Don't know how many of those left here played the game, but Asheron's Call was the first MMORPG I really got into and really the only one I actually factually really got into. And this was back while Massassi was still in its prime and I was still on dialup!!! Anyway, I saw an announcement on Blue's News that they are killing AC1 and AC2 at the end of January. I tried EverQuest, EQII, World of Warcraft, City of Heroes (which I played more than others but not as much as AC), AC2, Ryzom, and some others I forgot, but none of them compared to Asheron's Call for me. Of course, as time went on and players left, the game got worse, but meh, it was awesome while it lasted.

I haven't played it but I remember people here discussing it. My first MMORPG was EverQuest, followed by Dark Age of Camelot, & later World of Warcraft. I played the latter two for approximately a year or so, the latter of which approximately half of that time was during beta. I eventually stopped playing MMORPGs because they were addictive & ain't nobody got time for dat.

I don't blame WB for wanting to shut down Asheron's Call. It wasn't making money.

I do blame WB for reneging on their promise to release private player-run servers. That is something they have promised for years, starting before Asheron's Call went F2P, and I know for a fact that it convinced people to re-buy or re-subscribe (I was one of them). I'm sure what they did isn't bait-and-switch, at least in a legal sense, but it's still a supremely ****ty thing to do to their customers.

And I don't buy games from companies that do supremely ****ty things.

So you don't buy games? -_-

It was a great game fifteen years ago -- there's been nothing like it, as far as I know. I wish that other game developers had been influenced by it more when they built more recent generations of MMORPGs. I didn't play very many of them (read: any of them), but it seemed that after WoW, developers stopped experimenting with the possibilities of the genre, and instead tried to reproduce WoW's success by slavishly copying its mechanics.

Those first few story arcs were truly epic. But the grind became unbearably monotonous.

There's always CD Projekt.

Most companies don't abuse their customers.

Worst part is, WoW is an AC2 clone. The AC devs aren't just responsible for making one MMORPG monotonous, they're responsible for making all of them that way.

I could complain for months about everything AC got wrong and why it was a terrible MMORPG. The punitive, dysfunctional multiplayer. The tightly level-bounded quests and dungeons. The content updates aimed exclusively for outspoken, ultra high-level players, leaving 99% of the game content completely inaccessible to 99% of the player base. The ******* devs who snuck in grind dungeons and destroyed PvE play trying to give their Darktide melee mains an unfair advantage. Dumb bull**** world changes that either made the game too frustrating to play or too physically uncomfortable to play. Retiring unbalanced event items instead of fixing them, leaving all new/returning/casual players at a permanent disadvantage, and never able to enjoy certain content.

The one thing AC got right was the scenario. The premise was interesting, the setting was completely original, and the developers did a lot of work to make the world feel mysterious and worth exploring. Asheron's Call would have been a vastly superior single player game.

The best thing for me about AC was how big it was. It always felt like there was something more. If I logged on and had friends online, we'd just pick a direction and go. We'd always find new and fun places to explore. Eventually we were led to places that were "popular" to grind or hunt for quest items. That was fine, but I didn't spend a lot of time there, only enough time to get the items. Then off to a new place. We walked most everywhere, at least the first few times. If nobody I knew was on I'd just pick somewhere I hadn't been before and go that way. I'd generally run into someone else out there exploring and we'd stick together. Tons of fun. I also liked how all the settings and beasts were different. Not elves, goblins, rats, etc. Maybe I never got to a high enough level to care about all that stuff you complained about, I dunno.

Wow, I never played AC, but your reminiscences almost make me wish I had!

I always get a weird feeling when an MMO shuts down, even if I haven't played them at all. People forming friendships, going on adventures, having random antics. Entire communities around them, with players leaving their mark in some kind of way. All of that just goes poof. A weird feeling indeed, even though I never got into very many MMOs. Most of them felt like WoW clones, and thus boring and monotonous. Never actually played AC.

Yeah I know what you mean. It's even worse when it's a game I played and enjoyed. City of Heroes was bad for me, too, because I loved the character creation and I wanted my son to have a chance to try it. When he was finally old enough and I went to try it I found out the game was gone and I was bent. At least I got to play as much of the game as I wanted. The thing is, with old games like Jedi Knight and Zelda, we can pretty much go back and get all nostalgic whenever we want right? As long as we can get the game to run anyway. With these MMOs or games with MP that had central servers or games with ****ty always on DRM where the servers got shut down, the games just die. You can never go back. It's definitely a weird feeling. It's actually sort of getting that way for NES and SNES games for me nowadays because although I still have my old consoles they don't actually function correctly with my HDTVs. I guess there is some adapter I can buy to get them to work though. But apparently games with battery packs are finally dying so I have to break out the soldering iron and risk permanently killing my gold zelda to play it anymore. Bleck.

/me breaks out the retro console knowledge

Brian, it's basically my job to find ways to keep old consoles working these days (literally). Here's your options:

1. Just plug composite into a TV. It'll look like **** and lag pretty badly, but most TVs these days will handle it. Older HDTVs had really poor filtering that would make it unplayable, but newer ones do a ... better job. Make sure to enable Game Mode on the TV to reduce lag as much as possible.
2. If all you want is better video quality, HD Retrovision's RGB->Component cables do a bang up job. They're available for SNES (which works on a modded NES as well) and Genesis. They do require a TV that handles 240p component though, so do research first.
3. The Framemeister is a good all-around solution that will convert just about anything into a VERY good HDMI output. It introduces extremely little lag (usually 1 frame depending on settings), which is good because TVs aren't nearly as fast at converting these signals. So a slow TV will benefit massively. Downsides are that it's expensive, and any game that regularly switches resolutions will be annoying, as the device goes black for 2-3 seconds while it resyncs. Almost all NES, Genesis, SNES games do not switch resolutions often, though. Also note that the quality you get out of it is totally dependent on what you feed it. If you give it a composite cable, it's not going to look amazing. S-video is MUCH better and cables are easy to find on eBay. RGB/component is the top of the line, but harder to obtain cables for. Not impossible, just harder. NES will need a mod to do anything other than composite.
4. The coup-de-grace for scaling to HD (HDMI) is the OSSC (Open Source Scan Converter). It's very new, well engineered, but rough around the edges. It's stand-out feature is being able to take damn near anything and convert it to 720p or 480p flawlessly, without even a full frame of lag. It also handles resolution switches dramatically faster. However, it only supports RGB and Component input. For SNES and Genesis, this is as easy as buying a cable off eBay. But for NES, you'll need a fairly involved mod (or a pre-modded NES). It also only handles video, with audio either bypassing the unit entirely, or a passthru addon installed. If you do go this route though, there's nothing that's higher quality. Output from this device often resembles PC emulation levels of sharpness with zero stutter or other issues.

Edit: Forgot the ultimate option for the true nerd:

Don't use an HDTV. CRTs are massive and heavy, yes. But they absolutely do the best job. And better yet, you can get a CRT like the Sony PVM monitors that will make the games look way better than they ever did as a kid. Some are pretty "small" as well, so you don't lose an entire room to it. The PVM and their like support just about everything analog, including composite, s-video, component (480p max usually) and pure RGB. The better you give it the better it looks, although honestly ANYTHING other than composite looks damn good.

As for the batteries, honestly, they're super easy to replace. Unless you're stabbing the battery with the iron trying to turn it into a Samsung Note 7, it's not going to be damaged. And if you really want to fix the problem for good, you can desolder the old battery terminals and replace them with a battery holder, allowing easy replacement in the future. Note that some games may already have a holder!

I played Asheron's Call from beta 2 through the end of the Shadow arc, without ever coming close to even 'mid-level'. The main reason I quit Asheron's Call in the first place is because I never had enough time to powerlevel to the point where I could even see the monthly updates. It was probably 2002 before I could run Frore, ffs!

So level isn't really the issue. You might not have played long enough to care about it, maybe, but this stuff affected everybody regardless of level. The devs played favorites with PK, with their personal favorite character classes, and their in-game friends. I'm not gonna go into specifics about it - the info is out there, some of it only got aired out a couple of years ago, so it's not like anybody stopped playing because of the moral outrage. They did ultimately stop playing because of the loose ethics, though, even if they mistook it for incompetence and their own bad luck.



I tried Asheron's Call again about... 2 years ago, maybe? There wasn't much nostalgia left. The most interesting oldschool towns in Osteth were wiped out during events, either replaced with a smoldering crater or rebuilt in a boring way. The world is packed with player housing and dregs from 8 year old dead storylines. The classic dungeons have been "revamped". The classic quests have been "reformulated" for fast powerleveling.

They might be shutting down the servers in January, but the Asheron's Call I enjoyed pretty much died within a year of release.

Did you guys like EverQuest?

I'm not caught up on the devs favoritism, but I think they also failed to stay ahead of players who learned how to 'game' the system. As people learn more about Dereth, the knowledge that they obtained, while not actually part of the game, itself became a factor that affected the game and the community as they grew over time. It eventually sucked the soul out of the game, and made the game all about leveling up.

There were a few things that led to it. About a year or two in, players figured out how to game the fealty system to maximize the amount of xp that were sent up to patrons. That created a problem, where the few allegiances that figured out how to exploit xp chains produced an elite caste of high-level players, whom much of the monthly content/monthly events was for. It divided the world into haves and have-nots.

Another problem is that massive user-generated encyclopedias and tools removed any possible element of discovery from the game. The spell-learning system, the cooking/craft systems, the location of dungeons and other points of interest -- everything was online after a fairly short amount of time. Once I discovered those resources, it took out almost of the excitement from wandering around a world, and learning about what was happening in it by exploring and talking to others.

Another thing was when players learned what was the best combination of skills/attributes for new characters. Originally, all of the cookie-cutter player classes were totally gimped, because even the devs didn't know how to set up decent classes -- they didn't know how players would play the game. But once players figured out the best combinations of skills for mages/archer/melee, there were players running around that were far too powerful for enemies in the world, and so that not only incentivized devs to create for content for these supped up templates, but it also made lower level content too easy even at the lowest levels.

The closest things I've found to the AC experience has been the "survival" game genre. One thing I loved about AC was that the stakes and the penalties for dying were so high. Games like Rust are the closest thing that I've seen that reproduce that, but they also lack the depth/story that AC had.

It's not incompetence.

Sashi Mu had a good rant about this, posted less than a year after the game came out, where he makes the same mistake: http://mu.ranter.net/asherons-call/my-brain-explodes

He attributed this problem to the developers losing touch (i.e. being incompetent). The part he was missing, I think, because we didn't learn it for a few more years, was that the AC developers were all playing extreme spec life melees on Darktide at the time. They wanted cool PK melee hybrid toys, so they added them. They wanted fast, safe places to powerlevel, so they added Citadels/BSDs/OHNs. And what's the one thing that can threaten an extreme hybrid melee with a shield? War Magic. So they also believed War Magic was overpowered and spent the first couple of years making PvE immune to it.

None of this stuff was an accident. The Asheron's Call devs made the system easy to game because they were the people gaming it.

lol. They only cracked down on it because of Blood.

I didn't feel too bad about this, because it was the only way I got to experience any of the new content.

The more extreme stuff was SplitPea, SpilledBeans, and many Decal plugins. I agree that this stuff did a lot of damage to the game, but the devs were fine with it (they probably used it themselves).

IIRC, the spell comp bundles were actually called "peas" as a nod to SplitPea. But even if I have the dates backwards, the devs didn't mind:



Eh, kinda. Extreme spec characters were largely unsurvivable at lower levels. Og mages, for example, didn't get War until mid-30s; BMs didn't finish until 50 or 45 (post-DM).

This was a big problem at higher levels, though. The eventual fix was a way for players to respec. Of course, we know now that this is easily the worst thing you can do for player retention, psychologically speaking: perceived agency is destroyed when either your choices turn out badly, or your choices don't matter/aren't permanent. Isn't the human brain wonderful?

Putting aside the politics of Asheron's Call, this is the worst part for a scrublord casual. This is the real treadmill.

- Non-extreme characters were completely shut out from post-launch content, so you really had to roll an extreme spec character.
- Most launch content was level restricted low. As little as max level 3 or 4 in some cases, 6 in many others.
- Extreme spec characters couldn't survive anything at that level. (Remember, we're talking 5 health, 10 stamina, 10 mana here. I had a mid-2000 extreme spec melee get one-shotted by a friggin rabbit.)
- So, effectively, extreme spec characters couldn't do launch content.
- You had to grind from the very start, so you could get past the 'bad part' (i.e. the 1999 release content, which was the best stuff)
- But as a casual, you wouldn't ever put in enough hours to grind up to "high level", so you couldn't participate in the new content either.
- Worse, the monsters outside the grind dungeons were always getting more powerful. When you did play, you had to spend all of your time grinding just so you could survive running back to the grind dungeon.
- It meant that, even when a casual player "gave up" and rolled an extreme spec hybrid, you still couldn't actually get ahead in the game. You had to work your ass off just to keep what you already had. That's not a game, that's a suburban lifestyle.

For one of the more sensible examples: around the "chorizite" event, when they added hollow weapons and dispels, they also replaced most world-spawning Lugians with hollow variants. If you don't remember, hollow weapons ignore all magic. That meant the Obeloth Lugians hanging around outside the Lugian Citadels were far deadlier than the higher-level and more xp-rich Lithos Lugians inside.

Like I said, though, that's at least a sensible change. It's thematic, and you can confront that threat by preparing differently. What's crazy is that, more than once I logged out at a wilderness lifestone after killing trash mobs like drudges, logged back in after a patch, and got smoked by some ultra powerful monster like a diamond golem. That is bull****. Getting pushed out of areas you used to have fun exploring is total bull****.

I only played the first everquest for a few minutes on someone else's computer so I never really gave it a fair shake. I did buy everquest II but couldn't get into it. I felt trapped in a starting city and always died when I left, if I recall correctly. The thing that pissed me off about it is that it stopped me at loading screens seemingly every 3 or 4 buildings as I walked through the town. It was completely jarring and after AC I just couldn't put up with it. I think my subscription lasted a total of 2 months. Huge waste of money for me.

That was fun to read. Makes me miss the game even more.

Another page that's been floating around the internet for forever: http://www.schattenkind.com/past-present/history.html

I remember my 7th grade social studies teacher, Mr. O, would tell us stories about his adventures in Asheron's Call. Most of us (the guys and girl nerds anyway [okay maybe even just me]) thought it was so cool, but hardly any of us had a decent gaming pc, let alone broadband (again, maybe just me).

90% of the time I spent on AC was on dialup. I think my PC at the time was a pentium 75 with a voodoo2? I could be misremembering the PC specs but I know I was on dialup.

Oh, well I don't think I even had internet at that point.

Jason Booth's doing a Reddit AMA now: https://www.reddit.com/r/AsheronsCall/comments/5nd27n/one_of_the_original_asherons_call_developers_home/

With a Devilmouse cameo!

Anyone else been playing before the plug is pulled? I've been playing on Morningthaw occasionally, using a character I first created in 2004.

One of our own: https://www.reddit.com/r/AsheronsCall/comments/5nnpud/kept_a_bunch_of_old_ac_screenshots_on_my_file/

A bunch of those of us who frequented the Massassi AC board can be seen here.

Mostly Meginjarder

That's me, you, Darth, Baalzevuv. All we need is Thor Azaroth, Pyreal Rat, and Lightstaff, and that'd make everybody I remember from Meginjarder.

My account is still active!

Post your character name.

Aww, my account's from 2010, and I was playing on Frostfell. Might as well reroll though since the game is totally different now.

Trip report:

Rolled a battlemage on MT. They totally overhauled melee since the last time I played, but magic has been cast in amber since 1999 so it's a good way to avoid learning anything. Well, they did add some useless new schools, and they have a new magic training system that's faster than scriveners but also costs millions of pyreals. So, yeah, that's not happening.

Spent most of the night doing the lowest-level quest in the Facility Hub. Why? Oh... because despite being advertised as "good for level 10", the dungeon has been "rebalanced" which in Turbine Land means "swarming with Silver Rats and Granite Golems".

I was running the quest at the same time as someone else. They ragequit.

Basically, yeah, that's the Asheron's Call I remember.

I've got a level 275 char on MT named Quaki (I won the lottery and someone gave me level 170-275 worth of exp the other day. Despite that, I think my char is still a noob because I have no idea what luminance or augmentation gems are, and can't be bothered to sort it out). But maybe I'll roll a melee char for old times sake or an archer and run through some of those lower levels with you. It would be fun to run through halls of helm and collier again.

Ok, but in honor of 18 years of this game being garbage for fellowing, I will not heal you.

lvl 18 battlemage named Tree Marmot.

Also MMOs are violently incompatible with adulthood, so I probably won't be online until after 9:30 PM MST.

I'm at least hoping I can get one last Hoary Robe before EOL. I don't think Atlans or Shadow Amuli are gonna happen, lol.

They replaced Shadow Armor with something new. It's complete rubbish. All of the new types of armor since the golden age of the game looks like garbage. No style!

I'm currently in Israel, so we might need to do some planning to find time to play. What's that, a nine hour time difference?

Still though, I'll friend you and hopefully we'll be knocking some Tusker Guards into next Morningthaw.

Oh. I figured they would have reintroduced prepatch GSA by now. They brought back Hoary Robes IIRC.

Yeah. That's fine just go to bed at 8 PM :p

Ugh.

Fortunately the fastest way to level is to do the Facility Hub quests. They're all old content that's been repurposed, huge XP rewards when you finish them. Given that's basically the part of the game that's actually worth playing it seems win/win.

Hey, so, I got my Hoary Robe. Two things:

1.) **** this 0.1% drop rate from rare spawn bull****. **** it. **** this game, **** the developers for ever thinking this was fun. It's ****ing not. Atlans, GSA, every ****ing thing in this ****ing game is roll d100,000s until you get a 1. What's this **** supposed to do, stop people from getting items? Really? 18 years in, when the only people still playing the game are grind obsessed weirdos? Give me a ****ing break. All I wanted was a shiny, nostalgic texture to look at for the end of the game. What did I get instead? Three nights of running around looking for Hoary Mattekars to kill. AND I HAD TO INSTALL DECAL TO DO IT. FFFFFFFF.

2.) Hoary Robes look ugly now. They used to look cool and shiny - all silver with gold trim. But the new quote-unquote "high res" textures have a flat appearance. The devs said they tried their best in ToD to get items to look the same across the patch, but they didn't have a lot to work with. So basically Hoary Robes now look like Hoory Robes, matte white with a puke colored trim.

Sigh.

This game deserves death.

This is what Hoary Robes used to look like:


This is what they look like now:

Anyone who's played this game uninterruptedly for the duration of its existence -- or even for most of it -- must be a freak. There *must* be something wrong with them. Especially given the decline of quality in the game since the good old days.

But, of course, even in the good old days, there was nostalgia about the good old days. In 2001, I already felt that the golden age of the game had passed.

That being said, I thought it was actually pretty cool that prepatch Hoary Mattekar Robes and PPGSA were so rare back in the day. I liked that there were items that were valuable and coveted because new ones weren't being made; they were so prized because there simply weren't enough for everyone to have one. It made them even more special. And I kind of like that Turbine tried to preserve how special they were, by making the new Hoary Robe and PPGSA really, really ugly when they rolled back the nerfs. It preserved the distinction of the original items from the new ones.

I just wish that they had distributed those items differently, so that they weren't primarily owned by so-called power gamers. It shouldn't have been that the only way to get them was to invest either a sickening amount of time or money into a computer game.