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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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)

An MMORPG designed with the solo player in mind.

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.

Windows · by Afterburner (486) · 2001

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

Agree with kbmb

The Good
I played The Realm before playing AC. I thought that that game was awesome, I played for about 16 hours a day, all 10 days that I was on leave from boot camp (pretty sad considering I had 3 months pay in the bank ;))

A couple of years later I played my first beta, and that was for Asheron's Call. Creating my character wasn't really anything new, I'm not new at all to RPG's. Logging in the first time was really the shocker. Something about the open environment and the natural and sharp sounds immediately had me immersed.

Play control wasn't too bad to get the hang of since I could click most everything. I tried out the trainer dungeon. Next to the dungeon was a building with a couple of NPC's. One asked me to perform a task. Instead, I picked a direction and started running. With my goal the horizon (kinda like trying to get to the end of the rainbow :)) I constantly ended up back at the life stone (where you go when you die). Even dying was fun! My character used axe, and little did I know it but I had put all of my points into the wrong attributes (100 str, 100 quick, 10 coord, 100 end, 10 focus, 10 self for any AC'ers that happen across here) and ended up getting whooped quite often...by enemies much lower than my level! It was challenging to say the least but still fun!

Anyway, beta ended without a bang...which was disappointing to say the least. The ending had been building up and after staying up until 3am (on a weekday, work the next day!) the servers simply had the plug pulled. It was a precursor of things to come.

I bought the retail version in Sept 2000, which I think was very soon after it's release. The adventure was still very, very strong. I would spend hours playing this game trying nothing more than to get my icon to move a significant distance on the map. The land of Dereth is pretty big...running 30 minutes in one direction only moved me a hair's breadth on the map. The easier enemies resided close to where players start, so the further I would run the bigger and badder the enemies I was killed by.

Finally I found out that if I took a few portals I could get to where the really, REALLY big boys played. I'm talking level 60 players, it was insane! I would be the only level 12 mage running around on the Obsidian Plains (nasty place) trailing groups of uber high level players and re-looting the corpses of the monsters they left in their wake. I would find all kinds of great things...high quality armor, powerful magic jewelry, some of the finest weapons. The risk was great though.

If you die in AC you lose several of the most valuable items you are carrying (or wearing). Monsters made an entrance 99% of the time by just appearing (in a purple haze). If you were in the middle then 99.9% of the time you were dead very quickly. Especially if the 'spawn' is a group of level 105 Altered Drudges.

After re-rolling a couple of characters I found out that I enjoyed playing a mage the best. I was able to hurl war spells as monsters from a distance. This way I could run from the monster until it lost interest in me and returned to it's spawn point. Rinse and repeat and I was able to take down monsters many levels higher than myself. My first greatest accomplishment was to drop an Amploth Lugian (level 18) at level 1. It took me about 10 minutes but that one kill alone gave me enough experience to level to 2. My next greatest accomplishment was killing a level 276 Diamond Golem at level 33. That one took me about 30 minutes...and gave me 36,000 xp...at level 33 it takes a lot of xp to level...maybe several hundred thousand, so you can see where the returns diminish. Next was level 45 killing a Coral Golem (level 350'ish maybe?).

Anyway...getting back to some other part of the storyline...

My 3rd time at at level 16 (3rd reroll) I noticed that I was beginning to feel the tug of the need to gain as much xp in as little time as possible. Even at that low of a level it would take a couple of hours to gain enough xp to level. At level 32 I gained my fourth and final school of magic which allowed me to cast attribute and skill altering spells...basically I could increase my skills with magic and kill higher level monsters. That was when the Tusker slaughter began.

It did not end for another 13 levels or 2 months later. That is 2 months real time but about a week in game time...which is just sick because that is 7 days (solid) worth of time spent playing one video game, killing the same monster (the vast majority of my kills during those levels anyway). All of that so I could be level 45, thus making the level requirement to pass through the portal to go to Aerelinth(sp) Island. That was a great achievement, my single greatest in the game. It was all downhill from there.

Whether the Tusker rampage finally caught up and I was burning out or it had just dawned on me that I was only bettering my character to get better items to fight better monsters to better myself to get better items...hmmmmm kinda circular. Something happened and my interest from level 50'ish on started to dwindle, even though it was a very, very slow downward spiral.

I had seen several friends come and go. I had (together with my significant other...both IG and IRL ;)) started a clan and broken it up (heart wrenching event) to 'take a break' from the game. I'd spent most of my game time running solo but fighting in groups could be exhilerating....especially a mage and melee combo. I seen a great many changes in the game...but all things end. After 3 years of almost daily play I quit the game. My 'main' and only character that I played consistently had accrued 75 levels and nearly 2 months IG time. This was petty compared to the 100's of maxed out level 126's running around.

A few months after quitting I resubscribed (the "Call" was too much :P) and created an axe character, since I never completed my first one. It took me 2 weeks of RL time and about 3 days IG time to get him to level 65, so great were the changes over the years.

Both characters are currently in retirement...I resub just enough to keep them from being deleted forever.

One day I will let them fade....but I'm just not ready yet.

The Bad
At first the only thing I could complain about was the lag.

Next was the lack of XP received for killing monsters with levels so much higher than my own. You had to really work in this game to gain any XP...if you were solo.

The storyline could not be changed. This was a huge disapointment simply because we were promised that the players would impact the storyline. Case in point when the last crystal stood on Thistledown. The players there organized and defended the last crystal fiercely for 30 days, 24 hours a day. It was a very widely publicized event in the AC community. Because all of the other servers had destroyed their cystals the storyline had to take that path...and the last server? A chosen player was given super buffs, he entered the room with the crystal and cut down every opposing player. (the last crystal did kill him though, and he had to be revived on the spot I believe by the devs...if I remember correctly). Not being able to impact the storyline was definitely something I didn't like.

Later changes were made that re-organized all of the enemies, their levels, how much XP they gave and what loot they dropped. In the end it is far easier to level, which is mostly good. However the value of the currency is next to nothing. My level 65 character can hunt casually for 1 hour and gain half a million pyreals.

Housing seemed to be 1 step forward and 2 steps back. It was a great way to mule items and store extra equipment....but the towns became very empty. Maybe only the allegiance housing was a bad idea....



The Bottom Line
I think that you can try the game for a free. It's definitely worth it to try.

Windows · by The Holy Moly (19) · 2004

[ 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.