Asheron's Call

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.