Newsbrief: More than seven years after it was closed down, fantasy MMORPG Asheron's Call 2 has been resurrected by developer Turbine Entertainment, and is now available to subscribers of the previous installments.
You make it sound so negative. Turbine is an experienced developer, AC1 is still going strong after so many years. With AC2 at this point they're only concerned with the costs of running the game, they don't have to make up for the development. With the systems already implemented in AC2, and many to be implemented like AC1's housing system, this is a great opportunity to create a good F2P MMO, once the bugs are ironed out, old systems like Microsoft's GUN are replaced and the UI is updated.
That was more amused than negative. Well, I guess 'zombie' is negative, but it has been dead for seven years. And microtransactions are just how Turbine rolls.
I'm guessing this is simply a freebe/perk to retain (and maybe even attract) AC1 subscribers, not an initiative intended to actually generate revenue per se. Converting a subscription based MMO to F2P/freemium is a pretty massive undertaking (it took Turbine over a year for DDO and LOTRO).
I guess subscriptions have stayed at the same price and running a virtualised server just keeps getting cheaper and cheaper, so at some point the economics start to work again.
