Asheron's Call 2 Beta impressions

[Raedon]

http://www.microsoft.com/games/productImages/asheronscall2_ss_b_1.jpg http://www.microsoft.com/games/productImages/asheronscall2_ss_b_2.jpg

Well, after 2 days of playing Asheron's Call 2 Beta I can say i have a new respect for Everquest.

Asheron's Call 2 tries to hard to look good, it pulls out all the DirectX 8 tricks but it doesn't refine them and because of this everything grinds to a halt. There is some sort of problem in the code that causes huge HD loads for no reasons and any disk access in the beta causes the grfx to stop and the sound to skip. This happens regardless of what is set to low or high.

I haven't run into many people in the game yet and the one time I tried to group ended up just rebooting my computer so I can't say much about the MMO part of this RPG.

This beta feels more like an Alpha..

Graphics 8 for the landscape if nothing else. the mob animation is worse then my spelling..

Sound - 6 things grunt when you hit them.. water splashes. spells "whoosh"

Gameplay - 5: level 1 to 10, it's rats and bugs.. :roll:

Control - 8: the menu system and combat system works when the rest of the gaming engine isn't busy slowing everything down to a crawl.

[Sylentwulf]

Can't wait for this one myself. I've always DESPISED Everquest, I loved Ultima Online, but I can't go back to it. Asheron's Call, I'm looking forward to. Can't wait! I'm kinda surprised it's this early in Beta though with about a month left before Release...

[Raedon]

I think it will be delayed. when i got up this morning and loaded it up there was a 140 meg patch needed so maybe they fixed some of the glitches.

and this is an MMORPG, if you've played one before you know the game doesn't start until after several weeks of playing a character. So even I have to take the gameplay problems with a grain of salt. You can't play a MMORPG to level 10 and have a strong review.

[chazbeenhad]

I quit playing an uninstalled the beta because it was simply unplayable most of the time.

They should call the beta testers back when they actually have a game ready.....

Charlie

[Sylentwulf]

Well, that's kinda the point Chaz. If it was playable, it would be in stores :)