15 Things I Miss from Asheron’s Call

If you’ve been following this blog, chances are you’re already aware that I’m pretty big on MMOs. What few people know is that I’ve actually started playing them nine years ago. Asheron’s Call was released in November 1999 and was one of the first massively multiplayer online games to feature a fully three-dimensional environment, at the time rivaled only by EverQuest.

If you’ve never played Asheron’s Call, this list may not bring much of a flashback to you but will probably give you some insight on how the previous generations of MMO games were played. If you have played it, it may bring back some fond memories of times past. So without further delay here are, in no particular order, 15 things I miss about Asheron’s Call.

15. The PVP System

Unlike most MMOs, Asheron’s Call did not feature a PVP toggle functionality; it featured a PVP quest. In order to become a player killer (PK), players had to visit an altar dedicated to the evil demon known as Bael’Zharon and offer their services to him. This could only be un-done by visiting another altar dedicated to Asheron, source of good and hope in the world of Dereth.

In most cases, the combat was done by casting spells since most melee attacks were ineffective unless done in groups. This required players dodge enemy fire while casting their own attacks. This was done by holding down the arrow and strafe keys at the same time, while pressing several other buttons to scroll through and cast spells. Not an easy feat for most casual players. When the player was killed, the winner had the choice of leaving the body or to loot the items the player had dropped upon death.

An example of the casting technique required to PVP

This system forced PVPers to carry “Death items”, which were items of high monetary value that would dropped when killed, rather than their hard-to-replace weapons and armor.

In some scenarios, quest had to be executed by PVP-enabled players, since their goals were to release an evil being from captivity.

14. Item Inscriptions

Speaking of items, a feature I’ve yet to see replicated in another MMO is inscription. Asheron’s Call allowed players to write personalized notes or instructions on their equipment. In most cases, items were branded with a message to the tune of “please return to me if found” in case your items would fall to the ground upon death, but some carried whimsical quotes or humorous sayings. It was always entertaining to view other player’s weapons to see what they had written down.

Player could also purchase books and pages from vendors that allowed additional space to take down notes, reminders or characters templates and to-do lists. It was also a good way for guilds to distribute their “kill on sight” list of enemy players.

13. Burden

In most MMOs, players grind until their bag space is filled, forcing them to head back to town and sell their goods. In Asheron’s Call however, every item had a preset burden amount. Players could only carry a preset amount of burden, determined by their strength, before becoming encumbered. Encumbrance slowed the player’s moving speed, attack speed and reduced his melee defense, making him easy pray. It also had the disadvantage of reducing the player’s stamina; a stat that controlled jumping and melee combat.

While it may sound like an annoying system, it caused players to think twice about the loot they were picking up. If I leave the heavy plate helmet behind, I can pick up ten more jewels. It also forced players to sell the items no longer need, rather than become pack rats. In PVP combat, it was interesting to cast a strength debuff on an enemy player: if he was carrying too much with him, encumbrance would become a devastating curse. Players would constantly be on the lookout for items that were stronger, less expensive and lighter.

12. Skills and Talents

When it came to player classes, Asheron’s Call had a near-infinite amount of configurations to try. Players were free to specialize several skills and train others based on a point system. This allowed players to customize their avatar to their liking. It was common to see crossbow-wielding mages in heavy plate armor.

Those skills not only leveled up when used, they could also be dramatically enhanced by spending experience points. Players were constantly coming up with new templates to try but unfortunately, were locked in their configurations until a patch introduced the proper re-spec functionality.

11. Dropping items

While it may seem like a trivial features, players could drop items and money on the ground, allowing other player or characters to pick them up. This was common when a player was trading items with another character on the same account since no banking system was initially available.

In many cases, players that were leaving the game would run around town, dropping their hard-earned goods on the ground for other players to pick up in a frantic mess before saying their final farewells. It was also a source of many complaints since players would often drop their items in a public location, only to have them stolen by a bystander.

10. The Patron/Vassal System

Although Asheron’s Call was lacking many of the features found in today’s modern MMOs, it did have one very solid guild structure: the patron and vassal system. As a patron, your duty was to help out your vassals whenever possible, whether with corpse recovery, items, or simply information when requested. In return, your vassals would send up a percentage of their XP onto their patron, based on the level of their Loyalty skill. Patrons and vassals could communicate with each other through dedicated channels, creating a strong family-like bond between groups.

Many guilds had complex tree-like architectures to promote a solid flow of experience points from one branch of players to the higher-ranking ones in order to reward the guild’s officers for their loyalty.

9. Admin-played Boss Raids

During certain events, the game’s administrators and moderators would take control of an enemy and attack various towns and locations. While it doesn’t sound like much fun, it was always much more exhilarating fighting a human creature than an AI-controlled one. If you were around for the attacks by Martine or Bael’Zharon, then I do not need to remind you how epic these fights were.

Since Asheron’s Call only had a handful of servers, this was easily achieved by the staff on-hand, something that would be much harder to properly accomplish in World of Warcraft.

8. Grinding Zones

When it came to grinding experience points for hours on end, Asheron’s Call had something for everyone, regardless of their level range. Olthois, Lugians and Tuskers were amongst some of the favorite dungeon-crawling creatures players would spend countless hours slaying. In most scenarios, players would form groups and separate the dungeon into logical sections and divide the XP earned.

I couldn’t count the number of hours I spent on the Coral Reef, pounding on golemns, or all the time I spent burning Tuskers and stabbing Olthoi.

7. The Level Cap

When I was playing Asheron’s Call, the level cap was 126 which had only been hit by two players on my server; both leaders of large guilds, and it was quite a feat. Players had to work long and hard to achieve level 100, let alone 126.

In today’s modern MMOs, hitting the level cap is trivial and usually takes experienced players a few months at most. Most level 126 players were inspiring people, filled with the leadership and organizational skills that required such a feat. Every time someone hit the magic number, a global broadcast would be sent throughout the server.

6. Mana Conversion

Ah, Mana Conversion, how I miss thee. If you’ve never played Asheron’s Call, it will be a bit hard for me to explain what Mana Conversion was all about, but I’ll give it a try. In a nuttshell, it allowed players to cast spells with lower-than-required mana costs. For example, I want to cast Imperil which costs 500 mana. I only have 200 mana left but my mana conversion skill is high, which reduces the casting cost by a somewhat-random percentage every time I try to cast the spell. Players would hit their cast button over and over until mana conversion “clicked” at a high percentage and allows them to cast, despite the lower-than-required amount of mana they had left.

With a high conversion skill, players could replenish their mana by casting two spells in succession: Stamina to Mana, and Mana to Stamina. With a high enough skill, the mana expended by casting those spells would be significantly less than the amount received from them.

5. Running

Yes, you’ve read that right, running. In Asheron’s Call, running was actually a skill that players could level and spend experience points on in order to increase their movement speed up to a certain degree. When maxed out, players could run fairly quickly from one zone to the next. Running was affected by burden (see above) and affected how far players could jump.

4. Houses and Mansions

I miss my old house. In Asheron’s Call, players were allowed to purchase a house and decorate it with various items and trophies. Houses were divided into neighborhoods and separated fairly randomly across the world. Once a home was purchased, players were provided with a House Recall spell, so that it would always remain accessible, as well as a vault where players could store their items. A house could be set to be publicly accessible, or locked if players didn’t want other people poking around their property.

Larger guilds had the chance to purchase mansions that included an instanced basement zone where meetings and PVP contests could be held. However, most social events took place in front of the mansion’s yard, where players appeared when using their guild recall spell.

Players could raid other guild’s mansions, but could not take over the deed or loot the vaults.

3. Unlimited XP Flow

Although level 126 was the highest level players could achieve at the time, the additional XP received could always bee spent on stats or skills. This left even the highest-level players to remain in the game, always wanting to increase their skills higher and higher, something that most modern MMOs have left out, leaving high-level players to constantly re-roll new characters.

2. The Casting Bar

Asheron’s Call’s casting bar was different than any other I’ve encountered. The spells were aligned in a single bar at the bottom of the screen and divided into tabs. It was up to players to divide their tabs and place the spells they wanted in the appropriate sections.

What made it different is that players were not forced to click or bind specific spells, the bar could be navigated using preset keys. In my case, I remember moving from left to right using Page Up and Page Down, using Insert and Del to switch tabs, and using he End key to cast. Watching most Asheron’s Call players, a frantic tapping of the keyboard would almost certainly be heard.

1. Attack Power

While Melee Combat was never my forte in Asheron’s Call, melee attacks would have a variable bar in which players could set the strength of their attack. Moving the slider to the left side would make attacks much faster, but weaker while moving the slider to the right would increase the time between attacks, but make them much more powerful. Players were constantly adjusting that slider to accommodate the type of fighting they were doings. When faced with creatures with low melee defense, players would move the slider up in order to inflict more damage since the chance of a dodge would be much lower.

Wrap-up

In all my MMO-playing years, I’ve yet to find a game as dynamic and open as Asheron’s Call, and many of the original subscribers are still playing the game 8 years later. That alone should give you some insight into the depth of the game. Where Asheron’s Call 2 failed, the original is still going strong.

If you’re still curious, there are a ton of Asheron’s Call videos on YouTube you can check out.