Asheron's Call

The Good
I like the fact that the game is designed for solo play rather than group play. This means that when I log in to Asheron's Call, I can start playing the game immediately, rather than spending 30 minutes or more looking for a group.

The landscape graphics are, IMHO, better than the landscape graphics in the only other 3D, 1st-person MMORPG currently available on the market (i.e. Everquest).

The continually updating storyline is a fabulous and wholly underrated aspect of Asheron's Call, and is one of the areas where it stands head and shoulders above the more popular Everquest. Each month, the developers of Asheron's Call change the game world. They add new monsters, new dungeons, new landscape features, and/or new quests, etc. All for free. This can lead to some of the most profound gaming experiences you can imagine. Example:

Asheron's Call came online in late November, 1999. To commemorate the 1-year anniversary of the release of Asheron's Call, Turbine planned on letting Bael'Zharon (AC's Big Bad Guy(tm)) run loose around the world. But to involve the players, they set up the following circumstance:

1) Bael'Zharon was imprisoned in a crystal construct called "The Shard of the Herald."
2) Destroying the Shard of the Herald would get you phat lewt. But it would also release Bael'Zharon.
3) The Shard of the Herald was located in a dungeon that could only be entered if you had activated the "Player vs. Player" flag (allowing you to attack, and be attacked by, other players).
4) There was an item right next to the dungeon entrance which would allow you to activate (or deactivate) the "Player vs. Player" flag with ease.

This setup led to a situation where a group of people banded together to defend the Shard of the Herald from those who wanted to destroy it. On every server but one, these defenders either arrived too late, or they fell to the invaders. But on one server, Thistledown, the defenders managed to hold off the attackers for the entire month. Every day you could log in to the various Asheron's Call websites around the Net and see updates on how the Thistledown defenders were doing. It was one of the most incredible gaming experiences I've ever had.

The Bad
The chat interface is REALLY bad, especially when compared to Everquest's chat interface.

Partly because of the solo-oriented design, and partly because of the lame chat interface, Asheron's Call is a much less social game than other MMORPGs on the market, particularly Everquest. It's not impossible to make new friends in Asheron's Call, but it's a lot more difficult than it is in other games of the genre.

The Bottom Line
An incredibly addicting time-waster that will appeal to a different audience than Everquest, but which is just as much fun.