Asheron's Call

Asheron's Call
Boxart
Developer(s)	Turbine Entertainment Software
Publisher(s)	Microsoft (1999–2004); Turbine (2004– )
Designer(s)	Toby Ragaini, Eri Izawa, Chris Pierson, Chris Foster
Engine	Turbine Engine 1.0
Platform(s)	Windows
Release date(s)	November 2, 1999
Genre(s)	MMORPG
Mode(s)	Multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: T (Teen)
Media/distribution	CD-ROM
System requirements Intel Pentium CPU, 32 MB RAM, DirectX 7, Internet access

Asheron's Call (AC) is a fantasy MMORPG for Microsoft Windows-based PCs developed and published by Turbine Entertainment. It was published by Microsoft until 2004. Asheron's Call is set on the continent of Dereth and its surrounding islands on the fictional planet of Auberean. The game is played in a large, seamless 3D world that can be occupied by thousands of players at a time. Released on November 2, 1999 it was the third major MMORPG to be released^[1][2] and was developed at the same time as Ultima Online and Everquest.^[3] After initial success its subscription numbers dropped as newer MMORPGs moved into the market. Its servers are still online over ten years after launch.

Gameplay

Set in a heroic-fantasy world^[3] Asheron's Call allows players to create a character, or avatar from one of six (as of March 2010 Event) in-game races. The player initially allocates a limited number of attribute points (such as 'Strength', 'Coordination', and 'Quickness') and selects skills (such as 'Unarmed Combat', 'War Magic' and 'Melee Defense') for the character, with those base skills starting at a level determined by the character's attributes. Unlike many other games of the genre characters are not locked into a specific class, and can even reallocate previously selected skills to acquire other skills later in the game.

Gameplay involves earning experience points through a variety of activities, including engaging and defeating monsters in combat, fulfilling quests, and interacting with NPCs. Those earned experience points can then be invested to improve the character's abilities by spending it on attributes or skills. Additional skill points are awarded after the character reaches certain levels, and these skill points can then be used to acquire a new skill. In addition to earning experience, questing and combat yields 'loot', such as armor, weapons, health potions, and spell scrolls. Many types of loot can be improved or imbued with special spells and effects via Asheron's Call's 'tinkering' crafting system.

It offers "episodic narrative content, period new quests, and events that visibly affect the entire world.^[3]

Unlike most other games of the genre that draw upon existing fantasy fiction, most of Asheron's Call's creatures are original, unique creatures. Instead of elves and goblins there are the insect-like Olthoi, the cat-like humanoid Drudges, the giant grey-skinned humanoid Lugians and the reptilian Sclavus, to name a few.

Many elements of Asheron's Call are radically different from most other MMORPGs. For example, Asheron's Call does not divide its world into different level zones. While some areas are much more dangerous to players than others, there is nonetheless a mix of different creatures types that creates much more unpredictability than is present in other games. Another key difference is that Asheron's Call does not use character level as the major determinant in the outcome of a combat. Level simply determines what skills are available, and it is the skills and equipment of players and creatures that determine the outcome. Whereas in many games a player will be able to move a cursor over an opponent and instantly know from their level whether they will be successful in combat, in Asheron's Call a character might be able to defeat much higher level foes or lose to much lower level ones, again depending upon one's skill choices and equipment. As with the absence of specific level zones, this creates a higher degree of unpredicatability than in most games of this type.

The game's currency is the Pyreal. It is an alloy of precious metals found on Auberean combined in some ratio with pure mana. Pyreal is also the chief constituent of the powerful Atlan weapons, named for Asheron's father, their inventor.

Game World

The world itself is large at over 500 square miles (1,300 km²).^[4]. Unlike many other games in the genre, there are no zones. This means players can cross the world on foot without loading screens or invisible barriers and any terrain that can be seen in the distance was a real object in the world. It also had a much longer viewing distance then other games of the time, with mountains, bodies of water and other terrain being visible long before it was actually approached.

The world was also dotted with a system of one-way portals which expedited travel. Knowing the location and destination of the portals, as well of lifestones, was of vital strategic importance - especially on the Darktide server, where allegiances battled each other constantly for dominance over lucrative hunting zones and trading cities.

Apart from the seamless surface world, some of the portals also led to intricate dungeons. Many of the dungeons were part of quests containing unique treasures. Dungeons were often much more difficult to navigate then the surface world. They included dizzying labyrinths of passageways in which it was possible to get lost or cut off from your adventuring group, trapped in pits due to missing difficult jumps, stuck behind locked doors, or simply surrounded and overwhelmed by beasts. Some doors required keys. Others had series of levers to open doors which required group teamwork and timing to run or jump through.

Combat system

Players attune themselves to lifestones. Upon losing all of their health players will be resurrected at the last lifestone they attuned themselves to, having lost half their pyreals, one or more valuable items, and temporarily losing a certain percentage of their primary and secondary statistics due what is known as a "vitae penalty".^[5] The resurrected player may then go to the place the death occurred and recover the item(s) and pyreals from his or her corpse. If killed by another player the victor is allowed to take the dropped items from the vanquished player. The vitae penalty is removed by gaining a small amount of experience.

Player Killers, also known as PKs, are players who have chosen to change their status to enable them to attack other PKs in Player vs Player combat. On most servers players by default are prevented from attacking each other and must change their status to allow themselves to become PKs. One server, however, is completely PK; players are able to attack each other at will and cannot remove their PK status on Darktide.

Allegiance system

Asheron's Call features a unique allegiance and fealty system that creates formal links between players and rewards cooperative play.^[3] A player of a lower level can swear allegiance to a player of a higher level, becoming a vassal of a patron. The patron earns a small percentage of the experience the vassal makes, while the vassal is motivated to seek a patron exchange for money, items, or protection.^[6] In the words of one reviewer: "At worst, the allegiance system is a multilevel marketing scheme, whereby greedy, uncaring Patrons enlist as many Vassals as possible in order to gain large amounts of bonus experience. But at best, the allegiance system can provide a tightly knit companionship for players genuinely interested in helping others and developing an organized assembly."^[7] Players may also join together in fellowships, temporarily splitting the experience they gain amongst themselves.^[6]

Magic system

The magic system as originally designed was far more complicated than in any other such game, with specific formulae for each spell that the caster had to discover through painful trial and error. While this had the original effect of making magic challenging and somewhat rare, this element disappeared with the introduction of third party programs that would compute one's spell formulae without most of the experimentation. The system of spell components was later phased out and replaced with a simpler system wherein magic casters would carry a "foci" for each of the magic schools they were trained in (creature, item, life and war) and a series of taper candles and scarabs. Each spell is learned from a scroll, either purchased or found as treasure. The old system was left in the game as an alternative, but spell research was eliminated and most players quickly adapted to the new system.

The four magic schools allows players to alter nearly any stat in the game. War Magic offers projectile-based attacks that bypass a player or creature's base armor stats and come in the form of all three physical attacks (piercing, slashing and bludgeoning) and all four elemental attack types (acid, lightning, fire and frost). War also features multiple types of each attack, including arcing projectiles, wall spells and extremely quick blasts, which are more difficult to dodge. Creature Magic allows a player to alter skill stats and attributes, both on themselves and on others. Life Magic allows for heals and direct damage drains, as well as spells which made creatures or players more resistant or vulnerable to the seven attack types. Item Magic allows players to alter the physical properties of armor and weapons. It also includes portal magic, which allows the summoning of teleportation portals to a limited number of other locations. Due to the vast size of the Asheron's Call world, portal magic became viewed as nearly essential to gameplay by the vast majority of players.

Upon its launch, Asheron's Call also featured a Spell Economy system which, coupled with the game's complex spell-learning process, caused early players to jealously guard the formulas to the spells. The Spell Economy looked at the global use of each spell and made more commonly cast spells less effective, making it a wise move to protect lesser known spells. This system was removed from the game after the release of "Split Pea", a third party program which allowed players to instantly figure out the progression of spell components.

Crafting system

Asheron's Call features a dynamic crafting system that has evolved over the years. The four major crafting skills, Alchemy, Cooking, Fletching, and tinkering, are interrelated; items created using one skill can often be utilized by the other skills to create advanced items.

Alchemy

Characters can create many useful items using the Alchemy skill. They can create special oils that can be used to imbue missiles with oils that increase damage or bypass certain types of armor and resistance. They can create gems that increase resistances to different types of damage. Alchemists can create infusions that can be applied to food items to increase the amount of stamina recovered, or recover health or mana.^[8] Alchemy also can be used to brew potions that increase health, mana and stamina.

Fletching

Players with the fletching skill can create arrows, bolts and darts for use in bows, crossbows, and atlatls.

Cooking

By using the cooking skill players can create a wide variety of foods. Those foods can be combined with oils to increase health, mana and stamina. Cooking is also used to apply various dyes to armor and clothing.

Tinkering

Players can enhance Armor, Weapons, and Items with a process called tinkering. Unwanted items can be salvaged for raw materials and those materials can be applied to other items to augment the player's attributes or imbue special abilities to weapons to increase their effectiveness.

Third party software

Asheron's Call is also known for its friendly stance toward third-party software, particularly Decal, which allows the creation of gameplay-altering plug-ins. At first, plug-ins were only used by the most computer-savvy players, and were well guarded between allegiances. Several public 'macros' eventually became an extremely popular and defining point of Asheron's Call, such as unattended combat macros and buff bots. Using a bot script for unattended combat is highly frowned upon and will result in either a temporary or permanent ban.^[9][10]

Synopsis

Setting

The story of Asheron’s Call spans across several worlds and thousands of years. The primary worlds in the story are Ispar, the world from which the human characters that players play originated on, and Auberean, the world where Dereth, a tiny island and setting for the game, is located.

Auberean and the Empyreans

The history of Auberean spans back 35,000^[11] to 40,000^[12] years. A race of beings known as the Empyreans dominated the world for most of its history. They were tall slender humanoids with lifespans of 1,000 years^[13] and were divided into several cultures including Falatacot, Dericost, Haebrous, and Yalaini. These cultures had many conflicts over the years, but eventually the Seaborne Empire of the Yalaini became the dominant society.

Asheron Realaidain and Bael'Zharon

Asheron Realaidain, a Yalaini and member of the royal family, was born approximately 2,500 years prior to the game's release,^[11] where the story starts for players. Shortly after his birth, a war begins between the Yalaini people and an army of Shadows, creatures of darkness and chaos, led by Bael'Zharon, the Hopeslayer. The war with the Shadows lasted over 500 years^[11] and the Yalaini were nearly defeated, having been pushed back to the island of Dereth. Asheron and the Yalaini council of five mages were able to defeat Bael'Zharon through the arts of planar magic - magic pertaining to the planes of existence and the space in between them known as portal space. Using a crystal array, the council was able to seal Bael'Zharon in another plane. The sealing caused a great explosion, and all members of the council were killed. Asheron survived, protected by Falatacot Blood rites performed by his mother and a Falatacot-blooded 'witch' named Adja, just prior to the explosion.

With Bael'zharon banished, the Shadow armies retreated and the Yalaini people were saved.

Yalaini Exploration, the Olthoi, and the Sundering

After the defeat of Bael'Zharon, Asheron continued to research planar magic. Eventually, the Yalaini mastered this art of magic and were able to use it to create portals from one location to another. They used these portals to explore all of Auberean, and eventually began exploring other worlds, including the home world of humans known as Ispar.

In their explorations, the Yalaini came to a world dominated by numerous giant insect species. One of these species were known as the Olthoi. The first encounter with the Olthoi resulted in the death of one of the explorers and nearly the death of Asheron. The world would have been left alone, but the Emperor of the Yalaini demanded that Olthoi be brought back for research and possibly used as weapons for the empire. This action, along with the mistake of a wizard named Gaerlan, would be the doom of the Yalaini.

An Olthoi queen was brought back, and soon the other test subjects began to respond to her commands. Eventually, the olthoi broke loose and the Queen began to breed. The wizard Gaerlan had not properly closed a portal to the Olthoi's world, and countless more Olthoi were able to pour into Auberean and serve the captured Queen.

The Yalaini fought a losing war with the Olthoi for many years. Though the Yalaini were masters of magic, the Olthoi had the unique ability to weaken the flow of mana, reducing the power of the Yalaini's spells to nothing. After 100 years,^[11] all surviving Yalaini were pushed back to the island of Dereth. After almost 80 years^[11] on Dereth, one single Olthoi Queen arrived on the island and began to breed.

With their last place of safety invaded, the remaining Yalaini retreated from the world. Asheron and his disciples cast a powerful planar magic spell known as The Sundering, which sent the Yalaini people into portal space in a state of stasis. After sending his disciples in as well, Asheron retreated to the last place of safety - his castle on a small island - and alone began working on a way to defeat the Olthoi.

Arrival of the Humans and the Olthoi Rebellion

More than 500 years^[11] had passed since Asheron sent his people away when the first humans arrived on Dereth, drawn there from their homeworld of Ispar by mysterious portals that seemed to almost beckon them to enter. The first Isparians to arrive were the Aluvians, in the year later known as P.Y. (Portal Year) -15. The Aluvians arrived in a ruined world ruled by the Olthoi. These humans were quickly enslaved by the Olthoi, forced to work in their catacombs preparing the fungus soup that the insects use to nourish their young.

The enslaved people were not content to live in constant fear in the dark tunnels of the Olthoi for the rest of their lives. Many tried to escape. Few survived for long, but one band of escaped slaves did. They were led by the warrior Thorsten Cragstone.

Cragstone's band helped rescue other escaped slaves and provided some safety. One of these slaves was Elysa Strathelar, the daughter of a scribe. After rescuing Elysa, the rebels were chased by the Olthoi. They eventually found safety on a small island on a lake, the water forming a barrier between them and the insects. On this island, they discovered the ruins of an Empyrean catacomb, which came to be known as the Underground City. In the city, Elysa found Empyrean texts which she deciphered enough of to learn of Asheron and the location of his castle.

Leaving the safety of their island, Thorsten and Elysa went in search of Asheron. Elysa gained access to his tower and confronted the wizard. Asheron had spent his many years alone developing a poison that was deadly to the Olthoi. Seeing the harm he had placed the Aluvians in, he gave Elysa the poison and told her to kill the Queen.

Elysa, Thorsten, and the rebels, armed with poison coated weapons, assaulted the hive of the Olthoi Queen. With an Olthoi-slaying arrow, Elysa killed the Queen, but not before Thorsten had been impaled by the Queen's deadly pincers. Without the commands of the Queen the Olthoi went into confusion, the Aluvian people were liberated, and human civilization began to grow on Dereth.

The death of the Queen came to be known as the beginning of the Portal Year Calendar, P.Y. 0. After the liberation, Gharu'ndim and Sho, two other cultures from Ispar, also began to arrive on Dereth. During the end of P.Y. 10, a new surge of arrivals swept into Dereth.

Characters

Players originally entered Dereth as one of three races: the Aluvians, the Sho, and the Gharu'ndim. It has been updated to include Viamontians too. As of April, 2010, Shadows are also a playable race. Since then, Empyreans, Gearknights Olthoi and Tumerok have also been added as playable races.

Plot

The story for players began in Portal Year 10. Through the game's monthly updates the story unfolds. Not only do players experience the current events of the world, but as the months go on and they explore, they learn much about the past. Several monthly updates build upon each other, forming a story arc. Each story arc usually lasts around one year.

Development/Production

AC was developed by Turbine Entertainment Software and published by Microsoft. It had a multimillion dollar development budget.^[14] It was designed by Toby Ragaini (lead designer), Chris Foster, Eri Izawa, and Chris Pierson.^[15] The development team consisted of 30+ full-time developers, including 6 artists, 4 game designers, 15 software engineers and 5 QA testers.^[14]

Critical development software included Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0, Visual SourceSafe 5.0, Lightwave 5.5, and Photoshop 4.0^[14] Asheron's Call uses Microsoft SQL Server for persistent game data.^{[citation needed]}

Asheron's Call was technically innovative for its time. It did not use zoning, a technique of partitioning the game world into zones that ran on different computers on a cluster. This caused delay when moving between zones. Instead Asheron's Call had a single seamless world. It used dynamic load balancing to determine which computer in the cluster controlled which location area. If one area became overpopulated and sluggish control of part of that location would pass to another computer with a lighter load.^[16]

The finished product contained approximately 2 million lines of code.^[14]

Asheron's Call took 40 months plus 8 months of beta to complete.^[14] It was originally scheduled to ship during the fourth quarter of 1997.^[14] Production was delayed over a year because of the inexperience of the production team.^[15]

On launch there were six servers available. These were Frostfell, Harvestgain, Leafcull, Morningthaw, Thistledown, and one player-killer server, Darktide. Servers added later were Solclaim, Verdantine, and Wintersebb.

Asheron's Call allows computers to use either 3D or software graphics acceleration.^[4]

Marketing and release

Asheron's Call launched nine months after Everquest^[15] on November 2, 1999. After its release Asheron's Call had 80,000 players by the end of its first year.^[16] By the end of 2000 its subscription rate was third behind Ultima Online and Everquest, with 90,000 subscribers from 200,000 box sales.^[16] While neither Turbine nor Microsoft have been forthcoming in releasing exact subscription counts, it is believed that Asheron's Call peaked in popularity in early 2002 at about 120,000 accounts and has since dropped to below 10,000.^[17] Dark Age of Camelot had 200,000 subscribers in May 2002, taking Asheron's Call's spot as third most popular virtual world.^[18]

In December 2003, Turbine purchased the rights to the Asheron's Call franchise from Microsoft and assumed full responsibility for content development, customer service, billing and marketing in 2004.^[19]

In order to play Asheron's Call, one must first purchase the game or download the two week free trial. Asheron's Call is a subscription service with a monthly fee of $12.95. Discounts are available for multi-month subscriptions.^[20]

Retail version

Monthly content

The Asheron's Call franchise is unique in providing complimentary monthly content updates and "Events" that added new quests, skills, landmasses, monsters, gameplay dynamics and bug fixes for all subscribers. Epic storylines link multiple episodes to form distinct "story arcs".

Expansions

The first expansion, Dark Majesty, was released in 2001. A second expansion, Throne of Destiny, which includes a graphics upgrade, new player race and new landmass was released on July 18, 2005. In addition to the expansion packs, the in-game story is advanced by monthly updates, which introduce new quests and gameplay dynamics as part of the subscription package.^[21] Both expansions include the full version of the game.

Reception

Asheron's Call received generally positive reviews from critics. On the review aggregator Game Rankings, the game received an average score of 81% based on 26 reviews.^[22] On Metacritic, the game received an average score of 81 out of 100, based on 15 reviews.^[23]

Asheron's Call appealed to explorers and people who appreciated story arcs.^[24]

Awards

• CNET's Gamecenter Best RPG award for 1999.
• Gameindustry.com: 1999 Best all around game.
• Gamezilla: Editor's choice for best online/multiplayer title 1999
• Gamersvoice: 1999 Gamer's Choice Award in the category of "best online/multiplayer game"

See also

• Asheron's Call 2
• Dungeons and Dragons Online
• Lord of the Rings Online

Notes

1. ^ Asheron's Call Game Review at mmohut.com
2. ^ Asheron's Call at GameIndustry.com
3. ^ ^{a b c d} Grossman 2003, p. 299
4. ^ ^{a b} "Features". Asheron's Call. Turbine. 2005-2008. http://ac.turbine.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=34&Itemid=64&NavItemid=56. Retrieved April 10, 2010. 
5. ^ "Gameplay". Asheron's Call. Turbine. 2005-2008. http://ac.turbine.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=35&Itemid=66&NavItemid=56. Retrieved April 10, 2010. 
6. ^ ^{a b} Fullerton, 2008, p. 284
7. ^ Asheron's Call for PC Review - PC Asheron's Call Review
8. ^ "Introduction: Basic Tradeskills". AC Vault. IGN Entertainment Inc.. December 29, 2004. http://acvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Guidebooks.Detail&id=27. Retrieved October 14, 2009. 
9. ^ Turbine.com
10. ^ Archive.org
11. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Asheron's Call Community Wiki - Timeline of Auberean
12. ^ Stormwaltz Developer Quote - On Historical Outline
13. ^ Stormwaltz Developer Quote - The Historical Overview
14. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Grossman 2003, p. 300
15. ^ ^{a b c} Bartle 2004, p. 27
16. ^ ^{a b c} Bartle 2004, p. 28
17. ^ Mmogchart.com
18. ^ Bartle 2004, p. 29
19. ^ Gamespot.com
20. ^ "Asheron's Call multi-month subscription.". Turbine. http://ac.turbine.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=466. Retrieved 2009-12-29. 
21. ^ Ac.turbine.com
22. ^ "Asheron's Call Reviews". Game Rankings. http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/188393.asp. Retrieved 2008-04-04. 
23. ^ "Asheron's Call (pc: 1999): Reviews". Metacritic. http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/pc/asheronscall. Retrieved 2008-04-04. 
24. ^ Bartle 2004, p. 147

References

• Bartle, Richard (2004). Designing Virtual Worlds. New Riders. ISBN 0-1310-1816-7. 
• Fullerton, Tracey; Swain, Christopher and Hoffman, Steven (2008). Game design workshop: a playcentric approach to creating innovative games. Morgan Kaufmann. pp. 470. ISBN 9780240809748. http://books.google.com/books?id=OjIYWtqWxtAC&dq. 
• Grossman, Austin (2003). Postmortems from Game Developers. Focal Press. ISBN 1578202140. http://books.google.com/books?id=tQVJEpgoiIwC. 

Further reading

• Herz, J.C. (February 26, 1998). "GAME THEORY; Subtleties of Governing a Virtual World". The New York Times (New York, New York). http://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/26/technology/game-theory-subtleties-of-governing-a-virtual-world.html. Retrieved October 13, 2009. 
• Laber, Emily (January 11, 2001). "Men Are From Quake, Women Are From Ultima". The New York Times (New York, New York). http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/11/technology/men-are-from-quake-women-are-from-ultima.html. Retrieved October 13, 2009. 
• Kushner, David (March 7, 2002). "So What, Exactly, Do Online Gamers Want?". The New York Times (New York, New York). http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/07/technology/so-what-exactly-do-online-gamers-want.html. Retrieved October 13, 2009. 
• Kushner, David (July 11, 2002). "Multiplayer Game Servers Provide Worlds of Fun". The New York Times (New York, New York). http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/11/technology/circuits/11HOWW.html. Retrieved October 13, 2009. ^{[dead link]}
• Vorderer, Peter; Jennings Bryant (2006). Playing Video Games: Motives, Responses, and Consequences. Routledge. ISBN 0805853219. http://books.google.com/books?id=sl-Hjf-gMyUC. 

External links

• Asheron's Call official website
• Asheron's Call Community Wiki, an external wiki