When Asheron’s Call shut down last winter following the spinoff of Standing Stone Games from Turbine, one of the few hopes the community had to cling to was the player-run emulator. Now, it appears those hopes have ended too.
Last night, Redditors began reporting an outage of what is known as the Megaduck emulator following a brief and unexplained system blast. Lest you suspect it’s merely tech issues or someone forgot to turn it back on again, players have further reported that the two administrators of the emulator have vanished and apparently deleted the websites and file hosting for the emulator as well.
It’s all led players to suspect a Turbine-emitted cease-and-desist order, although we cannot confirm that rumor. As we’ve previously pointed out, it’s still not clear exactly why the Asheron’s Call franchise wasn’t part of the spinoff deal; neither Turbine nor Standing Stone would comment at the time. Turbine has moved increasingly into the mobile space but nevertheless renewed the Asheron’s Call domains through 2022 in May – months after the sunset.
There is another emulator for the game, Fenntide, though it’s apparently struggling under the influx of newbies too.
