A Big Announcement! - 12/22/05 (by
Frelorn)Hello there everyone. As some of you may have noticed there
was not a weekly update thread this week. The reason for that was that I was
waiting until I could make these announcements to you. So without further
delay…
We are very excited to be able to bring you some big news regarding
Asheron’s Call. The first announcement is that as of the January event, all
players who have purchased and upgraded to Throne of Destiny, will be able
to activate and use the High Res Textures. The Team has been working very
hard the past few months to get these ready for you and we are all very
excited about this. Keep in mind these textures are not a major upgrade.
When first creating these textures it was necessary to make sure the game
still ran under the recommended specs. In some cases you may not notice a
big difference in the textures.
The other big announcement that we have concerns Darktide. Many months ago
it was mentioned that Darktide was due for a hardware upgrade due to the
different play style on that world. We are pleased to say that sometime
before mid-February, Darktide will receive that hardware upgrade. We will
announce the actual date for this as we get closer to the time that it will
happen.
I would also like to take this time to remind everyone that as of January
10th, 2006 along with account migration no longer being available, the
ability to enter pre- order keys will also be turned off. So please make
sure that if you still have any of these keys that you have not entered into
our billing system, that you do so before the 10th of January.
In the coming weeks I will have more information for you on the exciting
things happening for AC right now. These are just some of the things to come
for Asheron’s Call and the team is very excited about the future.
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
Weekly Update - 1/4/05 (by
Frelorn)
Hello there everyone. I hope we all had a great Holiday Season, and a
Happy New Year. Here is our latest installment of the weekly updates. So
without further delay, lets get right to this weeks questions
1) Are there plans to try attracting new players?
We are always trying to find new ways to attract players to the game.
However, we do have some limitations on what we can do at this point. We
all love AC here, but it is not really very easy for us to market a 6
year old game to an audience of people who all want the next big thing
or the new shiny that just came out.
There are plans to make it easier for new people to get the game. When I
can give you more details, I will.
2) What is the team's vision for AC?
Our vision is and always has been to make the best game we can and to
move the world of Dereth forward. We will also be publishing our
Producer’s vision statement very soon, which will get into more detail
about what the future holds for Asheron’s Call.
3) Are there plans for an end game?
The Land Control plan that we publicized in the early days of Throne of
Destiny planning is officially off the table. I know that keeps coming
up on the boards, so let’s please just put the matter to rest. There are
no current plans to implement that Land Control system. This is not to
say that the team has given up on developing some kind of elder game
system, but it is going to have to be something that we can do on off
time or extra time, because it’s just not built in to our development
schedule. If this changes, we will let you know.
4) Are there any plans for non-hunting means of advancement?
We are always looking for ways that we can help those of you who have
dedicated crafters. The problem is with those select few who will try to
find a way to abuse whatever system we put in. To counteract these
people, it takes us a lot longer to do some things that might otherwise
be very simple.
5) The third party app API that Zyrca was working on: will we ever
see it?
The API that Zyrca was working on was for Dark Majesty. When Throne of
Destiny was made and released the API effectively became useless. I
can’t say for sure if we are going to try and make a version for ToD,
but there are no plans for one right now.
What we are working on right now.
This week we are in the stage of the month where things are being tested
and fixed for the January event. At the same time we have already begun
the planning for February.
That's about it for now. Everyone have a great week and see you all in
Dereth!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
High Res Texture Screenshots - 1/5/05 (link)
So with the release of the High Res Textures coming for the January event,
we felt it was a good time to give everyone some before and after
screenshots of the textures in action.
|
(click to enlage) |
 |
The image on the left is without the new textures, the image on the right
is with the High Res Textures activated.
|
(click to enlage) |
 |
Again, the left side of the image is without the textures, the right side
is with them activated.
|
(click to enlage) |
 |
This final image is one of a typical building you might find in Dereth.
In this case the image on the left side is with the Textures turned on, and
the right side is without the High Res Textures.
These are just a couple of examples of what you might see when the High Res
Textures are activated. Please keep in mind that not everything was updated
with these textures, so you may not see any difference in some things.
Looking for PvP Feedback - 1/10/05 (by
Crowley)Hey PvPers,
We're looking to make some changes in response to complaints about PvP
combat in Asheron's Call. So far, here are what we have found to be the most
commonly complained about issues:
1. Weeping Weapons (or weapons popular for PvP) don't do enough damage
2. Melee D bonuses on casting devices are too high
3. Players have too much health
First, it seems that the problem is that you think fights are taking too
long, or are too difficult to bring to a conclusion -- that is, to get a
kill. Is this an accurate assessment?
So are more lethal encounters a part of the solution? We're not going to
bring down players' health, so the logical choice seems to be to increase
the frequency with which people hit each other in fights, and increase the
amount of damage that they do on each hit.
I'd like to know if you think we are on the right track, because we are
investigating means to that end. If there are other ways in which you think
PvP combat needs to change, please post here.
Please try to keep it constructive.
Thanks for your feedback!
Crowley/DaveJ
__________________
"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." -- Hunter S. Thompson (RIP)
News for the Week - 1/11/05 (by
Frelorn)Hello everyone. I hope we are all well today. I know in the
past few weeks when I have done this update I have answered a few questions
and then told you what was going on in the week. For this update I am going
to do something a little different.
I wanted to use this opportunity to let you all know about a great new
feature going into the game in January (tentatively). When you first log in
after the January event goes live you will notice a new “friends” tab on the
social panel. This panel will be a list of your friends and their online
status, sorted first by online status, and then alphabetically. With this
panel you will be able to do all of the things you could do with the
existing friends list, as well as some new functionality.
One of the coolest things about this new friends panel is the ability to
appear offline. With a simple click of a button you will appear offline to
everyone, until you choose to hit the button again. You will be able to send
tells to people on your friends list by selecting that person and clicking
the send tell button on the panel. This will auto fill the /tell friends
name into your chat bar. You will also be able remove friends by selecting
them and hitting the remove button. In addition, your friends list will now
hold up to 50 people!
Having this new friends panel means that your old friends list will no
longer be useful. You will however, be able to type in the command @friends
old. This will give you a list of all the people who were on your friends
list before the January event. The one drawback to this new system is that
you will need to manually enter all of your old friends into your new
friends panel.
As far as this week goes, we are in the final stages of QA testing on the
January event and we are well into the writing process for February. We also
use this time to go over things we want in the future. I won’t get into
specifics, but there are some really great ideas that we are looking forward
to adding to the game.
Oh yea, before I forget… The tentative launch date for the January event is
Wednesday January 18. The name of this event is Reprisals! That means that
as long as everything goes according to plans, I will have the LttP out on
Friday.
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
Asheron's Call Cheaters Banned - 1/13/05 (link)
In Asheron's Call we are committed to providing a fun and fair experience
for our players. When unscrupulous players cheat it hurts everyone.
Over the past week, we have been doing extensive logging on the Darktide
server to track down players who have been "duping" items. We have completed
the investigation and today we banned dozens of accounts and removed these
items. Any player who was found to have duped items had all of their Turbine
accounts (both live and beta) permanently suspended.
