven't been taking new subscriptions and possibly haven't even been charging people? Well, it's the first of the big 3 to go down, had to happen at some point.
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Jan 30, 2017 04:53
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Alexander DeLarge posted:I read that there were weird things going on with the website and they're now assuming WB will start up servers but not honor the lifetime offer anymore. Man I hope so! I really want to play this again. I'm not sure what the lifetime subscription was about, it's kind of a bummer for those people. I will definitely get a subscription to the game if they start the servers back up.
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Feb 3, 2017 19:40
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Pube Factory posted:As much as I would like to see AC live on forever, the game was in a pretty sorry state the last couple years after it went to the lifetime subscription model and Turbine stopped supporting it Do you mean in terms of performance or content updates? I haven't played AC in about 10 years so content wise I could probably play for 10 years based on what they've already implemented. There is plenty of game there I can enjoy for a long, long time.
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Feb 3, 2017 20:56
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Pube Factory posted:There were a couple major overhauls to the weapon skills and portal networks and the UI that just felt forced and took away more than they added. Wasn't a big deal to a lot of people, but I was kind of sour on how unfamiliar the most basic aspects of the game had become in the time period leading up to the last patch. A lot of the old content had been reshuffled and new content added over the years that reinvigorated the game, but when then they reduced the quest timers for everything to 20 hours, it really but a premium on just repeating several of the easiest quests with the biggest rewards every day, and that's kind of the state the game ended in. Got it, thanks for the perspective! Somewhat selfishly none of that would apply to me as I would be starting a level 1 character and really going through the game for the first time. There's so much content for me there. The servers crashing and player's exploiting I don't like, but to be honest that is why I'd prefer to pay for a subscription.
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Feb 4, 2017 17:23
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I've been reading on acpedia a bunch and realized I really know nothing about this game. It's only made my desire to play that much more! Can someone explain the skill system to me? I think the way it works is: you can only use skills that are trained or specialized. You can only level up skills that are trained or specialized. You have 52 skill points at character creation to distribute however you want (move skills to trained/specialized). Skills are raised by applying xp to them. The amount of xp required to level a skill is based on whether the skill is trained or specialized. Skills have a cap they can be raised to (based on trained/specialized)? Stats have a cap? Also, you can raise your stats, strength, focus, self, etc. Is there a way to raise health, stamina, mana directly? Or is that a by product of raising your stats? Is the total amount of xp available limited? Level is capped at 275 so does that mean there is a maximum amount of xp possible and you would need to plan a long term character accordingly? Or can you continue to earn xp even after level cap? If so, could you theoretically cap all your stats and trained/specialized skills?
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Feb 6, 2017 02:12
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Sixfools posted:Emu update: Skills are working now https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QODQOBCx4Vc That's cool, they are making progress! I'm still hopeful that someone is buying the rights to AC and will be bringing the game live again soon.
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Feb 8, 2017 17:17
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For whatever reason I just can't let this go, I really want to play it! I looked into the "Lifetime Subscription" and found out it was only $10. And anyone who had an active subscription at the time got it as part of their last subscription payment. It seems to me either they were trying to generate some revenue and then sell it to someone, or had plans to move towards a cash shop and away from subscriptions. If the game is not generating any money then of course it would have to shut down due to server costs, employee costs etc. AC had ~120,000 active subscriptions in 2002 (no idea what that number was when they went into maintenance mode). I think more and more people now are wanting an MMO with more complexity and AC fits that model. I'd like it if they can bring it back online, merge the servers (1 of each) and charge a subscription.
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Feb 9, 2017 19:55
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SamEyeAm posted:there may be hope yet... Something official or emulated?
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Mar 21, 2017 22:17
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Sixfools posted:The emulation groups are getting a crazy amount done. Yeah I was on Peas server helping with the stress test. It was fun but still has a long ways to go. Definitely cool to see the progress.
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Mar 23, 2017 16:16
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