Soldiers of the Wasteland

The first video showcasing in game scenes from the new Ice & Blood expansion has just been released.

The video shows some scenery from the two new regions (the Blood Forest and the Crystal Plains) as well as showcasing the new Dragon Mage class. We are treated to seeing the Dragon Mage transform into the Dragon, along with plenty of fighting scenes of the Dragon Mage in both human and dragon form.

Check the video out for yourself below, and leave any comments about it or the upcoming expansion, on our forums.

A new patch for Sacred 2 has been released today. The patch seems to contain mainly bugfixes, however there are also changes made in preparation of the new expansion, Ice & Blood.

The update has not been added to the Sacred 2 Update site, so for now the patch can be downloaded from the official forums here.

You can read the patch notes and discuss the changes in our Sacred 2 forums here. Thanks to Dirty for the heads up.

The expansion to Sacred 2: Fallen Angel has been officially given a title – Ice & Blood. It was announced a week ago on the German forums then a few days later on the English forums, and finally ended up on our forums thanks to thegreatcthulhu.

For those too lazy to scour the internet for details (like myself) Cthulhu has kindly provided some information about the upcoming expansion in his thread.

- Release Date: this August (PC only)
- 1 new class (more may come): Dragon Mage – Summoner / Offensive Magic Caster / Transforms into a Dragon
- 2 New Regions, with new sub-campaigns for each region: Blood Forest and Crystal Plains
- Combos now can have up to 5 combat arts
- New, very powerful legendary weapons and also currently existing legendary weapons will be enhanced
- Two new horse mounts: Unicorn for good characters and Flame Horse for evil
- Carrier imp will be given to everyone who buys the expansion.

You can also check out a few screen shots from the new patch (which show the new regions) here.

In other Sacred news, Dirty has a thread on the forums trying to organise a weekly game night for SotW members to meet up together and play. Details are still sketchy at the moment, but so far all you need is a character on the Light campaign on the US servers. If you’re interested in joining the event, check out the thread here.

To clarify how much trouble Ascaron are actually in, thegreatcthulhu has kindly provided some information about the German legal proceedings of Insolvency and the phase of Administration.

The German legal proceeding of “Insolvency” is the same as the US legal proceeding known as Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.

When you go into Bankruptcy/Insolvency, your companies leaders have to ceed their power over to a court appointed “administrator”. This person oversees your company for a specific amount of time (in Germany, 3 months) to evaluate the situation and then afterwards, they decide whether or not to have the company fold or restructure.

The legal phase of Insolvency/Bankruptcy where the court appointed administrator takes over is, as you probably guessed, “Administration”.

The only optimistic part about this is that the court actually approved they could claim insolvency… otherwise they would’ve been told they’re SOL. So they must have at least somewhat of a snowball’s chance in… you know where.

So it looks like Ascaron’s situation is a little worse then they are actually letting on. Thanks again to Cthulhu for the clarification.

And if you feel like doing some further reading on the subject, here are some helpful links:

• http://www.mayerbrown.com/publications/article.asp?id=2572&nid=6
• http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m4130/is_n3_v25/ai_19161963/

Things aren’t looking too good for Ascaron right now. While administration doesn’t seem to be quite as final as bankruptcy, it is still not the best of situations for a company to be in.

The official announcement made by Ascaron stated that they are already in discussions with several parties regarding a friendly takeover. Assuming that all goes well, Sacred 2 might not be disappearing from our computers just yet.

Ascaron also said that their developers were currently working on the expansion to Sacred 2 as well as the next installment of the game, Sacred 3, so perhaps there is still a good chance that development and support for the game will continue.

While we wait for further news on the matter, feel free to read the official announcement below and share your thoughts on the forums.

17th april 2009: Ascaron Entertainment GmbH announces the finalization of the sacred 2 console versions and also presents itself under the protection of insolvency law.

“On tuesday, the 14th april 2009, the Ascaron Entertainment GmbH went into administration at the regional court in Bielefeld, Germany.
Because of this Ascaron is now protected by german administration right.
Ascaron Entertainment GmbH wants to use this chance to save the company and of course the jobs involved.

The famous action roleplaying game sacred2 has a huge potential on all international platforms.
Sacred 2 pc-version hold place 1 in the german gamecharts for five weeks during october 2008 and was granted several awards. By the end of 2008 over 100.000 copies were sold in germany, as well as over 400.000 copies worldwide, along with several top places in international pc charts.
The development of the sacred 2 playstation3 and xbox 360 versions were finished a few days ago. The necessary approvals have been given by sony and microsoft.
Both versions of sacred 2 Fallen Angel will hit the shelf by the end of may 2009.
At the moment the developers are working on a Sacred 2 PC Addon and on the development of the followup product Sacred3.

After four years of developing Sacred 2 Fallen Angel, Ascaron had to go into administration because further delays in development made it necessary .
Even with very high personal commitment of all Ascaron employees it was not possible to make up for this delay.
Ascaron Management already started negotiations with several well-known interested parties to discuss a friendly takeover.