GU Comics by: Woody Hearn

Jeffrey Anderson, CEO of Turbine Entertainment, announced yesterday that, as of 12/30/2005, they will be closing service to Asheron's Call 2.
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Now, some of us aren't overly suprised by this move. It did, however, feel a tad sudden.

I feel for the AC2 community. They've put so much time and effort into the game and their characters. But, some of the responses really make my head hurt. MMORPG.Com referred to it as "righteous anger" and I can't really think of a better way to put it. And, where I definately believe those players have the right to be annoyed and grumpy, I feel compelled to point out that neither Turbine nor the developers owe those players anything. Their "righteous anger" is misplaced and pointless.

We pay to play these games on a month by month basis. The EULA's state that the characters/items within the games do not belong to us. Whether we quit or they close the servers, we got exactly what we paid for and no more than they promised... entertainment.

Think of it like going to a movie. If we pay to go and enjoy the movie, then the movie theatre decides not to show it anymore, we can be angry, but we don't really have the right to complain; we got what we paid for.

Editted to add:
The movie analogy comes from a simple straighforward observation that both the game and the movie are povided as entertainment, we own no part of either because of the time or money we've invested, and we have no control over the continued existance of either once we've gotten the service that was promised for the money that was spent. Simple does does not make it wrong.

So yeah, if you're one of those people with huge amounts of "righteous anger", leave it off these forums. You'll find no sympathy here.

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And to all of those of you that have emailed and PMed me about this closing, please keep in mind... I read game-related news sites every day. Some of them I read 3 times a day: morning, afternoon, and at night. So, where I appreciate your attempts to keep me informed, those attempts are, most often, entirely unnecessary.

[ discuss ] - replies ( 56 ) last post by: Faile