Asheron's Call

Moby ID: 2847
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Description official descriptions

Asheron's Call is a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). This means that you can interact with hundreds (even thousands) of other players while exploring the gameworld provided by the game developers.

Like most RPGs, you start off in Asheron's Call as a rank beginner. As you gain experience, you gain power.

The gameworld is robust and, with the exception of zombies, skeletons, and other types of undead, Asheron's Call features completely original creatures not found in the typical fantasy environment (i.e. there are no Elves, Dwarves, Orcs, Goblins, etc).

Character development is skill-based, rather than level-based or class-based. This means that your character isn't restricted in his/her ability because of his/her class, and it means that you don't have to wait until you reach a new level to increase your abilities.

The biggest thing Asheron's Call has going for it, however, is the fact that once a month the game developers change the world slightly and add to the ongoing storyline. Quests are added which can affect the story, and players can complete those quests if they possess enough skill and luck. The first year of Asheron's Call saw the release and eventual defeat of Bael'Zharon, a major bad guy in the Asheron's Call universe. It was the players who released him, and the players who defeated him. This provides a glimmer of the ultimate promise of the MMORPG genre: the chance for players to have permanent, lasting effects on the gameworld.

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Screenshots

Credits (Windows version)

128 People (107 developers, 21 thanks) · View all

Product Planner
Executive Producer and Producer
Lead Designer and Producer
Lead Server Engineer and Producer
Lead Graphics Engineer and Lead Software Engineer
Lead Game Systems Engineer
Lead User Interface Engineer
Lead Artist
Lead Technical Artist
Quality Assurance Manager
Designers
Game Systems Engineers
Graphics Engineers
Server/Networking Engineers
User Interface Engineers
Artists
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 82% (based on 33 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 21 ratings with 5 reviews)

The best game I ever played; Asheron's Call has forcefully staked a major claim on my life.

The Good
Social aspects - the ability to make friends and be with others -- to live, fall in love, serve, quest, achieve, die (repeatedly!). Customizable characters, player leadership and community service opportunities, allegiance and fellowship structures. But mostly the obvious commitment of the genius developers to continue to revise the game into a protracted future filled with changes in storyline, improvements in gameplay, and (hopefully) the architecture for its metamorphosis into further phases and forms.

The Bad
The only 'rub', as it were, is the sense one gets of diminishing returns as one advances one's character. When the first level could be reached inside an hour, it gets tough to take when one's 50th level can require months of play to attain. Other than that, the main pleasure of playing this game, in my opinion, is the sense one finally gets that you are in a place much more than in a game, and that many fascinating (and fascinatED) people (players) are there with you!

The Bottom Line
The only game where I ever fell in love and had my heart broken. The most fun I have ever had in a game. A game that can become much more than an alternate reality -- a place -- with people -- that can enhance one's life immeasurably. An almost miraculous development in the life and times of humanity, and one sure to presage many more such alternate realities and futures.

Windows · by John Wilmerding (2) · 2001

My first and favorite MMORPG

The Good
At the time I started playing Asheron's Call was around 1999 during the public beta. I remember getting a game magazine at walmart and it had a article about a new game that was being developed and it came with a public beta version of Asheron's Call. I had never played a MMORPG before so popped it in and started playing. The game was interesting as the details were unlike most games, it made the world seem real and the characters and interface were very friendly, fast paced and the game made you feel like you had a lot of freedom and control in a 3rd person view.

I remember going into towns and there would be so many people chatting or trading, towns were very busy and lively. The quests were fun and dungeons were good as well. The monarch system was interesting as well as the fellowship system for sharing XP. Also I think Asherons Call had a very unique system of weapons and armor. Gameplay was a definite plus.

Perhaps my favorite feature while playing Asherons Call was the PK server Darktide. Asherons Call had a PVP system that should be aknowledged and incorporated into other games. First of all in Darktide you could kill or be killed at anywhere at anytime, you were never safe except for when you were respawning after being killed by another PK which you had 5 minutes to turn red again. You could lose your loot or loot others which made the game challenging and competitive. Perhaps the most unique about Darktide was that everything was based on a "trust" relationship and forming alliances and knowing people. I can recall many times when I was a newbie being killed by level 50's for no reason and it was a harsh existance. It's a shame very few games actually have the balls to do the same as AC did with the risk factor.

The Bad
There were a few minor annoyances, lag was always a huge issue, over the period AC has been out the population has dropped from thousands and thousands to sometimes a few hundred players. My biggest complaint was not necessarily the housing but rather mansions, when guilds were allowed to have mansions it wasn't so much a big deal until mansion recall was added. Most people left the towns in the game to sit at the mansions. Other problems were macroers and XP chains which caused people to level rather fast, also as a result many new players are discouraged which doesn't leave a bright future for AC.

The Bottom Line
It was an excellent game in it's prime, but now the magic has somewhat disappeared. It's still enjoyable to a degree especially darktide if you want a challenge, but don't expect those once populated towns or large groups of people to go on quests or hunting with you like the old days.

Windows · by matt cohen (10) · 2007

This used to be my favorite game, but time has done some horrible things to it.

The Good
At the time Asheron's Call was released, it was one of three major online RPGs (or, as they're commonly called now, MMORPGs), those being Ultima Online, Everquest, and of course Asheron's Call. Now, I'd played Everquest (Ultima Online confused the heck out of me) and I enjoyed it briefly, but it was so very flawed. Asheron's Call, at the time, surpassed Everquest and my expectations in every way.

Everquest and Asheron's Call were almost polar opposites of each other, despite the overall idea being the same. I thought Asheron's Call was better than Everquest in just about every sense. Asheron's Call was so very immersive. Traveling alone, along those dark endless fields, fighting drudges and trying to survive, with nothing but distant ambient sounds filling the air...ahh, it was wonderful. Whereas in Everquest, it was more like some fruity fantasy chat room than an immersive RPG. In Everquest, you were enclosed - imprisoned - within zones, many of which were rediculously tiny. And they were so very overpopulated that you couldn't just "go hunt". Instead, you had to "camp" - that is to say, you and whatever party you had had to wait around for a monster to spawn and kill it before someone else did. All the while you have seventy, eighty, ninety people in the zone all talking at once - and no matter how far away from them you are, you can hear their zone-wide shouts, out-of-character tells and auctions. Well, to say the least, Everquest is about as immersive as Dig Dug.

Everquest was small, inclosed, cliched, overpopulated, and slow. Asheron's call was extremely original, with a massive free-roaming world with absolutely no loading times or zones, save for dungeons. You were not subjected to choosing your life-long profession. Indeed, you could be whatever you wanted if you just persued in working on those skills. You could BE the Loner, the Hero, instead of just another nameless face in a group.

And there were so many skills! This is what made Asheron's Call really awesome, was that there were so many different skills you could work on, each one as important as you make it out to be. In Everquest (and most other RPGs), your character's perminent profession determined what skills he acquired. But in Asheron's Call, you could be whatever you want. You could work on obscure skills which strangely enough would come in handy. I recall making a career out of identifying items for people, for instance. Just boost up your "appraisal" skills and engrave the info on the items, and earn a coin or two just for that.

And because Asheron's Call was so less populated than Everquest, you really felt rewarded when you stumbled upon a fellow adventuerer. Or imagine fighting a monster and having another wandering adventuerer come to your aid. You'd make a friend for life.

Asheron's Call was a wonderful game. Never before was I so immersed within a game's universe. Imagine rich, rolling fields that stretch far off over the horizon, where monsters lurk off the beaten path, or waiting to intercept unsuspecting adventuerers between towns. Picture yourself gathering a group of adventuerers for that long trek accross the contininent, knowing that each one of you is as important as the other. Or go out alone, and know that you are truly alone.

I can't find the words to describe it. Asheron's Call defined immersion.

The Bad
Unfortunately, two years later, the game is pure crap.

See, Asheron's Call had this supposed difficulty for newbies. Supposedly, it was very dangerous for newcommers to venture out into the killing fields. Now, even though Asheron's Call was so great, it had one blaring horrible flaw, and that was the "alliegience" system. Here's how it worked: you swear alliegience to someone, and from that moment on a potion of your experience goes to this guy. If this guy has several vassals who've sworn alliegience, then he's leveling up like crazy. He uses his magical leveling up powers to get high class items and give them to his vassals, so that they may kill more monsters, thus leveling him up quicker, and so on. I don't even know how this got implemented. It is a stupid, horrible, unbalancing dumbass idea, and the developers only made it worse as time went on. Hard for newbies? No it wasn't - because within five minutes of playing, 99% of all newbies swore alliegience and were given high level items and never had to worry about fighting monsters again!

Regardless of this "let's make the game rediculously easy for anyone but those odd people who DON'T want a patron", it seems people were still whining about the difficulty of the game, so the developers dumbed down the game as much as possible. Two years ago, this game was my favorite. Now, it's dumb, it's easy, it's pathetic.

Once upon a time, the continent was huge and dangerous. There were portals scattered around that could take you all over the continent, but most were very hard to find and so you would often have to make the very long journey without them. But now there are portals damn near every six feet, so you NEVER have to go ANYWHERE dangerous if you don't want to. Once upon a time, if you wanted to cast spells, you often had to hunt for the ingredients yourself - or hire someone to do it for you. But now these ingredients can be bought at almost any store. My profession as an item-identifyer were be unprofitable because now most of the appraisal skills have been removed altogether.

Once upon a time, I recall stumbling upon a village and being so thankful, since after a long and dangerous trek accross the wilderness, I might be safe and able to recouperate. Unfortunately, now the game is so full of player-bought "houses" and "villages", that you can't really go anywhere without stumbling into one. And they still won't help you, since nobody's ever in them, and even if they were the players wouldn't help you unless you swore alliegience to the patron, and most of the houses are "locked" so you can't escape the beast chasing you anyway.

Many, many, many other features of the game have been dumbed down to where the game is completely different, and not immersive at all.

The Bottom Line
This is mostly a rant, not really a review.

Asheron's Call lives on in my memory. It used to be a great game, but a whiney, pathetic player community (I'm guessing) has dumbed it down and made it just plain stupid and not fun anymore. Immersion? Look elsewhere, and I'm not talking about Asheron's Call 2 which is even worse than what this has become.

Windows · by kbmb (415) · 2002

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Trivia

Pong mini game

When typing in "@logopolis" (without quotes) in the chat window., the player will be able to play a miniature game of Pong in a window that opens up.

This feature was removed when the game was patched, presumably because of copyright reasons.

References

  • Ulgrim the Unpleasant, one of the NPCs in the game that offers sometimes useful advice, will sometimes tell you, "You cannot always acquire what you desire. You cannot always acquire what you desire. But if you attempt it occasionally, you potentially could discover, that you acquire what you require. I'm thinking of setting it to music."

This is a reference to the old Rolling Stones tune "You Can't Always Get What You Want". The actual lyrics are "You can't always get what you want,

You can't always get what you want,

But if you try sometimes,

You just might find,

You get what you need." * The most harmless creatures in the game are rabbits. With the exception of one extraordinary white rabbit at 45.6S, 87.0W, near the town of Ayan Baqur. This particular white rabbit is a tribute to the vicious rabbit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and some would say he's just as deadly... "Look at the bones!" * Just before the release of the movie The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ringin December 2001, Ulgrim the Unpleasant would sometimes say, "Give me any rings you don't want. I've been collecting them ever since I found one near the water the other day." This is a reference to how The One Ring from The Lord of the Rings was lost and then found again in a river.

Awards

  • GameSpy
    • 2001 – #27 Top Game of All Time
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 03/2000 - Best Online Game in 1999

Information also contributed by Maw

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Adam Baratz.

Additional contributors: Afterburner, casimps1, Apogee IV, Patrick Bregger.

Game added December 29, 2000. Last modified March 22, 2024.