Never played it, so I went to look at a retrospective video. One thing that struck me was the teleportation effects. Sort of a Stargate transition:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKoeu1mDB4U&feature=youtu.be&t=2m46s
Another one bites the dust. I was under the impression that the servers have essentially been run by the community for a while. Turbine realized that it wasn't profitable anymore, but they wanted the game to live on for those that still cared about it. But I suppose no unprofitable game is safe from the wrath of Daybreak. Looks like a pretty cool game... it just never took off cause it always in the shadow of EverQuest due to bad timing. EQ came out just a few months before and pretty much soaked up that entire audience and locked them in. And sadly, AC just wasn't different enough to attract anyone.
I played Asheron's Call for about a week. A couple of guys at my pizza place job were all into gaming, and at the same time a little game called Everquest had been out a few months. Everquest won for me, but my friends went with AC.
Still, it makes me sad, because I know they had their dedicated playerbase as well. The true die hards are losing their fun place forever. Maybe they'll come play Pantheon.
AC was a very fun game and was actually my first MMO (predating EQ by about a month). Almost completely different from EQ, but I enjoyed both. While I prefeerred EQ, the massive, seamless game world of AC was the best MMO world I've ever played in. It had some very cool concepts too that I'm not sure have ever really been duplicated like being able to dodge spells, the allegiance system, and the "build your own class" system. Truly a unique game and I am very sad it's shutting down even though it's been about 15 years since I've played it with any level of seriousness.
I played AC1 after getting burned out by all the raiding in EQ1. It was buggy, had sever issues that probably invented the term "rubber banding" in MMOs and was by no means a major hit.
I also loved the hell out of it.
The world was wide open. I could make whatever type of character I wanted, go where I wanted, DO whatever I wanted. Sure, the min-max crowd was always tweaking the best builds for whatever type of character you wanted to be...melee, magic, or ranged. I loved EQ, still do; however, AC1 was the type of game that made you feel as though you truly had the freedom to do whatever the hell you wanted. I remember so many times going places I'd never been before, just because I'd talked to someone in town. I usually died alot. But the expereince was second to none, even when put up against the mighty Everquest.
The thing that killed the game--for me, anyways--was the stability issues. Not nearly as bad as Vanguard, but, still, it had it's issues. If someone was to remake AC1 with a modern UI, modern graphics, updated combat, etc, etc, I'd play it in a heartbeat.
Sad to hear that it's closing it's doors, although it stayed open far longer than I'd expected. RIP, Asheron's Call. You will be missed.