Asheron's Call
Published By: Microsoft

Reviewed by Strider
12/21/1999

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First Impressions:

Hail! Asheron's Call (AC) is the newest massively multiplayer RPG to hit the software shelves. With the recent increase in RPG titles (not to mention the highly anticipated coming release of Diablo II), how does AC stack up? Is the cost of the game, plus a ten dollar a month online playing fee justify your time and expense? Read on friend!

Large online multiplayer RPG's are not a new thing. The original online multiplayer RPG's started as MUD'S (multi-user dungeons), and were completely text based. A MUD is part quest and adventure, and part online chat. It is fair to say a MUD is very much like being on IRC, but with added missions and goals to complete. As technology improved, later titles like Ultima On-line and EverQuest brought to the table graphics and other goodies players wanted. One of the biggest draws of these types of games is the interaction with large numbers of real players and NPC's alike.

So what exactly is "massively multiplayer"? Consider a world containing over a thousand other players, any of which you may interact with in the game. A world so large, that to run its breadth would take you over 14 hours. Enter now Dereth, the land of Asheron's Call, where you will strike allegiances and fellowships with other players, and do battle with the horde of evil minions that do inhabit that place.

Gameplay:

In Asheron's Call, as in most RPG's, before you begin play you must generate your own personalized character. Just like most RPG's, this is a critical stage and you should spend as much time as possible thinking about how to role your character. To start with, you have the choice of one of three races. Each race has certain abilities already trained, so it does make a difference which one you choose. After that you can customize your characters look in terms of hair, sex, eyes, facial features, clothes, and skin color. You can then choose to start with one of the pre-rolled characters: Archer, Blademaster, Enchanter, Life Mage, Sorcerer, Vagabond, and Warrior. You can also create your own customized character, giving you full reign over all your characters attributes. Whether you decide to customize your character or start with a pre-rolled one, you will be able to spread points across your characters strength, stamina, endurance, and more. Finally, you are able to select various skills that you want your character to specialize in. These skills include selecting various schools of magic, weaponry, and other abilities like lock picking. There are over 30 skills to choose from, but you will have a limited amount of points to spend on your skills, so choose wisely. After you've finished generating your character, you'll be ready to enter the land of Dereth.

You are allowed to select from a number of entry points to start off in the game. The land of Dereth includes training areas were newbies can go through a tutorial describing fighting, magic use, and more. A number of newbie quests are available, and I recommend them as a good starting point to learn the ropes. The local taverns in the towns of Dereth provide a place to learn about some of these quests.

The towns in Dereth are a central location where players meet to talk, strategize, and buy armor, weapons, magical items, and more. While I'm speaking of players meeting in towns, it would be appropriate for me to discuss the social aspects of the game. There are two main ways to create specials groups of players. One is through fellowships, the other is through allegiances. If you join in a fellowship with another player or groups of players, your group will share the gaining of experience points. In the allegiance system, players will swear fealty (or have fealty sworn to them). A social hierarchy is developed, as more players join the allegiance and other characters move up in the ranks. Players with higher titles will have access to special armor and other items only afforded to players of their rank.

Turbine, developers of Asheron's Call, have promised to update the land of Dereth by adding new quests, monsters, and special events. This should go a long way to keeping your interest in the game, if the potential of what can be done here is realized. For example, just recently a winter storm has struck the entire land of Dereth, blanketing it in snow and the sudden appearance of snowmen has issued in the start of a new event.

Graphics:

Although AC provides you with a 3d world, if you're looking for a Quake III quality 3d graphics engine, you won't find it in AC. The worse part of the graphics is the large textures it uses, and the problems this causes. Most Voodoo 2 and Voodoo 3 cards will not be able to handle high resolutions and/or high levels of details turned on. This is in part due to the fact that most Voodoo cards have 16MB of memory or less. To me it matters little whether its the video cards fault or the games fault -- many people have voodoo cards, so this is a major oversight in the design of the game. Why should the consumer have to purchase a more expensive 3d video card far a game that isn't going to fully utilize the cards features anyway (that is it only needs the newer card to utilize the needed 32MB of memory)?

Having made the above points, in truth the graphics are decent, even at lower resolutions and with the details at the preset levels on a Voodoo 3. Still, towns like Hebian-To become 3/4 white as my Voodoo 3 quickly runs out of texture memory.

Sound/Music:

Each creature you fight has its own unique sounds. I especially like the sound the giants make, with their roars and strange language they speak. The mites also make a rather hilarious sound (which actually scared me the first time I heard it), something akin to "ayiieeeeeeeeeeee!!!!". Other creatures like the vulnerable Drudge Skulkers sound something like a cat stuck in a garbage can. Sounds that mages make when they cast spells were well done. The sounds for spells even differ as you get higher level casting of those spells. Sounds that warriors make when fighting don't go much beyond the clang of steel against steel.

There is absolutely no music in the game, something that is both good and bad. Good because you will play this game for addictive hour after hour, hearing the same old music would quickly drive you to turning the music off anyway. Bad because there could at least be music in the taverns of towns, or at other certain areas of the game.

There is some environmental sounds, like the chirping of birds, crickets, waves lapping on the shore, wind chimes, and the sound of rocks falling when you are high in the mountains. Still, I would like to have had much more ambient/environmental sounds! The sounds were just to sparse for me.

Multiplayer:

Multiplayer is what AC is all about, and it excels admirably at it. In case you haven't gleamed this fact from what you have read so far, AC is an online only game. While I wouldn't exactly recommend it, my friend does play at 26.4K. Sure, he gets killed from time to time by monsters when a lag occurs, but it is playable at that speed. You couldn't even dream of playing a 3d shooter at 26.4K. Some have complained about network performance, but I believe that those who do really should be complaining to their ISP.

Playing online is more often than not a social experience. Many of the quests, monsters, and adventures in Dereth require players working together. A group of players with complimentary skills can achieve much more interesting things than a player who goes it solo. As such, I advise you against playing AC if you are the solo or loner type. However, its very possible to succeed in AC alone, its just not going to be nearly as much fun.

You will have the choice of a number of servers to play on (around 6 if memory servers me well). One of the servers is a player killer only server, where you will be able to fight other players as well as the evil minions of Dereth. You can also become a player killer on the normal servers, and switch back to non-player killer again, by following one of the many quests in the game. Once you develop a character on one server, that character can NOT be moved to another server. Be sure to get on the same server that your friends are on, if you have any who play.

Enjoyment and Overall Impression:

AC is really all-in-all an absolutely wonderful game. I've played AC since the later part of the Beta Test, and countless hours since its release on the shelves. I plan on playing it for many more hours to come. There is only one game I can think of that I enjoyed more than AC, and maybe one game I like as much. It is a truly unique gaming experience.

There are a few caveats to playing AC, all of which for me I can overlook (and/or I understand why they are there) because I enjoy AC so much. I advise reading alt.games.asheronscall newsgroup or going to some of the websites listed below. Follows is a brief illustration of what I'm alluding to:

Let us suppose that you've been playing Quake III for endless hours developing your machine gun skill. For illustrative purposes lets say that the machine gun in Quake III does 4 hit points of damage per round and has a range of 80yds. Suddenly, the next day, the machine gun does 1 hit points of damage and the range of the machine gun is reduced to 20yds. Would that bother you? If not, then you will have no problem with the tweaking and gameplay changing that has occurred since the retail release of AC, and that may occur again. Go to the newsgroups and read some of the past discussions regarding gameplay tweaking, I hesitate to express my personal feelings here, as both sides of the issue have plenty of validity. It is my responsibility to make you aware of these things, however.

One last piece of advice: buy the strategy guide. The manual that comes with AC lacks some critical information as well as some general details, that absolutely should have been there. Greed strikes again!

Marketing Efforts Towards Women:

AC is so gender neutral, so non-gender biased I don't know where to begin. First of all, when you roll your character you may choose to be female or male. This choice only changes the look of your character, and has no effect on the skills or abilities of your character. For example, a male warrior and a female warrior are of equal strength and ability. As a gender test, my level 21 mage is female, my other character a level 9 male mage. Not once was I discriminated against or treated poorly by other players who might have perceived me as being female. So it seems to me that both the game and community of players it attracts are of a more diverse and tolerant people (well, for the most part anyway). This has been my experience, others' experience may differ of course.

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