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"Something Special" For the 100th Patch To Asheron's Call

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Jun 09, 2008 04:01 PM
from the old-timers-staying-hip dept.
Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games
Turbine is reportedly planning on something special for the 100th patch of Asheron's Call . Having been on the scene since 1999, Asheron's Call will be sharing a 10th anniversary next year with EverQuest, and the developers have been offering up tidbits to their players about what kinds of shiny they may find waiting for them when that big patch hits. "Some of the hints the developers have dropped touch on treasure chest rewards, and the mechanics of the treasure system. They also have plans for a new landscape hunting quests. The most firm new information comes from Frelorn, with the AC community relations team, about an incoming tier of loot and its role in the landscape hunting game."
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"Something Special" For the 100th Patch To Asheron's Call 50 Comments More /

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  • Great news... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 09 2008, @04:08PM (#23715669)
    I hope the users enjoy their special patch.
    All ten of them.
    • Thank You

      I am just glad you acknowledge we exist at all.....

      ok, haven't actually DONE anything in a couple years but log in a newbie for an hour or two now and then :( Most awesome game ever tho.

      The low level stuff goes by so fast now even if you try and go slow you can't to a fraction of it ;( Hell the newbie armor is better than what i wore for the 1st year, maybe 2!
      • Oh, back in my day, all n00bs got was a couple of rags on their feet, and a needle! And we slayed dragons with that damned needle! You kids, all you do is walk around with your +100 Brobdignagian Axe of Sundering, and talk about how impressive it is that you beat up on Minor Slimes! And the dragons were tougher in those days too...

  • Lanscape Hunting quests? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Turken (139591) on Monday June 09 2008, @04:11PM (#23715713)
    Hunting landscaping, huh? I can see it now...

    "And you shall bring us... A SHRUBBERY!"
    • > "Something Special" for the 100th Patch to Asheron's Call"

      "The return of the *atoyot* emote! You'll get quite the feeling all over again!"
      • It was the weirdest thing to log in on the very first day (using *free* NetZero internet access no less!) and see people frozen on top of buildings. Back then, knowing about *atoyot* made you officially no longer a noobie.
  • People still play AC? Better yet, it's still supported?
    • In name only. It's not even close to the same Asheron's Call you probably remember. Superficially it's similar enough, but there's nothing left of the game underneath.

      Too bad, AC was the only MMORPG I ever really got into.
    • 100 patches in 9 years is about 1 patch every 5 weeks. The only thing that I can think of that might have more is Windows.
      • I'm quite sure my Ubuntu 8.04 installs have surpassed the "100 patches" mark.

        And as the above AC posted, they patch a whole lot of content, changing the game world slightly as RL seasons pass. Or, at least they used to.
      • One of the real strengths of Asheron's Call was that the developers have added regular content patches. Their goal was about once per month, so a patch every 5 weeks is about on target.

        Because of this rather aggressive content patching schedule, AC is one of the more dynamic games on the market. The game has changed significantly over the years. Unfortunately, for some people that's not a good thing. But, some people regularly complain about the "static" nature of other games. AC has shown that a quali

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Hubbell (850646)
          Quality dev team? You are talking about the dev team that announced such changes as allowing Breasplates (1 out of 9 possible armor slots, but could also be covered by things like hauberks which covered abdomen + breast + upper arms + lower arms) to be debuffable in PVP which meant that melees (who had the only autohit in the game) to be able to 1 shot anyone who had their breastplate covering debuffed, and led to such a huge account cancellation that they performed the fastest hotfix in AC's history. Thi
            • Noobs? Almost every single old timer quit, essentially the entire pvp playerbase (not counting all the carebears who jumped to darktide from the white servers after buying accounts) quit when this patch was put in. They had so many accounts cancelled at once that if they hadn't hotfixed to bring them all back AC would have been shut down, and this was when servers had ~1000-1500 pops avg + DT having 2000 pop average
              • I do not recall such a large portion of the population being into PvP.... Maybe DT would be affected.
                • DT was extremely affected, and a huge proportion of DT accounts were cancelled, along with a substantial number of white server accounts, which led to one of the fastest hotfixes ever by turbine.
                  • DT was extremely affected, and a huge proportion of DT accounts were cancelled, along with a substantial number of white server accounts,

                    Just so no one gets confused, there was no such thing as a Dark Tide (DT/PVP) account and a white server account (non-pvp). Your account gave you access to ALL AC servers. And one thing unique about AC is that you could play on one server at the same time another member of your family played on another server using the same account. As far as DT having a huge effect on
                    • Darktide is PvP only. Everyone is PKable, lootable or in AC speak "Red". There is no way to prevent yourself from being killed by a fellow player anywhere in the game. This makes getting and keeping good equipment a major part of the game, a game in which loot is a big, big deal.

                      All other servers allowed players to PvP through a special quest, but the default was non-PK or "carebear". Non-PK players show up on the radar as white dots. PK-able players at a red dot. Also a "lite" version was available t
                    • "And one thing unique about AC is that you could play on one server at the same time another member of your family played on another server using the same account"

                      Are you SURE about that? Or was that a patch that was done after I left?

                      I'd like to go back but apparently they will only let me have my mega high level account back if I can remember the CC number I used to create it in 1999.

                    • Maybe for the 100th patch they should give free access to AC for anyone who subscribes to either of their other games.

                      I would fully support this. Or a LOTRO "Lifetime" subscription. $200 for a permanent account until AC dies in a few years.

                      Seriously though, they need to redo the graphics engine and start advertising. Make up little 1 minute long advertisements for each patch, and put them up on Youtube. Bribe the Penny Arcade guys, get them over there.

                      Something.

                    • All other servers allowed players to PvP through a special quest, but the default was non-PK or "carebear".

                      And Darktiders never considered PKing on carebear servers true PVP. You rarely saw people go red on a white server. Occasionally between allegiance members around the House or between two feuding allegiances.
                    • It was an undocumented feature. You had to log into the lobby of a specific world, which most people did anyway. Each world server only checked for activity in it's own domain. It may have changed when Turbine rolled onto their own authentication servers. I only heard about it when people started complaining that they would have to buy subscriptions for every member of their family, and that may have been when they were announcing the changes as they cuts the ties from Microsoft.

                      I'd like to go back but
                    • Turbine's auth system doesn't allow it anymore like zone did. As soon as you log into the auth system via the launcher, you couldn't log into it on the same TurbineID(account) from another place without booting the first
        • Too bad AC2 got such a negative reception.

          AC2 got a bad reception because it seriously sucked. And it never made any sense for them to create it. Why invest all that time and money into a new game that is going to steal from the user base of your existing game? They should have invested that time into AC fixing problems and putting out an updated graphics engine. I don't believe there was anything so broke in AC that it required a whole new game. For the people most concerned with living with the sins
      • Considering this is the only game I stopped playing before paying the first monthly fee -- it was fun, and had a nice concept but just required WAY too much boring grind and mundane quests.

  • 10 Year Anniversary? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Kalriath (849904) * on Monday June 09 2008, @04:53PM (#23716295)
    I suppose it's too much to ask for the editors to get the summary right, considering the 100th patch is in August and the 10 year anniversary next year - they aren't the same thing.
  • I actually still play Asheron's Call from time to time. It's a great game if you take the time to learn it. I really don't understand why so many people are frowning over the number of patches. These are not just bug fix patches. These are patches that add new things to do and places to go. Only about 5% or less of the patches are fix related. Even with all the newer mmorpg that came out, AC still did things that nobody has topped. It has the largest packs, a unique feel to the combat and spell system, an
    • I really don't understand why so many people are frowning over the number of patches.

      My only complaint is that you'd think by now they would have figured out how to add content to the game without needing to update the client and taking the servers down for several hours a month. But they designed the same type of system with LOTRO too.
  • AC was one of the greatest and first really "deep" MMORPGs, much more varied, original storyline, and with a better skill/attribute system than Everquest, the only real competition at the time. I played in beta 1, through 2003 or so, then tried it again last year, but it's just too sparse these days. Back when you could log on and there would be 2000+ on a server, that was excellent.

    Of all the great memories I have of AC, the greatest has to be the first sightings of the Tremendous Monouga, a 50 foot ta
  • I tried out AC for a couple of days about a week ago, and I couldn't see what makes it so special compared to today's MMOs.

    Is there something in it that modern MMOs don't have, or was it ahead of it's time then and outdated now?

    Seems like it would've been jaw dropping 10 years ago.
    • You probably won't see what's special about AC from a short trial. Its uniqueness is in the dynamic game world. Sure, other games add zones and places to explore...but as far as I know only AC has destroyed major cities in the game as part of their storyline.

      The 'zoneless' nature of AC is unique, too, and it adds to the dynamic feel. You don't just get doors to new zones -- additions to the world are generally placed on existing terrain. So it feels like one world that is changing, instead of an expandi
    • The things that I really liked about it was the huge land, large amounts of dungeons and interesting treasure. The place is zoneless, except when entering a dungeon and had no artifical borders(everything was a island and you could not swim in deep water, ok somewhat artifical) so if there was a mountain range off in the distance you could run and probably find a way to the top of those mountains. Far better then the current games with small areas high mountains on four sides.
      The dungeons were great, whe

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