Are there, perhaps, any Asheron's Call veterans around this forum? I use to play the MMO back in 2000 and 2001. In short, I loved the game, and I doubt there exists a game which I have enjoyed as much to this day. Asheron's Call (AC) was very unique. Every detail of the game seamlessly conformed to an utmost alluring and extraordinary fantasy theme, unlike any other. It didn't follow the depreciated "elves, trolls, dwarves, and dragons" cliche, but rather had it's own particular form of fantasy. AC had "Gromnies," the mysterious "Virindi," the simple-minded "Drudges," "Golems," the ever feared "Shadows," "Banderlings," "Sclavus," "Monougas," "Mattekars," the brutish, humanoid "Lugians," "Phyntos Wasps," and vast, countless other forms of inhabitants. All of these creatures resided in an enormous and seamless, 575 square mile large game-world known as "Dereth," a landmass extremely varied and mysterious. One could spend real-world days simply journeying afoot across its vast expanse of grasslands, forests, mires, deserts, beaches, rolling hills, mountaineous ridges, and snowy peaks (not to mention its seemingly unlimited magnitude of dungeons, catacombs, and caves), venturing about and perhaps stumbling upon unexplored areas. Each of the game's widespread locales had a particular atmosphere and dwelling of inhabitants. A newly arrived adventurer would find comfort in the relatively unscathed eastern territories of "Middle Osteth," harboring numerous consoling and populated towns of the likes of "Eastham" and "Cragstone," and with a wide variety of critters that gradually, but moderately grew more and more vicous the farther one distanced themselves from a trail. But those daring and battle-hardened could venture into the unexplored and feared "Direlands" in the distant west, where in the most ferocious and erratic creatures lingered and the refuge of fortress or commune did not exist for a hundred miles or more. Map A player had the choice of selecting one of three races, all of which were part of a congomerate "Isparian" race (essentially a human): The "Aluvians" (Caucasian), the "Gharu'ndim" (Negro), and the "Sho" (Asian), each of which had different inherent advantages, but which were generally insignificant in difference. In stark contrast to the "cookie-cutter" MMO's of today (IE: World of Warcraft), in Asheron's Call each and every player was unique. The facial customizations alone were so extensive one could go several years into the game without ever finding two players with the same set of characteristics (and there were different facial sets for each race), and this is not taking into consideration the varieties of skin tone, and hair color and style. Though, most importantly, not only were players defined unique in their appearance, but most especially in their player-defined attributes. The skill system is still probably the most extensive and well-designed out of all MMO's to date *1*, and there were so many forms of armor, weapons, gems, jewerly, clothing-attire, special-loot items, and other articles (5 years later, in this day and time, the item-set selection has likely doubled) that I do not believe I had ever come across a set of players who looked even remotely alike, or even two items that were exactly alike for that matter. Items were randomly generated in their appearance, worth, weight, color, special-affects, and usage-requirements upon defeating an adversary *2*. Overall, though, what I enjoyed most about this game was its challenge, longevity, and vastness, and this is the same area in which the game met its downfall. Early on in Asheron's Call (back when I played), it obliged at least two years or so to reach the maximum level--level 126. This estimation is solely for those who played in a mode of consistent hunting ("powerlevelers"), ignoring the many other features of the game, such as trading, questing, alchemy, spell research *3*, fishing, exploration, cooking, and "lore-research" *4*. In addition to these, one might also spend their pastime aside from hunting straightforwardly socializing with the wonderful community Asheron's Call had. AC's design encouraged socializing and cooperation between players of all levels, through certain personal benefits one could capitalize on. Aside from the obvious advantage of traveling in numbers, players who formed fellowships would be granted experience rewards. Likewise, the game touted a novel allegiance system, where in players could form patron/vassal relationships: Lower level players could swear allegiance to a higher level patron, in which they would thereafter become their vassal. The patron would be responsible for providing the vassal with items, knowledge, and personal assistance (all the while competing with the offers of other patrons), whereas they would personally receive a percentage of experience gained by the vassal in return. On the same token, Asheron's Call was just as suited to solo play as it was to cooperative. I know for a fact, as I personally enjoyed individualistic play in substitute to aggregate during my years. One was highly capable of perservering on their own means, not depending on the services of others. This was relatively more challenging, but, as a result, much more gratifying in the end--once accomplishing something. Though, this is not to say I never involved myself with others in AC. It's not often that you find an MMO in which a good portion of players have a friendly and non-rival decency about them, and a quality beyond a tiresome droning towards acheiving the highest level or finding the most popular, highest-experience hunting spots. For mellow players such as these (a good handlful of them were roleplayers), it would have probably taken much longer than two years to reach a high level like 126, but I do not believe such a feat was much of their concern. And, even so, the level cap did not have much significance *5*. This longetivity is one of the primary reasons I enjoyed Asheron's Call; the game seemed to never end. AC didn't necessitate a minuscule duration of two weeks to a month in order to "complete" the game, as is with many newer MMOs. And it was not as if level progression was a slow and tedious task without recompense. Had this been the case, there would have not been a point in dedicating so much time to the game in the first place. Rather, Asheron's Call was more of an adventure filled with much variety *6*, mystification *7*, and peculiarly random events *8*. And with the monthly content updates and live events the game received, in addition to the huge content base established at the release of the game, it would have been quite a feat (in other words, if you "have a life" outside of the game, outright impossible) to experience every bit of content the game offered to its players. But, alas, nothing this good could last for even a few years. The developers of Asheron's Call, insistent on ever improving their game, took to the likes of an aweful development scheme, in which they turned to their players for development/modification concepts. One might think this is a reasonable idea, but--as it turns out--players do not really know what they want. I can specifically remember the day when "Pyreals," Asheron's Call's form of ingame currency, became burdenless (Yes, characters were affected by the weight of items, depending on the level of their strength attribute). At first, this was a change that I didn't think much of. It was welcoming in that my character's movement was much faster, but, at the same time, it was surprisingly disapointing not having to worry about storing or carrying pyreals and my other various items strategically. I was oblivious to the motives of such a decision, and I didn't bother questioning them at the time as I had figured they were insignificant. Little did I know that this was the beginning of a whole slew of gameplay-altering changes that would ruin Asheron's Call. The next thing I knew, portals leading to virtually everywhere in the game were emerging all about the world of Dereth. Players had complained of needing to travel on foot to various locations in the game, and the developers--ignorant to the consequences--acted accordingly. Had they simply pondered the fact that eliminating any bit of necessary on-foot travel would render all of the inbetween land masses useless and entirely desolate, and dismiss all prospects of the once natural adventure that occurred in between such areas, I doubt they would have considered such decisions. I can recall traveling in fellowships across the huge Dereth landmass, depending on one another for "survival." It was quite an experience to say the least. But now all it took was one step into a swirling-portal and I was immediately at my intended destination. It was simply a shortcut to the prize; there was now no journey involved, and the "journey" or challenge--to many people's ignorance--is what makes a game fun. It was only a matter of time before other decisions and modifications of the same blazons arised. Players decided the extremely unique and intriguing spell research system*3* was only a nuisance, resolving that all spells should simply be bought at an NPC in the form of scrolls available in all towns. Persistent spell durations, previously lasting between five and eight minutes, uniformily began lasting twenty to even thirty minutes. The usage of ingame plugins were condoned, and as such "buff bots," non-player assisted "bots"--controlled by cleverly designed macros--offered all characters augmentations unintended for their rank, allowing them to hunt in areas not nearly intended for their level (this resulted in overly fast-paced character progression and unchallenging experience acquisition. Buff Bots are now treated as an ingrained "part of the game," and all new players are sadly encouraged to use them). "Double-Experience" weekends were introduced at whim if there was any sort of downtime (as the players could use this as an excuse). Drop rates of once rare items now surfaced on every other corpse. Many other miscellaneous and once challenging features of the game followed suit, and would either removed or castrated like the others. It was about this time that I left the game. As a result of all these nonsensical changes, the game had become rather boring and monotonous. There is no entertainment in obtaining a reward if there is no effort involved to obtain it. Three years after, I returned for a day or two to see what had become of the game, and it was even worse than before. Instead of the steady, yet enthralling leveling pace of two years to reach the highest level, give or take a few months, one could reach level 126 in a mere month or two--less if you were experienced in AC. As a result, 80% of the game's unique and classic content--of which had been designed for the previous gradual progression--could now be rushed through quite instantly. Much of the "hunting" areas, dungeons, quests, exploration, and great experiences once occurring in this content might as well have been removed. Pyreals, formerly having substantial value, were now a common place in that they dropped excessively on all creatures, and in that loot sold from creatures was amended with extravagant payback (whereas the price of items sold hardly changed). It was as if the developers really believed there was some merit behind the thoughtless rants of complainers, as though there was some public good beyond their obviously selfish intents to simply augment their alter egos. And from all of this, probably the worst of all changes transpired within the community: the Unattended Combat Macro (UCM). Expectedly, Asheron's Call--a once intriguing, immensily fun, and challenging game--had become boring. As a result, players decided that if the game was not fun, then why play it at all? In fact, why not simply run a program that would play the game for me, allowing me to continually advance 24 hours a day, without any effort? So, nowadays (as I hear anyways), 50% of the active population on each server is not actually "active," but more or less just some script repeating itself in a far off dungeon. Knowing what the game had once been, and what its further potential could have been, it is really sad to hear the cries of new players consistently complaining on the Asheron's Call forums about never once seeing another player in all their time in the game. It is estimated that there is about 150-250 players active, half of which are bots, on each of the 7 AC servers at high times. I can personally recall when the active server population rarely dipped below 1,800 on every server. 'Tis a sad story. *1*(In the year and a half that I played, there were more than 30 skills to choose from, including but definitely not limited to such things as "War Magic," "Missile Defense," "Life Magic," "Cooking," "Dagger," "Staff," "Archery," "Alchemy," "Arcane Lore," "Jump," "Deception," "Mana Conversion," "Unarmed Combat," "Sword," "Run," and on and on. The player had the option of training or--in a further advancement to training--"specializing" in any of these skills, depending on how they utilized their "skill-credits," and, afterwards, spending experience on whatever they preferred accordingly. In addition, the player was given "attributes," a base form of stats (in a different category than the skills system) which encompassed such things as "Strength," "Endurance," "Focus," "Coordination," "Health," "Quickness," and so on. All of these decisions based around XP and skill credit allocation affected how your character would turn out--not just in the beginning of the game, but all throughout. Your decisions affected, for example, further experience costs, special-items requirements, and such. There wasn't simply a "Sorcerer" class where every other "Sorcerer" was virtually the same character as your "Sorcerer," give or take a few minor differences. You were completely unique.) *2*(In addition, and most interestingly, recently I heard the developers introduced a "Rares" system, in which each player has the capacity to receive a randomly dropped "rare" loot item belonging to one of seven or so tiers of rares. The higher end tiers of rares, albiet quite hard to attain, are completely unique in the game, meaning they have entirely custom-designed models and special abilities, solely attainable by one player.) *3*(Initially, the role of a mage was quite novel in Asheron's Call. There were seven tiers of spells attainable in the game, and additional levels would render themselves usable as you progressed in a specific profession. From what I can recall, of these seven levels, for each of the magical professions of "Life Magic," "Creature Enchantment," "War Magic," and "Item Enchantment," there existed a vast collection of spells. Most were uniform across each of the seven levels in their type and affect, simply growing stronger and lasting for longer durations at higher levels (For instance, there was a "Flamebolt IV," "Flamebolt V," "Flame Arc IV," Flame Streak IV," "Frost Bolt VI," etc"). But there were so many variations and types--probably amounting to several hundred, and each had a tactical use. Far from generic or boring on there own, these spells were supplemented by special sets of entirely unique forms of spells, each of which had individualistic affects and animations. For every spell in the game, there existed "spell components" which would need to be combined in order to cast and learn a spell, and this is where "Spell Research" came into play. The spell components that founded these spells took the form of "Scarabs," "Herbs," "Powdered Gems," "Alchemical Substances," "Talismans," and "Tapers," each of which was compromized of a group of several dozen variations. Some types were extremely rare and valuable--naturally needed for higher-end, powerful spells, others were simply commonplace, and many were somewhere inbetween. Following a formal pattern of combination, the player would need to test combinations of components in order to contrive spells. The combinations for each of these spells were unique for every player, so one could not simply divulge their entire spellbook to their fellow. In addition, spells could also be learned by spell scrolls found in loot, though higher end ones were naturally rare. *4*(The game had its own arrangement of extremly extensive lore and story, in which players could attain texts and valuable information in the form of books, scripts, tomes, or straightforward NPC-communication, revealing the hidden facts about Dereth and its history/mysteries. Such findings might disclose secret quests, the whereabouts of a scroll for some unique and powerful spell, the appropriate combinations of extraordinary or seemingly useless loot in order to form some peculiar item, the secretive dwellings of a certain horribly powerful and legendary monster, or perhaps the lore divulged would simply be another piece of Dereth's expansive puzzle of history.) *5*(The level cap did not have much significance anyways, beyond the fact that one couldn't attain additional skill credits used in training new skills; you could still increase your skills and attributes with experience gained afterwards.) *6*(For instance, there were hundreds of different grounds of exploration and hunting. So many that even with the 120,000 large player-base in the game's peak, many far-off areas--aside from the popular and ever-changing hunting locales--were often almost or altogether abandoned, which would evoke a sort of mystical feeling of adventure--not knowing what might be around the next bend of a cavern wall or what treasure may have existed in a chest at the depths of some dungeon.) *7*(Often throughout Asheron's Call's history, developers of the game would hint at the fact that they would secretly implement much content kept disclosed from the regularly released patch's feature list. And indeed they did, as such peculiarities would emerge regularly. According to developer chats, even to this day--in addition to normaly adding such curiousities--some content back from the early 2000's has yet to be discovered.) *8*(I can recall such spontaneous events as monsters, having defeated several players, leveling far past their base level, becoming quite powerful of foes, or random raids of 30 or so of a certain creature on some town, for example.)
