We would like to start out by thanking everyone for giving Severlin a warm welcome to the team. He is still getting used to his new surroundings and getting up to speed on the game code, so he has been a very busy person this last week. I am sure we will hear more from him here on the forums as he gets more comfortable in his new role. He has already brought up some exciting ideas for things he would like to do in the future.
So we had a chance to try out some new toys over the last couple of weeks here, so I took the opportunity to make my first attempt at an official Asheron’s Call Screensaver. You can download a version with or without sound. The version with sound comes with the music that has graced most of our videos in the past, “Excalibur”. Both versions run the same images, so it is a matter of preference if you want sound or not. This was my first attempt at creating a screensaver so your feedback is welcome. The more I know about what folks want, the better the next one will be. Click here if you want the version with sound, click here if you want the version without sound. Enjoy!
As much as I would like to, I cannot give away any clues about the November event yet. What I can do is give you a sneak peek at one of the new heritage masks that will be available in the November event. That will just have to hold everyone over until we can give you some more information.
That’s it for this week. Everyone have a great week and see you all in Dereth!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
Hello there and welcome to the October 30th edition of the weekly update.
This week’s update is going to be a short one due to the fact it is our annual Halloween event here in the Turbine offices. Every department does some decorating of their area in preparation for the children of employees coming in for some Halloween fun. Many of us get in costume and just have a good time. Needless to say, this can be a bit distracting at times.
This week the team is working on fixing any issues that may still remain in the November event, Remembering the Past, tentatively scheduled to go live on November 14th. At this point all the content is done and is being tested and fixed as things are found.
As I am sure you can guess we are all excited about the upcoming free trial. This is something we have been working on getting done for some time now, and we think that along with the full page add in PC Gamer, we should be seeing some new players coming into the world of Dereth very soon. We know there are quite a few questions surrounding the upcoming trial, and those questions will be answered in short order once the trial is live and ready to go.
That’s about it for this week. Everyone have a great week and see you all in Dereth!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
This week we are going to address one of the issues most discussed on this forum over the last few months, the pre-order gem.
After much debate from the community as well as internally here in the office we have come to a decision we feel is optimal given the situation. Starting in the November event players will be able to get a new augmentation which will grant them an 8% health bonus for 24 hours upon use. Getting this augmentation will give players a gem in their inventory similar to the pre-order gem some players already have. The cost of getting this gem will be 2 billion experience and the gems effect will NOT stack with the Asheron's Benediction gem that those who did pre-order have in their inventory. We feel this is the best solution to an issue which has stirred up debate for quite some time now.
Remember that this upcoming Friday the November Letter to the Players and new Event fiction will be released. This month is going to mark the beginning of the latest story arc in Asheron's Call. What does the future hold for Dereth in the coming months?
That's about it for this week, everyone have a great day and see you all in Dereth!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
Hello there and welcome to the November 13th edition of the weekly update.
As many of you know the Asheron’s Call free trial site was live over this past weekend. Unfortunately we had to bring the site live before originally planned and before all of the development support was ready. This allowed some players to possibly abuse trial accounts in an unintended manner.
The positive side of this is we have information for those people and we will be checking the system based on the information we have. Anyone found to have exploited the system by gathering either rank chains or excess housing may be subject to a ban across all of their accounts, both trial and existing accounts. This will mean any accounts associated with trial accounts caught abusing the system could be banned. If you are a player who used the trial in a legitimate manner, you will not need to worry about any type of repercussions with your account.
We had hoped it would not come down to this, but some players felt the need to once again try to gain advantages over other players. This trial is meant to re-energize AC and this kind of behavior only serves to hurt the game and the community.
When the Free Trial officially goes live there will be restrictions in place that will prevent this from being an issue. Until this system is in place we will be monitoring all account transactions related to the free trial for abuse.
The November event, Remembering the past is tentatively going live this Thursday, the 16th. All worlds will be down from 8am – 3pm EST and players will not be able to log in to the game. Make sure to check out the various fan sites for the tease images related to the November event, and check out the Remembering the Past event page.
That’s about it for this week. Have a great day and see you all in Dereth!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
Hello there and welcome to the November 20th edition of the Asheron’s Call Weekly Update!
The November event, Remembering the Past will be launching tomorrow November 21st. Please remember that all worlds will be down from 8am – 3pm EST.
This week the team is working on implementing some of the things for the December event. That means they get to see how they look in a game environment, and how they work. We then begin making the appropriate changes to these quests and items to bring them in line with what the initial vision for the particular item or quest is supposed to be.
Much to my surprise today we had a visit from one of our oldest friends here at Turbine, Kwip. He and his wife came by to say hello to some old friends and to hand out some jerky to some of the staff. For many it was nice to see them in for a visit, and for me it was finally nice to meet him and his wife. You can check out Kwip’s work over at http://www.neenerneener.net.
Finally, this is a reminder that most of us here will be having a long weekend this week to celebrate the Thanksgiving Holiday. Customer service will still be working during the time the rest of us are off. Billing and technical support hours will be as follows:
Account & Technical Support will be closed in observation of the Thanksgiving Day Holiday, Thursday November 23rd, 2006.
Account & Technical Support will be available Friday November 24th, via live chat and email. Account Management phone support will be closed. Please plan accordingly.
Both departments will re-open on Monday November 27th during the regular business hours of 12pm-9pm EST. Phone, email, and live chat services will be available.
That’s about it for this week. Everyone have a great week and see you all in Dereth!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
Hello there and welcome to the November 27th edition of the weekly update. I hope everyone had a great weekend.
This week the team is working on things for the December event. They are working out all of the details of the quests, working on some balance stuff and overall just getting things ready for testing.
We would now like to take this opportunity to answer a couple questions from the forums over the last week.
Any chance that the Nuhmudira quest will be repeatable?
As of right now we have no plans to change how this quest works. If we do decide to change anything on this quest we will be sure to let everyone know.
Where is the non Subscriber section of the forums you promised a while back? The reason is that right now we are having some issues making the changes needed to our forum management system to allow it to recognize the difference between the two user groups. It is something we are still working on, but as of right now I do not have an ETA on when things will be ready.
Is there any chance we can get a mana check command?
As of right now this is not something in the plans, but I can bring it up to the team.
That’s about it for today. Everyone have a great week and see you all in Dereth!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
Hello there and welcome to the December 4th edition of the weekly update! I hope everyone had a great weekend of AC playing and relaxation.
This week the team is working on getting things prepared for the December event. This includes testing for any final issues as well as making sure that things are in line with where the team wanted them to be. The event is set to go live on Tuesday December 19th and is titled Cold Tracks.
We are very proud to say that the Asheron’s Call free trial has been a great success thus far. Seeing not only new players but those returning to find out what is new, is something we are very excited to see. One thing that has stood out to me so far is all of the comments we have received from the new and returning folks about how nice everyone has been to them. Helping players get acquainted or re-acquainted with the game. Once again the Asheron’s Call community proves why it is still one of the best gaming communities in all of online gaming. Thank you all from us here on the team as well as all of the people new or returning to the world of Dereth.
That’s about it for this week. I will have teaser images out to all of the Fansites this week so make sure to stay tuned for those. Have a great week and see you all in Dereth!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
Hello and welcome to the late because I am sick edition of the Weekly Update for the week of December 11, 2006! Based on some recent feedback I am going to try a slightly different format for this particular update.
So this week I want to give you all some insight as to what we have been discussing over the last few weeks in various meetings we have had. This will be done of course, without going into too much detail. We don’t want to give away everything in one little post, now do we?
So, one thing that has been coming up a lot in our discussions recently has been an Elder Game System. Everyone here is in total agreement this is some type of Elder game needs to be done as soon as we can. One idea was to make the system in some way tie in with allegiances and making them have an important role in how this system works. As always, we will discuss things more as we get closer to actually doing the work on this. The feedback we get from the players will be a valuable tool we plan to use as much as possible in designing something that is fun for everyone involved. I want to be very clear that this subject is still in the very, very early stages of discussion.
We have also seen that a lot of folks were big fans of the Comic Style teaser that was released for the Reign of Terror event. Right now art time is a bit tight, but we are trying to find a way to possibly get something like this done for the next big story arc. Along the lines of art we are also in the process of trying to get some new art assets for the web. To be used in things like online ads, and possibly a new website template or two. If we do decide to go with the comic book teaser, I will let everyone know ahead of time. Possibly with a teaser of the teaser!
On a side note I have been very glad to see that the art of debating an issue without insulting people is not dead. Case in point is this thread. Who said the art of civil debate was dead?
Well that’s about it for this week. Please remember all things discussed in this update are by no means set in stone and plans could change at any time based on our work load and direction.
Have a great week and see you all in Dereth!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
Hello there and welcome to the Holiday edition of the Weekly update for December 18, 2006.
We were really happy to see all of the feedback from last weeks update. The discussion has been handled very well so far and there has been several great ideas given to us thus far. These kinds of discussions are exactly what we are looking for when it comes to getting feedback from the players. We are all very excited about the possibilities we have going forward.
There will not be a weekly update next week. While the team will be keeping an eye on things, I will be taking a little vacation over the holidays to spend some time with family and friends. I will be checking in from time to time, but for the most part these forums will be checked by the team and some of the other OCR folks here at Turbine, such as Ramen and Saffron. Please be nice to them if they do stop by.
As most of you know by now, this Tuesday December 19th is patch day. Please remember that all worlds will be down from 8am EST – 3pm EST.
In keeping with the theme of letting everyone in on what is going on in the world of Asheron’s Call, I wanted to give everyone a peek into what is coming soon to Asheron’s Call. Coming in the month of January we are planning on running some scheduled live ops to further progress the storyline we are currently in right now. We will be posting a schedule for these ops when we get closer to the time they are going live. We are going to look at several factors in determining when the best times to run these and future events will be. Our goal is to get as many players as we can involved in these events.
I must admit that being a part of these events is one of the best perks of working on Asheron’s Call.
That’s about it for this week. Everyone have a happy and safe holiday season, and see you all in Dereth!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
Hello there and welcome to the January 8th edition of the weekly update!
I know it has been a couple of weeks since the last update was posted, so I am going to try and cram as much information as I can in to this weeks update.
During the last week I have been busy trying to catch up on all the things I missed over the Holiday vacation. One thing we did discuss on my return was gathering more feedback from players here on the forums and in-game. A fine example of this feedback in action is the thread on returning the Caul to its previous XP yield. Just so we are clear, for the time being we are just talking about the creatures in the area known as Caulcano. Creatures outside of this area were not touched when the XP amounts were lowered.
The January event Bridging the Vast Divide is tentatively scheduled to go live on Tuesday January 16th. As always the date can change if there are any unforeseen issues. We will of course give as much notice as possible if that were to be the case.
In the past, players have stated that they would like schedules of our story-related live-ops. To this end, we wanted to let you know that we do have a story live-op in the works for our January update. We will be posting a schedule of the live-ops in conjunction with the Letter to the Players. We hope that you will be attend, and look forward to seeing you in Dereth!
As some of you may have noticed, we have fixed the errors on the launcher that became evident to those using IE7. The actual issue was that some different coding had to be done when everyone was using IE6 in order to make things look right. This code was actually throwing me off a bit because; for the most part it did look correct. After several posts on the issue I made some quick changes to the old page, which as far as I can tell has fixed the problems people were having. We are still going to have a new page made at some point in the future.
A reminder that on January 19th our beloved Producer, Crowley will be attending a special dinner in the beautiful Pacific Northwest! The will be fun and prizes, as well as the chance to meet and hang with the man behind the scenes of Asheron’s Call. If you are going to be in the Bellevue Washington area and you would like to attend make sure to RSVP john@dilley.com. Having had the opportunity to attend one of these dinners myself, I can say they are really a lot of fun. Make sure you go if you have the chance.
Based on some recent feedback and wanting to keep things going in the right direction as we go forward. We would like to take the opportunity once again to solicit some feedback from you, the players about the last story arc involving Grael. What about the Arc did you like? What about the Arc did you not like? Please keep all responses constructive in nature. Just telling us you did not like it, is not what we are looking for. We want to know exactly what aspects of the event you did like as well what you may not have liked. The more information we can gather, the better. We want to make sure that moving ahead we make the events as strong as we can. Your feedback is an important part of that process.
Some of you have already noticed but, AC along with a few other games has been featured in this month’s Massive Magazine. That goes along with another back cover advertisement. Make sure to check it out if you get the chance.
Well 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
Hello there and welcome to the January 15th edition of the weekly update!
As most of you know by now, Tuesday January 16th is patch day. So remember that all worlds will be down from 8am EST – 3pm EST for the update.
Crowley, who has been on vacation, sort of, will be attending an Asheron’s Call dinner for all those located in the beautiful Pacific Northwest on the 19th of this month. If you can go, make sure you harass him as much as possible.
During the last week, we have been having a lot of discussions about storylines and what we want to happen in the coming months. The feedback we have gotten from last week’s update has been great to read. We would like to thank everyone who has taken the time to give us that feedback. Our goal is as always to provide our players with the best content and stories that we possibly can. Getting the feedback we have so far is going to be a good way for us to make sure we deliver on that goal. So, thanks again for the great feedback.
With the January event being all set to go this week, the team has shifted gears to getting things done for the February event. This means getting things documented, implemented on our internal servers and getting into balancing things. I know it’s still early, but from what I have seen so far, February is already looking like it is going to be a fun month.
At this point there is not much else going on right now, so I will take this opportunity to answer a couple of questions that are looking at us from the front page of the forums.
Is it possible to change my characters to another server?
At this time it is not possible. Not too long ago we had a very serious internal discussion about being able to do this as a service to our customers. After some research we found that without a lot of back end work on the game code and how information is stored of the server, this process would be very difficult to do on a large scale. Hopefully with some of the changes we would like to make over the coming year, this will become a possibility, but as of right now, this is something we just cannot do.
New sounds?
We would love to add some new sounds to the game. Right now the team has other priorities as far as what is getting done, but I would not rule out some new sounds at some point. As far as the weather stuff that came along with this question, we can certainly inquire about putting it back in with a toggle of some sort. Though I know that Severlin already has a ton on his plate right now, but what’s one more thing?
Rares
As someone in the thread on this topic already said, they are called Rares for a reason. The higher tier rares were never meant to be found by everyone, while the lower tiers were meant to be a bit more common. With that in mind we have been discussing the system as a whole and the possibility of turning up some of the rates on the different tiers of rares. When we have more information about what, if any changes we are going make to the system, we will make sure to let everyone know.
Well that’s about it for now. Everyone have a great week and see you in Dereth!
Oh yea, one more thing before we forget…
GO PATS!!! (Sorry had to do it.)
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
Hi there and welcome to the January 22nd edition of the weekly update!
Crowley has finally returned to us today, after his trip to the west coast. He reports that things were fun and he enjoyed the chance to meet with folks at the AC dinner. From all reports the dinner was a success and fun was had by all. Thanks to everyone who attended and those who set things up. Next time it will hopefully be our turn to get things set up. We are hopeful to have more information about another ACPL in the coming weeks.
Over the past week with Crowley out, there were not a lot of decisions made about what was going into the game. We had a few discussions about the direction we should go with the next story arc. A big part of those talks were based directly off feedback we got from folks here on the forums and in the game.
Please remember that the scheduled Live Ops begin this week. Make sure you are ready for it when it is time for your server. You can view the full schedule here. Just as a friendly reminder, here are some tips to help your live event experience go smoother.
1. Make sure if you have any question about what your PC can handle, turn down your graphics ahead of time. This will save you the hassle of doing it in the middle of the event due to performance issues.
2. Some sound cards can draw from system resources. If you are one of the people who runs the game on a lower end machine, turning off the sounds of the game can sometimes help increase overall performance.
3. No matter what level you are please feel free to participate in the event. If you do not know where to go when the event starts, do not be afraid to ask for directions in general chat. The chat is there for a reason.
4. The person or persons running the events will be in character while the event is going on. That means they will not be answering your question about the variances on weapon damage. If you want to ask them about something related to the event, please feel free.
5. It is recommended that you do not send tells to the person running the Live event. They may get the message, but you have a better chance of getting an answer if you ask in local chat.
Last but not least we are happy to let you know that we have some new pets coming soon. Players have been asking for some time now, for pets to be more useful. So coming soon will be some craft buffing pets. These pets will be able to give you temporary buffs to your crafting skill while out. As of right now these pets will buff only one skill per pet and they will buff the four basic crafting skills of Alchemy, Cooking, Fletching, and Lockpick.
We will of course have more information about these pets as we get closer to their release in to the world. Right now we are aiming for them to be a part of the February event, but as always this can change.
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
Hi there and welcome to the January 29th edition of the weekly update!
The scheduled live events have begun taking place, and the turnout for these events has been great so far. It is always good to see the players together in large groups. So far it seems that everyone has been enjoying the events, and participating in any way they can.
This week the team is very busy getting all the quests for February on to our internal servers for testing and balancing. This is the time in development when all the kinks and bugs are worked out. Feedback from the team is then given to the person working on the content and adjustments are made.
The team has also started working on things for the March event. We had our first meetings to discuss the plans for March and beyond. We are now at the point where the team will be starting to work out the mechanics of the content they want to add for the month of March. We will then a have a few more meeting to discuss plans and direction of content.
I would like to take this opportunity to point out one of the best threads I have seen in some time on this forum. What makes the thread so great is the back and forth between the team and the players. It is this type of communication and the back and forth dialog that makes this community so great. Please feel free to check it out. http://forums.ac.turbine.com/showthread.php?t=32710
The free trial and our advertising have been going very well so far, and we are not done yet. We will be running another ad in an upcoming issue of Massive Magazine. Our goal is to attract people who enjoy the MMO experience. Asheron’s Call can be one of the most exciting engaging games out there, and the more players we can bring to Dereth, the better that experience will be. We are very excited about what 2007 has in store for us. With new features and quests coming every month, there has never been a better time to get in to the action.
Last but not least… For the last several weeks I have gently prodding Crowley to write us up a 2007 edition of the Producer’s Letter. Well, it seems like all that begging finally worked, and Crowley is now in the process of writing it up. I can’t give you an exact date of when it will be published, but it will be soon.
That’s it for now. Everyone have a great week and see you all in Dereth!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
Hello there and welcome to the February 5th edition of the weekly update. Let’s get right into some of the news for this week coming up.
Our billing folks have been hard at work trying to get new offers together for our loyal customers of Asheron’s Call. We are pleased to announce that Asheron’s Call is now offering muti-month purchasing options. These options will give players a chance to make a one time purchase to pay for their accounts at a discounted rate. This is the first of what we hope are many exciting changes coming to Asheron's Call in the coming months. The available plans are as follows:
3 months -1 time charge of $35.75 ($3 savings)
6 months -1 time charge of $67.75 ($12 savings)
12 months -1 time charge of $119.75 ($36 savings)
If you are interested in taking part in one of these great deals, please click here for more details on how you can sign up today.
As of right now we are still in the process of nailing down the launch date of the February event, Rekindling the Light. As soon as we have the date for the event set, I will make sure and post it.
As pointed out earlier this week by Severlin here it appears we have finally nailed down that pesky bug which caused some creatures to teleport home.
Quote:
Severlin: Well, I think I nailed the bug where homesick mobs never quite reach their home and eventually teleport back. After some initial testing with the usual suspects we couldn't reproduce the behavior. Yet since it is an intermittent problem if any of you see that bug after the fix goes live it would be great if you could throw a post or PM our way.
The scheduled live events have been wrapped up for the month. As far as I have seen and read, most people had a great time, and are enjoying Bur. We would like to thank everyone who participated in the events, and we look forward to doing more of these in the future.
That's about it for this week. Everyone have a great day and see you all in Dereth!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
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