f13.net

https://www.asheronscall.com/en/forums/showthread.php?&postid=712139

TLDR version:

-The game's February patch, which adds a lot of end-of-endgame content, will be the game's last monthly content patch, ending a nearly 15 year run.

-The only future patches will be minor bug-fixes and balance corrections as needed.

-AC1 and AC2 will be made free to play for anyone who has an active account with Turbine, and continue on in perpetuity that way, as a gift to its subscribers and a continuation of the company's legacy.

-Turbine has plans to release tools to allow dedicated players to host their own servers and perhaps even build new content. These tools will not be for the faint of heart; they'll be the same archaic tools the devs have been using. But nobody will have to reinvent the wheel by making an Asheron's Call emulator from scratch. Doing this will not require Turbine to divulge the game's source code.

Interesting to see this happening with one of the original "Big Three," especially given the recent UO/DAOC announcements.

Guess this is the beginning of the end. I'm still amazed they've kept it up for this long, let alone continuing to update it rather frequently. Sadly I'd always hoped something else would have come out of it.

Wonder how long they'll be able to keep it going in that state. From the sounds of it there's only 1 or 2 people working on it now.

I wonder if I'll finally be able to finish those half-built dungeons I abandoned back in 2002. :/

Wow, I had no idea AC2 was in existence again...

Nor me. Anyone know if it's worth trying?

See, now that's the way to wind down a game.  Unlike what those pricks at NCSoft did with City of Heroes.

What is an active Turbine account?  Someone who's currently paying?  Or anyone who ever played?

I enjoyed it, but I was just wanting a massive nostalgia kick when I played it and didn't stick around. Not sure what, if anything, has changed since December 2012, but it was very stable at the time and seemed to have no real issues other than it being a 10 year old MMO. Didn't look half bad either. Still think it has some of the best ambient sound/music out there. I wandered around exploring mostly, doing the vaults and random quests I stumbled upon. It seemed to be exactly like it used to be.

I believe you need an active subscription with AC1 to try it out right now though, so it might be best to wait.

Wow, I still have my AC2 shirt signed by the devs that I got back in beta, but I had no idea that they'd started an AC2 server.

It will be interesting to see how it looks some 10 years later.

Does this mean that they finally fixed beekepers?

AC1 is far and away my favorite MMO.  The some of the best gaming I've ever had has been playing AC1.  I'm sure a lot of that has to do with my age at the time, and the newness of MMO's, and the age of the internet overall as a gaming medium but still.  Good on them for ending it in a classy way.

My limited understanding is that all sorts of old content got used as the basis for later-on content additions. So perhaps your dungeons were used at some point!

There will never be another live dev chat rounded off with a Devilmouse stream-of-consciousness ramble.  :cry2:

And Thistledown will never again be the only server to resist B'Z's wicked temptations such that it took live dev interaction to put the server back on stort-line track. :cry2: :cry2:

So much history. So many memories.

Source code or not, this will make it easier to make emulators, which might still be in "demand" for fixes/feature-additions that are not possible with the official tools.

Had no idea AC2 was still running - I actually fondly remember my brief time playing with the beta and doing spinning swan dives into a lake.

Kind of wish I had been able to play AC1 in it's prime; unfortunately, I was a bit young and had enough trouble getting the parents to cough up the sub fee for EQ.

I resubbed and loaded the client. It's.... not quite as playmobil as it used to be, but man, has that game changed in the past seven years.

I logged in to about 60 levels of vassal xp. It looks entertaining enough for me to give it an occasional go when I'm not doing degree work or the job.

Classy and an awesome way to keep a game alive. There should be enough community around to get player-run servers going and those may last for years to come. I suppose as long as the cost of running the servers is within reason, Turbine can just let them run along until nobody even remembers what they were there for. I'm glad they are going free-to-play, and lucky too since I have an active account just to maintain access to the resurrected AC2 server. :)

Oh man, the feels:

Ulgrim the Unpleasant tells you, "I found, hidden away, an old bottle of scotch I had forgotten about."
Ulgrim the Unpleasant tells you, "It was 14, almost 15 years old."
Ulgrim the Unpleasant tells you, "I thought "What the hell?" and opened it. Good stuff. It's been a good 14 years."
Ulgrim the Unpleasant tells you, "We've had a good run."

Man.  Wonder if my account from WAYYYYYYY back when still exists.  God, I cant even remember if i ever did change it over to whatever new login system turbine set up when they decupled the thing from the Microsoft Gameing Zone.   I vaguely remember having an AC2 beta account, but even that would be going on 10 years old or more.

Aw, damn.

A former guildmate, who still plays, pinged me about this the other day.

I loved AC1. It was my first MMO, close to my first internet game, and I played the hell out of it from January 2000 until well into 2002.

I felt a lot of nostalgia after I finally quit for good, and there are some things about the game that I'll always miss. But I could never go back to AC1.

A game in the same vein, the same IP, and the same setting, but with modern graphics, UI and gameplay features, would get my interest. I don't see how that happens though.

***THIS***

They did upgrade the graphics (and features) multiple times over the years. But yeah, I feel you.

I'm generally a tolkienish elves/dwarves/gnomes/etc sort of person, but I loved Dereth. Most of the time when companies try to innovate a world, we end up with something vaguely unsatisfying like Rift. Dereth felt alive and it felt unique.

Yeah. Even though I'm not planning on going back to AC, Turbine scored some major points with me by doing this. It only shows the difference in attitude between having the game controlled by a publisher and the original developer.

I bit and resubbed. Had to buy a new copy of the game but $10 plus a couple of months sub is worth it to me. I like it. It's not quite the cockpunch that I feel trying to go back to EQ and it's refreshingly hard compared to WoW. I'm still re-acclimating to it but it's definitely easier than what I remember 10+ years ago. I can see myself having fun with this for some years to come. I'd forgotten how much I hate Drudges though. Damn mewling bastards.

Their death cries are great though. I miss being swarmed by lugians and not being able to hear a damn thing.

Only game I know of where the weather changed across the world every season. First game I'd ever seen to wipe out content in the interest of story.

"Puish Zaharil!"

I remember logging in one month and it was raining blood.

But did you notice Bael'Zharon looming on the northern horizon when the lightning flashed? :)

Hey, btw: now that it's all over, any particularly cool what-ifs or what-might-have-beens from your time plotting AC's future that you feel comfortable sharing?

Not after so many years. At least nothing I didn't feel safe saying years ago.

I did have some pretty wacky ideas for how we could exploit the housing mechanics. I wanted to have yard-hookable cows that you could milk, and chicken coops you could get eggs from - moving the ground-level store bought cooking ingredients to make them available from a pseudo-farm.

Probably the craziest idea I ever had was turning the portal-in point on Aerlinthe into a buyable plot. People who tried to port without house permission would get bounced back to where they came from. The idea was that people could control what was then a prime levelling ground. But it would have to be something you couldn't monopolize month after month, so I thought the payment would be in dozens of Orbs of the Bunny Booty... but then people became capable of farming the White Rabbit.

It could never have worked, but it was a fun thought experiment.

You've pretty much described the entirety of MMOG development history.  :why_so_serious:

Yes, though the difference here was the realisation came before implementation.  :grin:

That whole game wound up being an interesting thought experiment. An unlimited PVP server that actually sort of worked under a system of self policing. A player base dropping the in game currency almost completely and going to a barter system based off a rare resource that had little other value.

The game didn't have an auction hall, so players wrote bot scripts to run alts that would auto trade items based on specific trade values, and then turned a travel hub in the game in to a community market.

Best of all, the Devs never got in the way of any of this.

No, just the good parts.

I'd also like to echo that I think this is very classy. It shows that they actually care about the game.

I hope someone takes this and runs with it.

The devs did, from time to time, introduce new non-pyreal currency items, so we shifted from pyreal motes to iron keys to virindi chest keys, etc etc. They also created a new zone to serve as the trading hall, to get the players the hell out of the subway.

The in-game currency did eventually regain some value as barter currency, as the devs started introducing expensive spell comps, and a significant segment of the player base was too lazy (or too automated) to loot their kills.

Okay, I thought of something, but it's likely of significance only to me.

Very early in AC2's development, I wrote a script for a trailer. It was utterly foolish, my own blue sky dreaming of what the game should be, unleavened by any thought of budget or peer opinion. Here it is.

Sweet Jesus that's beautiful... "likely of significance only to me" my ass. ;p Paints a picture that doesn't really fall within the technical/game design bounds of a traditional MMO (unleavened by any thought of budget, as you note), but when I idly imagine what Asheron's Call 2: The Movie might be like, I'm going to have your vision in my head now. Reminds me a little bit of how the Avatar world-runners advanced their setting from Aang to Korra.

AC1 was a pretty darn decent MMO.  Nostalgia and all that, no doubt, but I had a lot of fun there.

Still fond memories of running for my life in some lugian cavern, and camping the Green Mire Yoroi Cuirass.

Feeling old now.

I loved AC, except for three things in descending order of significance:

Rubberbanding,

crafting and combat requiring skill points from the same pool,

The world change that converted 3/4 of the map (The Dires) from a place you could carefuly make your way through, picking your fights, into a densely populated clusterfuc k of static spawns placed so close together you had to fight.every.single.step.of.the.way to get amywhere.

The first two were gradually wearing me down. The advent of the third, combined with changes that made the first two even worse instead of better, killed it for me in no time.

But I still miss it and think whistfully of what might have been.

I thought that was one of the best ideas in AC.

Well, I despised it there and I despised it in SWG. I like crafting and want to be able to make -something- useful., I also like combat and want to be able to hold my own in a fight. I don't need to be able to master all crafts with a single character, nor do I need to be a top performing tank and mage and healer in a single character. But having my only option to experience both sides of the game with a single identity being to be gimped in one or the other or both sucks, and I doubt I'll ever spend another dime for that "privilege".

I guess those games just aren't FOR me, any more than the other pvp games are. I'm just too old and stressed out to want my recreation to be 100% pvp on top of real life. LOL

It's been years since I played, but most people I knew did have at least 1 crafting skill trained.

Specializing increased the skill point cost (and you wanted any combat skill specialized),  there wasn't really a reason to spec more to have more than 1 melee skill, magic schools cost a lot of skill points and experience to be useful, and thus you usually ended up buying at least 1 crafting skill.  Because of the experience curve, you could get a crafting skill high enough to do everything you need without any real impact on your non-crafting skills.

A lot has changed in the last few years, new combat skills (void magic, summoning(pets), dual-wield, 2hand), end game XP called Luminance to increase Damage/Reduction ratings and new attack mechanics like in the Viridian Rise with monster power-attacks that make it un-macroable.

I've been streaming the last few days for people that have been asking to see the new area and mechanics before deciding to join up prior to f2p.

Check it out at twitch.tv/hellswrathmt

See you in Dereth

Caught you right before you logged.

Ah, nostalgic spellcasting sounds...

The portal sound really got me.

I just remembered why I first played AC instead of EQ. It was because I had this laptop (K6/200mhz) and AC didn't require a 3d card, it was actually a 2d game.

I'll be streaming a few times a week at least, usually in afternoon or late evening. Most past broadcasts should be available as well.

I'll have to hop on a Void Mage, the spell sounds are creepy.

Free-to-play confirmed for August

https://www.asheronscall.com/en/forums/showthread.php?63316-Update-on-Final-Billing-For-Asheron%92s-Call-and-Asheron-s-Call-2

But the most exciting bit:


I bunch of the people I used to play with have reactivated their accounts on WE, and plan to set up their own server.

Coincidentally, yesterday marked the 15th anniversary of the day I was hired by Turbine as an intern content builder for AC. I've been in this industry for as long as some players have been alive...

Private servers are cool and all, but I'm most excited about the potential release of content creation tools down the line. My understanding is that they're not as horrific as back in the early days, thanks to Sev's efforts...

Holy crap I'm old. But this is awesome news. Well, for people who were really deep in AC1 anyway. I went from UO to EQ1 and by then could only dabble in AC1 while I was really getting sucked into Norrath. I'd love a game to come along with that same level of emotional depth again, but honestly, only after I'm retired  :grin:

It's over. (https://www.facebook.com/TurbineAC/posts/10154057619360913)

Well, at least we can't say they didn't give it a good run.

There's been talk of private servers. Wonder if anything will come of that?

No private servers (https://www.asheronscall.com/en/forums/showthread.php?73423-Asheron-s-Call&p=753848&viewfull=1#post753848) according to an official response on the forums.

Sad, but not unexpected.

Asheron's Call had a really good run. I sure had a heck of a lot of fun playing it for many years.

I just remembered that my first "End of the World" party was at the culmination of the Asheron's call beta. We all sat outside and watched the dire comet threatening the sky as we chatted about the future of the world when it would be reborn.

I might just have to jump back in January 31st. I wonder how many old friends I'll see?

Sad.  I loved this game  :heartbreak:

Forgive the Reddit link, but if you played AC this is a must watch:

https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/5n82zt/my_grandpa_has_played_this_mmo_for_over_17_years/

Direct youtube link if you want to avoid Reddit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPiBrIXCiQE

It's a story/video of a 74 year old grandpa that has played AC since the beginning.  Seventeen years!

While everyone else was playing Everquest, Stewie and I were playing Asheron's Call. Darktide forever!

The graphics may have been shit, but that was a game with real character and community.

Added a bit a the end there.  :awesome_for_real:

I think AC is the game where I started to give up on PVP in MMOs. I know people had a love for Darktide, but I found it to be completely bothersome. The mechanics of the game were partially to blame for it (jesus christ, the buffing), but the conflict was a bit too ever present for me. Of course, I learned nothing and played on Darktide for a brief AC2 stint. Holy shit that game was awful.

I missed this one. I went UO-EQ-DAOC. Wish I would have at least tried it out.

It had some pretty innovative features, some of which haven't really been copied.

They did a bunch to support content creation tools, which meant they were pushing many new dungeons pretty much every month. Granted, there was a bit of a cookie-cutter feel to them (in large part due to texture limits of the day), but still. The content creation tools also meant they were comfortable really trashing the world on a regular basis--cities would get blown up (and new ones opened/founded), pretty much the entire world would change with the seasons, major invasions, etc.

The leveling system was a hybrid of skill- and level-based. Experience points got you levels which let you buy new skills, but XP was also allocated directly to skills which increased through usage as well.

For a while, the magic system was "secret"--above a low level, the spell formulas were character-specific, so you had to experiment. (taper rotation!)

It had an "allegiance" system, where your vassals would pass up some experience to their patron. At its best, it created a motivation for recruiting and helping new players (doing so could get you free experience if they pledged to you).

Monsters could level up as they killed players.

Some dungeons had actual jumping puzzles, and combat had some "twitch" elements (side-stepping spells/arrows).

Death had actual penalties. Items would be left on your corpse (with a few ways to reduce the likelihood you'd lose something critical), and you'd suffer a temporary skill and experience penalty (vitae) you'd have to earn off. You could get into a "vitae pit" where you nearly lost the ability to progress; that was a sign you should just log out for a while.

The world was huge, but with enough fast-travel capabilities (portals, lifestone ties) that travel was more of an adventure than an ordeal. There were so many little things stuck all over the world that exploration was fun--it was likely you'd find something that nobody else had ever found, even if just a hut with a few mobs, a small cave, or some ruins overlooking a lake.

The lore was very non-traditional-fantasy. No elves, orcs, etc. Races were human only, inspired by European, Asian, and Arabic cultures.

It also had enough bugs and quirks that meta-gaming was a big thing. One really funny bug was the "Wi flag". A bad hash function was used to determine who'd get aggro by default, and a guy named "Wi" always won. Whenever he'd enter a dungeon, every single monster would run toward him.

It was a lot of fun, a lot of the time.

It was the little details. The game launched without all of the towns in the world even being on the map. Before people figured out how to read the data, you actually had to explore to find things. One town wasn't discovered until a few weeks after launch, and it was kept a secret for several weeks after that. Ended up being the site of a massive intra-guild betrayal, and subsequent war.

The politics in Darktide were amazing, and completely player driven. There was no form of area control or ownership in the game at launch. You were tied to a particular respawn point and the was it. Guilds "owned" areas based on their presence there. Everything became about Guilds. Your Guild was visible to everyone on sight, and first reactions became entirely based on Guild Reputations. Websites popped up to map out the political zones of the game, based on what guilds were controlling what areas. Because the world was huge and fast travel limited, it was a significant thing to get a guild to "move".

Probably still the only Open MMO PVP Game to have a stat for Run Speed that you could choose to level up. Or twitch combat for that matter. Yeah, eventually got cheated to hell, but was cool while it lasted.

Gold was totally devalued due to a lack of sinks, so eventually a whole economy formed over rare drop items. There was no in game auction hall of any sort, so people created one by setting up bot characters that would trade items based off of scripts, and dropping them in the biggest fast travel hub. All player driven.

As you can tell, I have fond memories of that stupid game.