citizen059hello my name is citizenI'm from the InternetRegistered Userregular
It's a real shame. Official discussion of the private server stuff went quiet a long time ago, and neither of the remaining devs had posted since mid-October.
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
Yeah just saw this. Dunno how to even take it. I was fully prepared to go gung go on the server thing but otherwise i was waiting patiently. Now i missed ever playing it again.
Super sad. I haven't logged in to ac since like 2003 and i still cite it as my favorite online experience whenever i get the chance.
I really want to see MMOs make a comeback in some form (i.e. a return to early EQ/WoW levels of relevance), but not sure what it would take to make it happen. I feel like it's partly a technology problem - the cost of making a new game at that scale that meets modern gameplay/art expectations is very daunting. My hope is that the cost of server resources going down and the power of development tools going up will eventually allow smaller teams to make higher quality MMOs, until sooner or later someone will make a hit.
A very large part of what made MMO's so enthralling initially was there wasn't an entire network of websites that would crack the data files and mine every bit of information out of them weeks before the patch. Even in early WoW it hadn't happened yet. Now though? Any content you create is spoiled and ruined before it's ever released, the worlds don't feel as massive as they once did because it's all rewards based interaction instead of gameplay based. People put more time into setting up mods/macros/interface and less time playing the game. It's partially the games fault, as challenges get more convoluted and the quantity of information you need to have available increases, so does the need for a very in-depth interface.
AC/EQ/WOW(Vanilla)/GW (Original) had some of the most fun content and exploration by design. We've somehow gone deep into FedEX cave of horrors.
I don't know that MMO's will ever "come back" because the changes they've gone through have been in response to what people say they want. Though as time goes on, I'm less and less convinced people who play MMO's have any idea what they want. Ultimately it seems to come down to them wanting pretty cosmetics, particle effects on weapons, buffs to their favorite class and lots of types of currency to keep the grind relevant.
Oh well. At least I have my memories of Portal Storms and Olthoi tunnels. Maybe some Lugians in the mountains getting shot in the head with arrows.
Edit: Haha, oh man. I remember my item/archer found an awesome breastplate that didn't cover arms, but it was too good to pass up. Of course, for the next three weeks I'd randomly die in a single hit to something because it hit me in the wrist. Also, I had a really valuable spoon or something that I carried as a death item.
Edit2: Dudewick -> Charwick = Nevar Forget.
Edit3: Learning the portal routes without a guide. Such amazing times.
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citizen059hello my name is citizenI'm from the InternetRegistered Userregular
Yeah, no doubt. I had a notebook I kept by my desk to write things down in.
A notebook.
Because the notion of a website containing every single secret the game held was just absurd.
Copying from @KiTA's post in the holiday subforum, just so it's not all gloom and doom in here:
Hello everyone and Happy Holidays,
Thank you for the phenomenal show of support and for your continued efforts to keep Asheron’s Call and Asheron’s Call 2 alive! We have been overwhelmed with the offers of continued support and with requests for information about what our team at Save Asheron’s Call has planned in its efforts to keep both games alive!
We are committed to this project and like all of you we plan to do everything we can to keep the games going! We have consulted with counsel and with business development and game development folks and we have been advised that there are a number of things that we have to do in order to get this project off on the right foot and to be able to negotiate with Turbine Entertainment and WB Games. As a first step, we have to form a legal LLC that can act as a representative of our team and can eventually enter into an agreement with Turbine and WB Games.
The process of setting up the LLC and getting into contact with the right persons at Turbine and WB Games may take several weeks. From there, our next step, is to see whether Turbine and WB Games can be convinced to enter into an agreement that will allow us to either purchase or lease the rights to Asheron’s Call and Asheron’s Call 2. We do not know, at this point, the cost or the terms that Turbine and WB Games will require for us to get the rights to keep the games alive. We promise to keep you updated on the progress of our negotiations and on next steps. We would like to emphasize that, at this point, our entire team, from our attorney to our business and game development people, are all long-time Asheron's Call players who love the game as you do and who are committed to saving the world of Auberean once and for all.
Our team has been informed of some crowd-funding efforts that are going on under the name of Asheron’s Call Resurrection. These crowd-funding efforts are not affiliated with our group and we have no association with the folks running the fundraisers. Before contributing any funds to a fundraising effort, we recommend doing your due diligence to check out the group raising the funds and to confirm where the money will ultimately go. Depending on the outcome of our discussions with Turbine and WB Games we may, as needed, set up a Kickstarter or other fundraising effort—if we do all of you will be the first to know. For now, we ask that you keep the momentum alive by continuing to support our efforts and by staying tuned for additional information. Thank you all for your efforts and Happy Holidays!
Sincerely,
Rocky Batton
Owner – Flank Gaming Network, LLC and Dereth.us
Project Lead – Save Asheron’s Call
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
I tried Project Gorgon for a few minutes tonight. The combat is a bit of a mess, but there's definitely a bit of the Asheron's Call exploration vibe going on. When I have more time I'll dig in a little me, but I might have fun with it for a few nights right now, and there's some potential there.
I tried Project Gorgon for a few minutes tonight. The combat is a bit of a mess, but there's definitely a bit of the Asheron's Call exploration vibe going on. When I have more time I'll dig in a little me, but I might have fun with it for a few nights right now, and there's some potential there.
That's the first I have heard of it and checking it out now.
Asheron's Call was criminally underrated and I played it for years. Never did receive the critical acclaim it deserved but 17 years is a pretty damn good run for an MMORPG. RIP.
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
They're Asheron's Call alumns, and the inspiration is there if the game is pretty rough. I think KiTA was the one who brought it up in the holiday forum, but I can't find the thread now.
They're Asheron's Call alumns, and the inspiration is there if the game is pretty rough. I think KiTA was the one who brought it up in the holiday forum, but I can't find the thread now.
Yeah. For fun....
They have a skill for dying. As in, the more unique ways you die, the more you level up the dying skill, and the more benefits you get (max hp bonus).
They have curses, like losing to a certain boss will see you turned into a cow until you beat the boss or get a remove curse potion. Fun thing is cows can chew (harvest) grass, chew their cud to heal, and can create milk (and cheese)... but you can't speak, so you can't use shops. There are similar curses for lycanthrope, giant spider, NBA Jam mode (big heads).... all with unique combat styles and benfits (and drawbacks).
In the Save AC neck of the woods, they've had some good talks with Warner Brothers. Apparently most of the decision makers at WB are gone on vacation until next week so they're in limbo, but they have mentioned there's no way in hell they can save the original servers. Basically, they have no way of getting personal data off the servers, specifically the Turbine usernames for each AC username -- and WB/Turbine would need to request permission from each and every person who has ever created an AC account and get their permission to migrate. Not happening. So if they do save AC... AC will move forward with 1-2 new servers (PVE, PVP).
Someone created a, lets say "competing" IndyGoGo campaign (the SaveAC folks have said they won't be requesting funds until later, if ever, and have banned those people from the SaveAC facebook group, take that what you will) so there's some drama.
How the hell did Warner Brothers end up with the rights?
They bought Turbine and fucked them into the ground, basically. Turbine is now a Mobile shoveware development house, and that's after they were made to make a shoveware licensed MOBA. All the talent at Turbine switched over to Standing Stone Games.
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
In the Save AC neck of the woods, they've had some good talks with Warner Brothers. Apparently most of the decision makers at WB are gone on vacation until next week so they're in limbo, but they have mentioned there's no way in hell they can save the original servers. Basically, they have no way of getting personal data off the servers, specifically the Turbine usernames for each AC username -- and WB/Turbine would need to request permission from each and every person who has ever created an AC account and get their permission to migrate. Not happening. So if they do save AC... AC will move forward with 1-2 new servers (PVE, PVP).
What a weird situation. There was no problem transferring the LotRO or DDO information, but AC won't work? Are the account servers that much of a clusterfuck?
Transferring things to SSG, which WB presumably owns or at least has a long term working relationship with, is different than transferring all that data to "Save AC LLC."
DDO and LOTRO were sold to another company and the staff on both teams moved off. AC is Turbine's IP so they (or rather, WB Games) have control over it. I would hope they can work something out with the fans to give them the code but I doubt it'll happen.
So in the Save AC group, someone randomly asked about the Harvestgain guild Dragonstar Alliance, trying to get in touch with them.
I've been in Dragonstar Alliance for 16 or 17 years now, since joining Asheron's Call with an IRL firend. I've followed them across 2 MMOs now, haha.
Small world.
Well I mean yeah, it kind of literally was a small world.
AC barely ever had the kind of roaming portion of playerbase most MMOs had. Majority of its players were IT'S players so its not shocking for everyone to have known everyone at some point.
Like anyone I ever talked to that played AC on darktide, I basically knew their character.
Random question here, a bit tangential to talking about AC, but how does data mining work when it comes to game files? For instance how every time a new WoW patch hits, everything in it gets found and disseminated immediately. Is there any way developers can design their file/server structures in a way to keep players from spoiling everything on day one? Is there even enough of a reason to, since players with too much time on their hand can be determined to solve it just for the challenge.
Reason I ask is that part of the big reason AC was so loved was the sense of exploration and discovery. It was in the early days of online gaming sure, but not having websites immediately posting coordinates to every quest objective right off the bat helped keep monthly content interesting since it wasn't all solved on patch day. Things are compounded these days with the longer content development cycles making patch days fewer and farther between. I know most people would say "Well just don't look at those sites and figure it out yourself" but that still takes some fun out of the community involvement of players discovering new things, sharing it with others on the forums, and actually having a sense of accomplishment tied to it.
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
Not really, because you have to have lines of text as they appear in game somewhere in the data. So unless you could somehow run with the data always being on the server then it would be impossible. And doing that would mean downloading that data every single time you play, which ehhhhhhhh.
Or obfuscation/encryption which requires the game to either decode on the fly or load the necessary decoded information into memory for when it is needed.
In the Save AC neck of the woods, they've had some good talks with Warner Brothers. Apparently most of the decision makers at WB are gone on vacation until next week so they're in limbo, but they have mentioned there's no way in hell they can save the original servers. Basically, they have no way of getting personal data off the servers, specifically the Turbine usernames for each AC username -- and WB/Turbine would need to request permission from each and every person who has ever created an AC account and get their permission to migrate. Not happening. So if they do save AC... AC will move forward with 1-2 new servers (PVE, PVP).
What a weird situation. There was no problem transferring the LotRO or DDO information, but AC won't work? Are the account servers that much of a clusterfuck?
I probably know the answer.
Their account system, at least the part that AC uses, is almost certainly a kludge of code from 1998 with whatever bandaids are necessary to make that code interface with the more modern parts of the system.
On the plus side, I'm sure someone can throw together a one-button plugin for Decal that saves all our character information (character stats, armor info, housing info, everything in inventory). Might have to put house-stored items on mules to make sure you get everything.
Then again, for such an operation to be useful, there would need to be a way (and a willingness) for future AC server admins to populate their server with that information.
There'd also need to be some kind of remote storage or verification to make sure a player doesn't just edit the stored info to give themselves perfect gear and a mansion, though. Maybe Virindi could add that functionality to the Integrator and store the info on his server by VI username (or at least checksums for the data on each stored character, etc).
Back in Egg Orchard. VTank remembered me. Level 258, I cannot raise any stats or skills with XP anymore, so the only thing I can do with my XP is augment myself. Augment gems which are on a timer, which I don't think I can realistically get before the end, heh.
Edit: Got 2. +3 DR, +3 DV. Have 3 endurance, will cap that out before the end I guess.
The founder of Turbine and creator of Asheron's Call, Johnny Monsarrat, is now posting on the Save AC boards. Jon Charette, one of the original devteam, is also involved.
They also posted an update today:
Rocky Batton
Good afternoon everyone,
Thank you all for your continued support as we try to make headway into what direction we need to travel to keep AC alive. I wanted to take a couple moments of your time to update everyone on what is going on, and where we stand.
Warner Brothers Communication - At this time, we are in the process of communicating with Warner Brothers. While we have sent emails to respective individuals within the company, we have not yet received official responses. Darren Sammons, who is our legal counsel, along with myself, will be heading up the efforts to open up communications with Warner Brothers, along with anyone else associated with the AC IP.
Communication with former Developers and other individuals associated with Asheron's Call - This part is kind of exciting for most of us, including myself immensely. We are in communication with Johnny Monsarrat in regards to Asheron's Call. He has brought to light information that we were not previously able to get, and we are scheduling a time with him to talk specifically about our efforts towards the Asheron's Call IP. We both have the same drive to save AC, and I am quite confident in saying that anything we can do for Mr. Monsarrat, we will do our best to accomplish it.
I hope everyone enjoys their day, and hopefully we will have more exciting news in the near future.
So while the lack of communication from WB is disheartening, it's also not unexpected due to the people involved not having an LLC setup yet. The fact that the founder of Turbine and creator of AC is now involved is good news, as his name has a lot of clout and I'm sure he's quite interested in getting his IP back. (Note we're not sure if he's involved as a member, just joining the community for solidarity, or what. There hasn't been any official announcement.)
Edit: Other responses.
Someone offered to get them in touch with a network host for the game if needed, Save AC lead said they had that covered. So that's good.
They are now leaving the idea of them getting the databases (i.e., retaining the original servers) up in the air, so they may have gotten some encouraging word from WB about that.
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
I have to imagine a lot of the delay in hearing from anyone is due to the holiday break.
I have to imagine a lot of the delay in hearing from anyone is due to the holiday break.
Absolutely. No one was in until today and it'll still take a few days to respond. And they likely cannot give an official answer until they form an LLC.
One of the things that made Asheron's Call so great was it's use of nontraditional fantasy. What is a Drudge? Or a Reedshark? What about the Lugians and the Virindi.
The creativity required to dream up the world that was Dereth is... Immense. It's why I loved it.
Not an Orc to be seen, nor a Goblin or Drow. Yet, a world I could understand and believe. Filled with things I'd never seen.
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
I mean, you could say that Drudge = Kobold, or Banderling = Troll. But yeah, the distinct creatures, with their own society and structure... it was great stuff.
Ding 268. 269. 270. 271. 272. Still on track to at least hit the cap before the end.
Tuskers were fun. Drudges, especially the playable ones in AC2, were interesting, and Olthoi / Virindi made an amazing overarching enemy. Realizing the player Empyreans were actually Virindi was a nice twist. (Protip: Empyreans do not have glowy eyes and float off the ground. Virindi do, howver.)
Monouga... they were my go to exaple for "Hey, this game has odd stuff." What's a Monouga? It's a 3 eyed cyclops.
Edit: According to the SaveAC head, there will be an update tomorrow. It's good news.
I decided to take a look at this saveAC stuff, I'm hopeful but realistic.
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
So if they do accomplish the goal that saveAC is working on, would it reopen the game as a paid game or completely free? Cause I never was able to purchase the game before it stopped going on sale but still wanted to log in for the first time in ages. I have no knowledge of my account info from back then so weather they save the info or not doesn't matter to me. Even if it is paid, I would find a way to pay whatever it is though.
Don't know. Hosting is cheap compared to 1999. They had said they would have to restart the servers fresh, but have started talking about the potential of getting the original server databases.
Also, re. datamining of game files: At least in WoW's case, they could encrypt all the game files. This is something they have the ability to do, but do not do outside of specific circumstances (preloaded data for future patches) because if they did encrypt the game files they wouldn't be able to distribute minor patches (with encryption, even small changes to the original versions of files results in an entirely different ciphertext, so patching even only one byte of the file would mean the entire encrypted file would change).
I don't think they ever encrypted the files. Portal.dat datamines were common with every single patch. The real thing keeping an AC Server Emulator from happening is a lack of understanding about the protocols, and a lack of the exact logic behind a lot of things (monster spawns, quests, etc).
Some highlights: Apparently there's an easter egg in the character creator involving clicking somewhere 10 times. "If I remember correctly, it was just above center to the right in the face creator."
You can turn yourself into an Alien, Dan Scherlis, or something else which I'm not remembering in the character creator. You have to click in one specific spot like 10 times or something..
On the Server Hardware:
I believe each world ran on something like 7 quad core p133s. I think they got upgraded at some point to 200mhz machines or something, but I can't say for sure as I never really dealt with ops.
I wasn't involved with the server code at all, but I will tell you a funny story. The server breaks up the world into strips to do it's load balancing. When this was first written, we were told to lay out the content such that things did not line up horizontally, so they'd be on different strips. However, turns out the server was coded with vertical strips.
Once we were live, there was one strip that often had 3 towns on it, so we needed to move at least one of them to lighten the load. So we blew it up in an event.
Your town got blown up to help us balance the server.
7 quad core P133s... I think anyone could swing that hardware nowadays. Hell, blow everyone's mind, upgrade it to a set of 500mhz boxes.
Edit: The town in question was Arwic. It's on the same strip as Rithwic, and Sawato, and there's the added traffic from people going to Eastham...
On private servers:
I'm in active discussions with people who are trying to do this and with the original server engineers. If someone can get the source out of WB, I have no doubt we'll be able to get the servers running again. That said, I know no one over there, and there's like 1 person I still know at Turbine.
To clarify, cause I got giddy looking at it: The head of AC2 and one of the original devs of AC is in touch with the original Server team for AC who are all ready to volunteer to get the servers running outside of WB/Turbine... if WB/Turbine will play cricket.
Edit: On AC2:
"Do you believe that the fundamental changes in skills/character progression/gameplay of AC2 were necessary? What was the motivation behind those changes? I felt like part of the allure of AC1 was the skill system and "sandboxiness" character progression-wise and of the game in general."
Time. Basically, Turbine was going through a really rough patch. The board had basically decided to sell the company, but then the internet crash happened. So they ousted the CEO and put in a temp CEO who didn't really know games, and he signed a really, really bad deal for AC2. When the new CEO arrived, he put me in charge of AC2 and said "We can only lose money from this deal, so we have to ship this as soon as possible and get on to other things or we'll go out of business".
Meanwhile there was a 3000+ page design for AC2. It was insane, and could never have been implemented no matter how much time you had.
So, I threw out that design and pushed everyone to come up with the simplest thing that could possibly work. I was also on a naive quest to produce something that could be balanced at the time, where as now I'd prefer the rough ends created by a system that is fundamentally unbalanced.
That's game dev, folks. You don't get to choose the constraints you work under, you just deal with them the best you can.
Edit: On what made AC feel special compared to other, bland, MMOs:
"I've played many MMOs since AC, but never one that has its soul. Do you think there's a reason many games these days feel like they lack something intrinsic that AC had?
Even industry leaders like WoW while highly polished and great, lack something distinctive about them that games like AC just had naturally... Some sense of wild optimism in its opportunities which were just waiting to be discovered.
People like to think we've all changed as gamers, which we have, but you can go back and play older games you've never played and still get that feeling. Everquest, Ultima, I'd never played those until recently and they had that feeling. What is it thats happened in the game dev industry that's caused games to lose that?"
I think there's a few things that might make the difference:
Broken things:
A broken system can actually be more fun than a fun system sometimes. Take Battlefield 1942, for instance. The first version of that game had so many bugs and strange physics tricks, but it all added to the mayhem. Many of the systems in AC1 were fundamentally unbalanceable, and this created interesting opportunity for players. As a genre evolve, these issues tend to get solved, and a more polished game emerges which often lacks some of the fun.
A more specific example is the treasure system. It basically randomly dials parameters and spits thing out. You end up with totally ridiculous things sometimes - but that lead to 'ugly fashion' shows in the game. There's value in being polished, but you can polish off all the interesting and unique elements if your not careful.
The allegence system:
I've been pushing us towards a version of this on my latest game, based on the Walking Dead franchise, because I think it provided a tighter nit community that cared about each other than most guild systems out there. On mobile this is especially bad, because most of these systems are just "50 random people with no reason to talk or care for each other".
In designing communities, I think it's necessary to provide a structure which matches human behavior. We tend to work best in small groups, and then group those structures together to create larger groups. The alliance system not only provided such a structure, but encouraged recruitment via the xp rewards, and encouraged experienced players to help newer players as a way to get those rewards. XP flows up, help flows down.
Difficulty:
Game genres have, in general, gotten easier over time. There are things in early MMOs that are just hard (by design or by accident). When you accomplish one of these goals anyway, it matters more.
Scope and being first:
AC was one of the first games with a massive scale; people hadn't climbed mountains and watched the sun go down in a game before. When you do something for the first time, you tend to remember it. Today, for a game to have these types of features is not a big deal, and you take it for granted. But the first game you played that broke open these new things will always be special in your memory.
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Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
The example of broken things being good is pretty interesting. AC was already a much more "action" type of MMO from the getgo. I mean it had actual projectiles.
But the stuff players did with basically animation cancelling and combinations of keypresses letting you move while casting actually reworked the combat engine into something that... worked. And well. Coming from darktide, there was such a huge skillcap to PVP because expert players could manipulate the movement while casting to do things like quickcast and delay cast to make dodging war magic (which was actual projectiles, something no MMO even tried to do for a LONG time after AC) super difficult. Before they implemented a band aid for it, being able to full cast spells while actually running was a little broken. But then the small check to see if you end a cast in the same spot you start it actually balanced the issue without removing the "bug" completely. This was an awesome approach, because other games (WoW being likely the prime example) would just remove anything close to the issue because attempting to balance it was just tooooooo hard.
Of course likely the games weakest point was melee combat and it was due to all this, but it had its tricks too. Magic was basically kind of the games thing anyway and everyone almost required it in some fashion, so those tricks would matter for others as well. Melee had plenty of tricks of its own.
The random factor of ALL armor combined with the full out trade economy is another aspect of the game they failed to mention that made it feel so alive. The fact people would sell armor at a town and it was up for resale for anyone that went there (within a reasonable time limit) was freaking HUGE. The fact there was no guaranteed way to get any armor stats meant that rare occurances in the randomization could basically give you just a flat out legendary item. The advent of the BOE/BOP idea really killed this and is another reason very few games ever offered a similar experience to AC.
I kind of like how that article really explains why AC2 never felt like a real successor to AC. It was basically just a product thrown out the door with the AC IP tossed on it. I would KILL to get to read that huge original design though.
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Sad day.
The signs have all been there for quite a while.
I hate to see it go.
Some of my best memories are from moments in AC.
AC is officially dead for good.
Super sad. I haven't logged in to ac since like 2003 and i still cite it as my favorite online experience whenever i get the chance.
A very large part of what made MMO's so enthralling initially was there wasn't an entire network of websites that would crack the data files and mine every bit of information out of them weeks before the patch. Even in early WoW it hadn't happened yet. Now though? Any content you create is spoiled and ruined before it's ever released, the worlds don't feel as massive as they once did because it's all rewards based interaction instead of gameplay based. People put more time into setting up mods/macros/interface and less time playing the game. It's partially the games fault, as challenges get more convoluted and the quantity of information you need to have available increases, so does the need for a very in-depth interface.
AC/EQ/WOW(Vanilla)/GW (Original) had some of the most fun content and exploration by design. We've somehow gone deep into FedEX cave of horrors.
I don't know that MMO's will ever "come back" because the changes they've gone through have been in response to what people say they want. Though as time goes on, I'm less and less convinced people who play MMO's have any idea what they want. Ultimately it seems to come down to them wanting pretty cosmetics, particle effects on weapons, buffs to their favorite class and lots of types of currency to keep the grind relevant.
Oh well. At least I have my memories of Portal Storms and Olthoi tunnels. Maybe some Lugians in the mountains getting shot in the head with arrows.
Edit: Haha, oh man. I remember my item/archer found an awesome breastplate that didn't cover arms, but it was too good to pass up. Of course, for the next three weeks I'd randomly die in a single hit to something because it hit me in the wrist. Also, I had a really valuable spoon or something that I carried as a death item.
Edit2: Dudewick -> Charwick = Nevar Forget.
Edit3: Learning the portal routes without a guide. Such amazing times.
A notebook.
Because the notion of a website containing every single secret the game held was just absurd.
That's the first I have heard of it and checking it out now.
Asheron's Call was criminally underrated and I played it for years. Never did receive the critical acclaim it deserved but 17 years is a pretty damn good run for an MMORPG. RIP.
They're Asheron's Call alumns, and the inspiration is there if the game is pretty rough. I think KiTA was the one who brought it up in the holiday forum, but I can't find the thread now.
Yeah. For fun....
They have a skill for dying. As in, the more unique ways you die, the more you level up the dying skill, and the more benefits you get (max hp bonus).
They have curses, like losing to a certain boss will see you turned into a cow until you beat the boss or get a remove curse potion. Fun thing is cows can chew (harvest) grass, chew their cud to heal, and can create milk (and cheese)... but you can't speak, so you can't use shops. There are similar curses for lycanthrope, giant spider, NBA Jam mode (big heads).... all with unique combat styles and benfits (and drawbacks).
In the Save AC neck of the woods, they've had some good talks with Warner Brothers. Apparently most of the decision makers at WB are gone on vacation until next week so they're in limbo, but they have mentioned there's no way in hell they can save the original servers. Basically, they have no way of getting personal data off the servers, specifically the Turbine usernames for each AC username -- and WB/Turbine would need to request permission from each and every person who has ever created an AC account and get their permission to migrate. Not happening. So if they do save AC... AC will move forward with 1-2 new servers (PVE, PVP).
Someone created a, lets say "competing" IndyGoGo campaign (the SaveAC folks have said they won't be requesting funds until later, if ever, and have banned those people from the SaveAC facebook group, take that what you will) so there's some drama.
They bought Turbine and fucked them into the ground, basically. Turbine is now a Mobile shoveware development house, and that's after they were made to make a shoveware licensed MOBA. All the talent at Turbine switched over to Standing Stone Games.
What a weird situation. There was no problem transferring the LotRO or DDO information, but AC won't work? Are the account servers that much of a clusterfuck?
I probably know the answer.
All of the mobile people are still at Turbine.
I've been in Dragonstar Alliance for 16 or 17 years now, since joining Asheron's Call with an IRL firend. I've followed them across 2 MMOs now, haha.
Small world.
Well I mean yeah, it kind of literally was a small world.
AC barely ever had the kind of roaming portion of playerbase most MMOs had. Majority of its players were IT'S players so its not shocking for everyone to have known everyone at some point.
Like anyone I ever talked to that played AC on darktide, I basically knew their character.
Reason I ask is that part of the big reason AC was so loved was the sense of exploration and discovery. It was in the early days of online gaming sure, but not having websites immediately posting coordinates to every quest objective right off the bat helped keep monthly content interesting since it wasn't all solved on patch day. Things are compounded these days with the longer content development cycles making patch days fewer and farther between. I know most people would say "Well just don't look at those sites and figure it out yourself" but that still takes some fun out of the community involvement of players discovering new things, sharing it with others on the forums, and actually having a sense of accomplishment tied to it.
PSN:Furlion
Their account system, at least the part that AC uses, is almost certainly a kludge of code from 1998 with whatever bandaids are necessary to make that code interface with the more modern parts of the system.
On the plus side, I'm sure someone can throw together a one-button plugin for Decal that saves all our character information (character stats, armor info, housing info, everything in inventory). Might have to put house-stored items on mules to make sure you get everything.
Then again, for such an operation to be useful, there would need to be a way (and a willingness) for future AC server admins to populate their server with that information.
There'd also need to be some kind of remote storage or verification to make sure a player doesn't just edit the stored info to give themselves perfect gear and a mansion, though. Maybe Virindi could add that functionality to the Integrator and store the info on his server by VI username (or at least checksums for the data on each stored character, etc).
Edit: Got 2. +3 DR, +3 DV. Have 3 endurance, will cap that out before the end I guess.
They also posted an update today:
So while the lack of communication from WB is disheartening, it's also not unexpected due to the people involved not having an LLC setup yet. The fact that the founder of Turbine and creator of AC is now involved is good news, as his name has a lot of clout and I'm sure he's quite interested in getting his IP back. (Note we're not sure if he's involved as a member, just joining the community for solidarity, or what. There hasn't been any official announcement.)
Edit: Other responses.
Someone offered to get them in touch with a network host for the game if needed, Save AC lead said they had that covered. So that's good.
They are now leaving the idea of them getting the databases (i.e., retaining the original servers) up in the air, so they may have gotten some encouraging word from WB about that.
Absolutely. No one was in until today and it'll still take a few days to respond. And they likely cannot give an official answer until they form an LLC.
The creativity required to dream up the world that was Dereth is... Immense. It's why I loved it.
Not an Orc to be seen, nor a Goblin or Drow. Yet, a world I could understand and believe. Filled with things I'd never seen.
Tuskers were fun. Drudges, especially the playable ones in AC2, were interesting, and Olthoi / Virindi made an amazing overarching enemy. Realizing the player Empyreans were actually Virindi was a nice twist. (Protip: Empyreans do not have glowy eyes and float off the ground. Virindi do, howver.)
Monouga... they were my go to exaple for "Hey, this game has odd stuff." What's a Monouga? It's a 3 eyed cyclops.
Edit: According to the SaveAC head, there will be an update tomorrow. It's good news.
Edit: ... Still waiting on that update.
Also, re. datamining of game files: At least in WoW's case, they could encrypt all the game files. This is something they have the ability to do, but do not do outside of specific circumstances (preloaded data for future patches) because if they did encrypt the game files they wouldn't be able to distribute minor patches (with encryption, even small changes to the original versions of files results in an entirely different ciphertext, so patching even only one byte of the file would mean the entire encrypted file would change).
I don't think they ever encrypted the files. Portal.dat datamines were common with every single patch. The real thing keeping an AC Server Emulator from happening is a lack of understanding about the protocols, and a lack of the exact logic behind a lot of things (monster spawns, quests, etc).
https://www.reddit.com/r/AsheronsCall/comments/5nd27n/one_of_the_original_asherons_call_developers_home/
Some highlights: Apparently there's an easter egg in the character creator involving clicking somewhere 10 times. "If I remember correctly, it was just above center to the right in the face creator."
On the Server Hardware:
7 quad core P133s... I think anyone could swing that hardware nowadays. Hell, blow everyone's mind, upgrade it to a set of 500mhz boxes.
Edit: The town in question was Arwic. It's on the same strip as Rithwic, and Sawato, and there's the added traffic from people going to Eastham...
On private servers:
To clarify, cause I got giddy looking at it: The head of AC2 and one of the original devs of AC is in touch with the original Server team for AC who are all ready to volunteer to get the servers running outside of WB/Turbine... if WB/Turbine will play cricket.
Edit: On AC2:
"Do you believe that the fundamental changes in skills/character progression/gameplay of AC2 were necessary? What was the motivation behind those changes? I felt like part of the allure of AC1 was the skill system and "sandboxiness" character progression-wise and of the game in general."
Edit: On what made AC feel special compared to other, bland, MMOs:
"I've played many MMOs since AC, but never one that has its soul. Do you think there's a reason many games these days feel like they lack something intrinsic that AC had?
Even industry leaders like WoW while highly polished and great, lack something distinctive about them that games like AC just had naturally... Some sense of wild optimism in its opportunities which were just waiting to be discovered.
People like to think we've all changed as gamers, which we have, but you can go back and play older games you've never played and still get that feeling. Everquest, Ultima, I'd never played those until recently and they had that feeling. What is it thats happened in the game dev industry that's caused games to lose that?"
But the stuff players did with basically animation cancelling and combinations of keypresses letting you move while casting actually reworked the combat engine into something that... worked. And well. Coming from darktide, there was such a huge skillcap to PVP because expert players could manipulate the movement while casting to do things like quickcast and delay cast to make dodging war magic (which was actual projectiles, something no MMO even tried to do for a LONG time after AC) super difficult. Before they implemented a band aid for it, being able to full cast spells while actually running was a little broken. But then the small check to see if you end a cast in the same spot you start it actually balanced the issue without removing the "bug" completely. This was an awesome approach, because other games (WoW being likely the prime example) would just remove anything close to the issue because attempting to balance it was just tooooooo hard.
Of course likely the games weakest point was melee combat and it was due to all this, but it had its tricks too. Magic was basically kind of the games thing anyway and everyone almost required it in some fashion, so those tricks would matter for others as well. Melee had plenty of tricks of its own.
The random factor of ALL armor combined with the full out trade economy is another aspect of the game they failed to mention that made it feel so alive. The fact people would sell armor at a town and it was up for resale for anyone that went there (within a reasonable time limit) was freaking HUGE. The fact there was no guaranteed way to get any armor stats meant that rare occurances in the randomization could basically give you just a flat out legendary item. The advent of the BOE/BOP idea really killed this and is another reason very few games ever offered a similar experience to AC.
I kind of like how that article really explains why AC2 never felt like a real successor to AC. It was basically just a product thrown out the door with the AC IP tossed on it. I would KILL to get to read that huge original design though.
274.