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Asheron's Call: New Playable Race, Features Added
MikeB
Community ManagerAdministrator RarePosts: 6,555
Turbine has announced that Asheron's Call has been updated with the inclusion of a new playable "Shadows" race, as well as several other features including, Aetheria, which is a new type of magic, Barbers and hairstyles, and multi-slot armor.
Additional details below:
New Playable Race-
Now you can play as a Shadow!Players can now choose to be a Shadow, living among the peoples of Dereth! Isin Dule has harnessed the power of the Lifestones to grant those who want it, a chance at life among those who follow the light! You can read more about the new playable race here!
Aetheria-
By researching the ancient writings of Empyrean magic, the Archmages of the Arcanum have unlocked the secrets of a new kind of magic that the Empyreans called Aetheria. In ancient times, powerful Empyrean mages learned to infuse Aetheria in Dereth with pure mana to empower it.Barbers and Hairstyles-
In addition, barbers have also set up shop to prepare people for the wedding. These artisans can help you freshen up your look, using their expert techniques to restyle your hair and freshen your look. Their craft is not entirely mundane for they can even change your appearance as they freshen up your look. Located near the tailors, you simply talk to the barbers. If you can pay their price you will find a variety of options appear to allow you to change your style. The barbers are very particular about their time, however. You pay up front, and their fee stands regardless of what look you choose, even if change your mind and get cold feet.Multi-slot Armor
Many blacksmiths have worked their craft in the lands of Dereth and ancient armor can be found all over. It is not uncommon for smiths to create large pieces of armor that offer coverage over multiple areas of the body. To the discerning adventurer trying to create the perfect suit of armor, however, these larger pieces can be inconvenient to fit into their suit even though the piece may have powerful magics and look very good when worn. Smiths have perfected powerful craft magic which will rework these pieces so they are much more efficient and cover less area. This allows adventurers to more easily fit pieces into existing suits.
Visit the official Asheron's Call website for more information.
Comments
Awsome they are still adding content like this. Keep it going Turbine.
Nice additions, too bad they can't do a graphics upgrade to this game, still one of the more unique games out there.
If they could remake this to use lotr:o engine, we'd have a pure winner in our hands.
If they did a major overhaul to the graphics engine and started a new server I would go back in a minute.
Best game ever.
But I won't play it like it is or if I have to be level 1 on a server with a bunch of maxxed characters.
Well you do basically start at level 5 so there you go :-)
Actually the recently added a newbie hub which gets you to level 45 nice quick and easily. From there they updated 60 or so quests in the 50-150 range many of which reward a level or half a level of xp just for doing it once. 150+ is essentially all end game and where the top tier of loot starts so it's where you want to aim for. Now a days you can get there with a little help in a week or two, it's really not bad at all.
In case you missed their anniversary patch they also added new player skills and trinkets.
Holy crap when are they gonna cancel this crap game or give it a remake. Update the grphics and give it a new hud or something. bring back AC2 or something.
How many delicate flowers have you met in Counterstrike?
I got a case of beer and a chainsaw waiting for me at home after work.
Wonder how the big the community is?
But it's nice of Turbine to still add content to an old game. I also agree with the upgrade the engine request.
To me, Asherons Call was the closest turbine ever came to getting it right.Even more, it was among the closest an MMO came to getting it right .
Graphics mean almost squat to me.Id be happy with stick figures if the gameplay was there.
I wnet back for the 10 year anniversary and i had a blast. I leveled a character from lvl 5 to about 125 in an amazingly short amount of time and i had fun doing it. I could not see myself playing it actively unless they upgraded the graphics and some of the quests but i do have to say Asherons will always be remembered fondly.
I'm begging you Turbine !!!
PLEASE remake this game with Better Graphics !!!!!!
PLEASE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You're all eye candy whores and I'd be playing it now if I didn't have to jump through hoops to get the client to run on win7.
Agreed. I can't even figure out why the "graphic whore" types would even be around the AC section in the first place.
You could name any game with 100s of times the visual power of AC, and I'll bet all the money to my name that it still wouldn't even come close to AC's gameplay.
Eye candy means nothing if it's paired with lackluster depth and gameplay, and unfortunately, that seems to be the unanimously exclusive formula used for all of the "shiny" games that come out these days. That being the case, I'm going with the more logical answer in my eyes - gameplay.
Yeah, but either way, this set of game mechanics and systems as a package is due for a new coat of paint and updated network code. The guy on Garrett Fuller's panel from Turbine kept talking about "monetizing this and monetizing that". They (Turbine) need to go back to their roots gameplay wise and release a new game using those ideas and then he'll be "monetized" out the wazoo.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
Turbine are bright enough to know that AC was never the most popular MMO even in its prime, subscription numbers were very low in comparison to its main competitors UO and EQ, so while I can understand veteran AC players eulogising over their first love (much as former UO and EQ players do albeit the AC ones seem to be more vocal), for most early MMO players it was a pretty second-rate game and even a graphics update today wouldn't transform it into a market winner.
Which is a shame, because it had a certain something about it but at the time I was one of the many who didn't feel it came close to the competition. I'd go back if it was upgraded but how long I'd stay is another matter.
I found AC2 a better game in some ways and I regret its demise, but how Turbine and Microsoft had the idea of creating buildings you couldn't enter, items you couldn't stack in a minute inventory with no bank or other storage space, and a linear world in which you advanced from one area to another never to return so that new players found themselves in a totally deserted environment is utterly beyond me. The vaults were amazing, however, as were some of the mobs' voices.
What's even more staggering is how, having additionally got so many things wrong with DDO, Turbine then managed to pull the rabbit out of the hat with LoTRO which really is of exceptional quality by comparison with what they had put out before. That's another reason, of course, why Turbine will never revisit the past, but kudos to them for keeping AC going.
once again great update, and cool features.
BUT STILL NO NON- CREDIT CARD OPTIONS FOR SUBS
please for love of this game add paypal to subcriptions. 3 yrs i've been asking, and see in many forums others ask too.
i'd even be willing to mail in a money order or check to pre-pay for 12 months at a time , just so i can play one of my 5 accounts. even just to start a new one and start all over again i'd be fine with that. just want to play again.
your DDO has paypal options to buy points. but no ddo subs. why not make life easy. alow us to buy points and trade the ddo points for ddo subs. and asheron's call subs . shouldn't to to hard to do.
OR go free to play like DDO has. with buyalbe options ect...
You'd have to explain to me in detail how AC "was a pretty second-rate game" in order for me to see your point. Just because it didn't reach the numbers attests nothing to the quality of the game itself. It came out later than the other two and had a MUCH steeper learning curve; that's about all I can think of that probably hindered the population growth. Heck, even graphically it pretty much blew EQ out of the water - way better models and a seamless world with a broad view distance just to give an example.
As far as I'm concerned, AC did (and still does) offer a much more in-depth gameplay experience than either of the other two you listed. UO comes close in a sense, but it's combat progression options aren't nearly as complex. And no, despite what you might believe, my first game was actually Everquest back in 2000, and I played it for quite a few years. It wasn't until around 2006 that I finally tried AC, and it didn't take me long to realize which game had more potential (in my eyes at least).
Jump through hoops? I did the free trial a few weeks ago and it just ran for me.
It's pretty simple, really. AC was second rate in relation to the competition at the time both in terms of market appeal and also in relation to content and graphics. The open-ended landscape was great, but even in 1999 the character models were awful. Whereas EQ offered real choice of character class, in AC there was always just the one flavour of the month template. Portal storms were a confounded nuisance. I personally hated the way the monarchy/vassal system worked but I appreciate that others loved it. Worst of all, of course, from any genuine gamer's point of view was the accepted cheating through Turbine's tolerance of gameplay altering third party software. I personally wouldn't regard any title as first rate if it openly allowed cheating. That was a massive mistake on Turbine's part and put an awful lot of other people off trying out the game.
And every game nowadays doesn't have cheaters? Even back then EQ and UO had a huge amount of cheaters. It's pretty inevitable. EQ and UO didn't accept it and tried to counter against it, but well... we all know that it's impossible to counter cheaters as a whole. So that argument is pointless. Portals storms were a nuisance, but when a game is lifting off and becomes popular, there are things bound to happen. I've had worse problems in EQ when it started then I had in AC when it started. So this is on a person to person basis. Basically, a pointless statement. I prefered the "Build your character the way you want to" over the specific classes. Back then, yes, there was a FotM build, but nowadays, anything is viable. In terms of graphics, if you're playing a game for it's graphics the whole time and not any of its gameplay, then... alright... have fun. I don't want my game to have the Crysis effect. All graphics, no gameplay.
It's not remotely pointless. I'd rather play a game where the developer cracks down on cheating rather than one where the developer openly allows it. That's a far from pointless distinction, and anyone who knows anything about AC acknowledges that the game's reputation for accepted cheating did it no favours. A lot of people didn't try the game because of it, and a lot of players left the game because of it.
It's a really pointless argument. If you think it's really worth it, then go for it. I could care less about what Turbine does. Turbine as a company is successful, but like... LotRO is horrible and DDO is... haha, not mentionable. But seriously, food is pretty good.
It's not an argument, it's a fact. Turbine made a mistake in accepting cheating in its game rather than cracking down on it, and that's a fact. Everyone knows it, except I suppose those who profited from it. Why do you think they have taken a tougher line in every other one of their games? You haven't countered the fact that cheating was allowed and it spoilt AC, all you have said is that cheating happens in every game so what? Now there's a pointless argument!
Maybe i should have been more specific in my posts. I played for over 3 years the first time aroundd-beta then 3+ years before i left the first time. Went back for Annivesary had a blast got to lvl 125 for old time sake and did it quickly in a still active guild. But to pull me back as an active player i would like a graphics update and interactive quest lines. This is 2010 after all and we do have the technology.
But like i said in my first post Asherons no matter if they update it or not will always be remembered by me as the best MMO i ever played and the community back in the day was the best i ever had the pleasure of meeting. I still hang out with people i met ingame in RL and still touch base wth people by email who are to far away to hang with.
First of all, "cheating" is a relative term. If you think that having a program to help sell items for you in the marketplace while you're not able to do so, helping to eliminate the tedium of casting close to 100 buffs on a character manually, or addons that bring the UI up to modern standards is equated to "cheating" well, I'd have to disagree wholeheartedly.
For all intents and purposes, I'm assuming that you're referring to the unattended macroing that some people use in-game for leveling their character. I'll agree that THAT would be considered cheating, but you're wrong if you think that Turbine "openly allows it". If players are reported to them for doing it, they take action. That's a fact. The problem is, the community is so small these days that it's not hard to get away with, considering how vast the world is and how many places there are to level.
As far as the class-bases versus skill-based system argument goes, we'll just have to agree to disagree. Both systems have their "FOTM" so I don't see how you can pin that solely on skill-based games. In fact, I'd say that the FOTM aspect is much more current in a class-based game because there's absolutely no way to deviate from the set classes in the game (unless you're considering the typically very limited WoW-like speccing options), whereas with a skill-based game, people are able to tweak builds until they eventually find something that works better. They both have their pros and cons, but I personally like the freedom of a skill-based game over the more linear progression.
Shadewalker just doesn't know what he's talking about.
His "Cheating" is them allowing third party programs to cast your buff spells for you (since they have a LOT of spells it can take a few minutes) and allows you to setup a tradebot. That is not cheating and never will be. Now using those botting tools to fight is against the rules and people do get banned for it.
Also AC wasn't a second rate game in any way, it didn't ever beat EQ in terms of subs but it wasn't far behind like he tries to make it sound. Also EQ had some terrible character models in the early days, I think people forget that because they have updated their graphics a few times.
Would it be nice for AC to get a graphics overhaul? of course. Will the people who like solid gameplay keep playing if it doesn't? Yup. Also Severlin has already said he's working on some changes to the networking code to make it smoother.
They are doing some amazing things with this game, even with it being almost 11 years old. And they do it all for free, they don't charge for their updates. Free monthly content updates (and major feature updates like these) is something other games just don't do.
So ignore shadewalker who is disgruntled for some reason, disgruntled enough to have half the posts in this thread. The gameplay is solid and it's a blast to play. But if you need amazing graphics, then this game isn't for you.