Asheron's Call

Palum

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AC was a first gen MMO which coexisted with UO and EQ. Like most there was a downturn due to WoW and the sequel AC2 which abandoned all of the originals ideals to be more WoWlike (the EQ2 playbook) failed before the original and was considered a marginal game, though it has it's charms.

The game had immense (literal books in game) and great lore, open character building, endless content and seasonal changes to the whole world. For the first decade or so there was a content patch monthly, and often live events with once and done content.

The combat is a bit janky but fun enough, while magic is generally seen to be higher skill cap and potential due to its adaptability and animation cancelling. There were lots of systems and changes over the year, and lots of controversy about booting which was rampant. The game should be considered closer to a 3d ARPG in combat complexity and loot, which was disappointing at the time but a bit refreshing these days as a light side game.

So I've been trying the recent emulators and they are now really solid. I'm currently playing on a server called Infinite Leaftide which rewards quest completion with account wide exp bonus. You can then reset your character at old cap (275) to gain a permanent character bonus with enlightenment, and level "infinitely" (though log scaling makes this soft instead of hard capped in practice). This really incentivizes visiting all the content (over a hundred updates and 2 expacs) as well as removes the need for macro/booting to level (though you still can).

Because the client is still the original (which granted was still being maintained until 2014ish) there's a few oddities with UI scaling and playing on 4k monitors, but it still works.

Anyway ACEmulator – Open source Asheron's Call server emulator powered by the community is the link for the ACE emulator (targets end of retail), GDLE is another (tends to target DM or ToD expansion launch periods).

If anyone is interested I will post more or help with how tos, there are full wikis which are only slightly less indexed than wowhead, so plenty of content guides.
 
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Sylas

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As one of only 40k people who purchased and played ac2 i would like to inform you your history is off.

AC2 was changed to be more like everquest, not wow. It launched a full 2 years prior to wow and and its original systems it employed inspired things like talent trees and group based instanced dungeons, they were copied by wow, not the other way around.
 
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Rajaah

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AC was a first gen MMO which coexisted with UO and EQ. Like most there was a downturn due to WoW and the sequel AC2 which abandoned all of the originals ideals to be more WoWlike (the EQ2 playbook) failed before the original and was considered a marginal game, though it has it's charms.

The game had immense (literal books in game) and great lore, open character building, endless content and seasonal changes to the whole world. For the first decade or so there was a content patch monthly, and often live events with once and done content.

The combat is a bit janky but fun enough, while magic is generally seen to be higher skill cap and potential due to its adaptability and animation cancelling. There were lots of systems and changes over the year, and lots of controversy about booting which was rampant. The game should be considered closer to a 3d ARPG in combat complexity and loot, which was disappointing at the time but a bit refreshing these days as a light side game.

So I've been trying the recent emulators and they are now really solid. I'm currently playing on a server called Infinite Leaftide which rewards quest completion with account wide exp bonus. You can then reset your character at old cap (275) to gain a permanent character bonus with enlightenment, and level "infinitely" (though log scaling makes this soft instead of hard capped in practice). This really incentivizes visiting all the content (over a hundred updates and 2 expacs) as well as removes the need for macro/booting to level (though you still can).

Because the client is still the original (which granted was still being maintained until 2014ish) there's a few oddities with UI scaling and playing on 4k monitors, but it still works.

Anyway ACEmulator – Open source Asheron's Call server emulator powered by the community is the link for the ACE emulator (targets end of retail), GDLE is another (tends to target DM or ToD expansion launch periods).

If anyone is interested I will post more or help with how tos, there are full wikis which are only slightly less indexed than wowhead, so plenty of content guides.

I 'member Asheron's Call. Never got to play it, but I did read up on it, download maps, look at a lot of screenshots, etc. When I was trying to get into EQ in 1999 and 2000, it wasn't really working out too well. Barely had any computer time, didn't really know what I was doing when I did get on there (since I didn't have enough time to really learn the ins and outs yet), and mostly just found EQ to be a total chore where I spent as much time running back to corpses as I did actually gaining anything. I really wanted to get into it though. So I looked over at Asheron's Call as an alternative, something similar in tech level without being so goddamn annoying. EQ won me over with Velious, though, so I never switched games. In some alternate universe I swore off EQ very early and played AC for a few years instead and probably have a completely different life now.

It's cool that people are still preserving stuff like this and Vanguard. Now I just wish someone would port the Dragon Quest 10 MMO (or just translate the single-player version) since Square-Enix doesn't seem to give a damn about it...
 

McCheese

SW: Sean, CW: Crone, GW: Wizardhawk
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I was a big EQ player. My dad was big into AC. I remember being really jealous of the seasonal changes and monthly updates that AC got. I'd watch him playing and see the trees covered in snow for winter, new things added (for example, I vaguely remember a big haunted house added as part of a Halloween update), and entire towns get destroyed.

Meanwhile I'm over here in EQ watching the Overthere skeletons make no progress on their shipbuilding after several years.
 
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Palum

what Suineg set it to
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As one of only 40k people who purchased and played ac2 i would like to inform you your history is off.

AC2 was changed to be more like everquest, not wow. It launched a full 2 years prior to wow and and its original systems it employed inspired things like talent trees and group based instanced dungeons, they were copied by wow, not the other way around.
Yea you're right, I got into the WoW CB pretty early so I kind of get things shuffled from that era. I would say that it was maybe evolutionary on gen 1 in the same way as WoW and EQ2 were but failed to really establish itself or offer anything worth not taking the offramp when WoW came out.

It did have dragons though.
 

Sylas

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Tacticians were amazing you shut your mouth.

A class that could place a variety of walls to funnel mobs a certain direction, prevent them from damaging the rest of the party while said walls lived, while he repaired said walls as well as place turrets which enabled him to "hold threat" is literally the first and only new concept for a "tank" class in the history of MMOs.

Yes creative players found ways to exploit the fuck out of it because you could use walls to control how mobs pathed and get some epic tower defense style gameplay with your turrets going ham, but even the intended gameplay for normal players, place 4 walls around party to turtle up, keep wall hp above 0 while reduing mob hp to 0, collect loot still worked and allowed for group comps beyond the standard healer tank dps of every other game before or after it.

The turret concept at least survived via wow totems. The walls sadly ive yet to see, too easy for smart players to exploit.
 

Palum

what Suineg set it to
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Tacticians were amazing you shut your mouth.

A class that could place a variety of walls to funnel mobs a certain direction, prevent them from damaging the rest of the party while said walls lived, while he repaired said walls as well as place turrets which enabled him to "hold threat" is literally the first and only new concept for a "tank" class in the history of MMOs.

Yes creative players found ways to exploit the fuck out of it because you could use walls to control how mobs pathed and get some epic tower defense style gameplay with your turrets going ham, but even the intended gameplay for normal players, place 4 walls around party to turtle up, keep wall hp above 0 while reduing mob hp to 0, collect loot still worked and allowed for group comps beyond the standard healer tank dps of every other game before or after it.

The turret concept at least survived via wow totems. The walls sadly ive yet to see, too easy for smart players to exploit.
Oh they were cool but fuck having 3 of them making mazes lol.
 

Hatorade

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Game was fun for sure, Lugian life caster buffs were crazy good. Game really did have some truly unique stuff.
 

Palum

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Game was fun for sure, Lugian life caster buffs were crazy good. Game really did have some truly unique stuff.
My favorite dumb class was the alchemist that just turned into a rage monster then immediately died when the transformation wore off lol
 

JOESAN21

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Man I loved this game, the world was so huge you could just find random instanced dungeons everywhere. The best part is you had to think and prepare for each dungeon, acid, frost, fire attacks and defense were essential depending on the monster you were fighting
 
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Palum

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Man I loved this game, the world was so huge you could just find random instanced dungeons everywhere. The best part is you had to think and prepare for each dungeon, acid, frost, fire attacks and defense were essential depending on the monster you were fighting
Yea this game still fills me with dread in some places. I just remember certain dungeons, dying super far in and losing something I can't afford to lose. Have to do the whole thing more carefully and hope you can at least rescue your corpse.
 
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Breakdown

Gunnar Durden
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I never played this. I saw a guy playing on Seedsow emu on tik tok. How hard would this be to play now, or understand. I play EQ EMU but this looks even harder barrier to entry
 

Palum

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I never played this. I saw a guy playing on Seedsow emu on tik tok. How hard would this be to play now, or understand. I play EQ EMU but this looks even harder barrier to entry
It's very simple and approachable which is what made it great. The problem as with most of these games is the client is built for the 90s and so you have to make some compromises like doing resolution scaling to get UI to look OK.

Though a lot of what made this game stand out is hard to recapture. AC had monthly content patches which actually changed the world and GM events which were happening frequently. The character building mechanics and rng loot are still great, if a bit solved. The combat is one of the best skill expressions (there were few or no other 3d MMOs at the time where you could just dodge spells and arrows), but also it's aged a lot. The original spell economy and research was eventually thrown out which was a shame.

If you're ok with actually reading text and some of the very early MMO mechanics, it's worth checking out.
 
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