The end of the world as they know it

We’ve had a slight taste of this in CoH, since CoV came on — especially in the weeks immediately afterwards, when Paragon felt like a freaking ghost town. I mean — arriving at the Talos tram station, or the Steel Canyon Yellow Line, and having them empty? Yeesh. Things seem to have picked back up a bit, of late. Mercifully.

“Anybody out there?” I type, but I already know it’s pointless. There’s nobody anywhere near me. For almost an hour, I’ve been wandering around a desolate plain: Gray clouds scud slowly over rough quartz mountains, while a few birds wheel in the air near mushroom-shaped trees. I never see another living soul. It feels like the end of the world.

And in fact, it is. I’m inside Asheron’s Call 2, an online game that is scheduled to die in two weeks. It never acquired enough players to make it self-sufficient, so the game’s owner — Turbine — is going to do something that only happens rarely in the world of online play: On Dec. 30, it’ll flip the power off on the remaining servers, and an entire world will blink out of existence.
Interesting. And disturbing.
(via Collision Detection)

3 thoughts on “The end of the world as they know it”

  1. Well, CoH and CoV combined have enough playership that isn’t likely to happen. It picked up well when it came out, and despite people leaving as time passed I know CoV brought lots of players back and I’ve met several people who never played CoH and only have gotten CoV so it’ll survive for some time.
    Oddly enough, I still saw boxes on sale for Asheron’s Call 2 today while out picking up a few final holiday gifts.

  2. Interestingly enough Turbine is the company behind the new Tolkein based game and, in conjunction with Atari, will be launching Dungeons & Dragons Online in February.

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