AS FAR AS I KNOW, THEY DIDN’T CALL IT “DERETH ZEK” [Author: wirehead]

Turbine opened up a PvP+ server (called “Forced PvP”) and folks have been busy enforcing their will at swordpoint on others, taking over entire towns and the like. Check out Crossroads of Dereth for the scoop, but be quick… I hear the beta is ending Sunday.

Those of you who follow this page religiously (thanks for all the shrines guys, the incense was a nice touch) know that my verdict on AC when the beta came out was “very promising game system, if they flesh out the game world I’m there.” Well, they didn’t flesh out the game world, and I’m not there. In fact from what little I’ve been able to tell wandering around Dereth’s empty plains and hills, NO work on the game world has been done save the liberal sprinkling of spawn points.

Could it be Microsoft rushed the game to market? Say it isn’t so, Bill! Actually Microsoft has a history of being the one company that does NOT rush games to market (see the excellent Age of Empires series for a demonstration of this) so I’d really lay the fault more on Turbine. You can’t make a pretty engine with nothing to show. Well, you can, just don’t expect people to jump on it.

My call – Asheron’s Call bombs, and bombs BIG. There’s no market for “Everquest, only with less stuff”.