Wired reports that Asheron’s Call 2 is scheduled to be shut down on December 31, due to financial difficulties.
What struck me immediately was how creepy the world had become. “Being in-game is like walking around a ghost town,” I was warned by Amy Gilson, a 31-year-old from Philomath, Oregon. “You can almost see the tumbleweeds pass you by.” Indeed: Since I’d created a brand-new avatar, I was teleported to “Arwic North Outpost,” a newbie area that was gorgeous — Asheron’s Call 2 is a visual treat — but sepulchrally quiet.
To get in character, I gamely tried to level up my character by killing a few monsters. But I couldn’t get past the sense of existential emptiness. At one point, a non-player character assigned me a quest of killing all the burrowing beasts in a nearby canyon, to save her town. I’m like, save the town? Lady, the whole damn world is about to end!
Now as the final days click down, the last denizens of Asheron’s Call 2 are wrestling with a question that historically faces all displaced peoples: Where next?
Source: Wired
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