Dark Majesty

Throne of Destiny review

The Good

The Bad

 

AC artwork is  property of Turbine Inc. and its affiliates

Asheron's Call - Very good, was a pioneer in MMORPG game play.

Asheron's Call, Dark Majesty - Very Good, a continuation of the original with  various map expansions

Asheron's Call 2 - A Bust!  Too much Microsoft involvement. May as well get an xbox if you  like this style or play one of the other games. Camelot, Everquest, or World of Warcraft comes to mind. Plug to  be pulled December 2005

Asheron's Call, Throne of Destiny - To date, published, but at what cost! The new AC expansion pack is a meager 2  on a scale of 1 to 5. This expansion  brings new mobs and land mass to the game. This expansion pack was to be released in Feb/Mar 05, but failed to publish. The Executive Producer, Mr. J. Mulligan, who was ultimately  responsible decided to cut and  run to Paris, France around publishing day and work  for a competitor.  Throne of Destiny has been long touted by  the E-3 Bullchip artists as being the catalyst to revive a dying game. 

In-depth review Of Asheron's Call - Throne of Destiny

The Good - This game, although roughly  6 years old is one of the best games to ever crawl out of a code jocks dungeon. Its unique game engine coupled with the medium to  high resolution graphics and story-line have kept many an Adventurer glued to  the screen. What's around the next hill, the next dungeon corner,  or just general online gemoglichkeit/camaraderie developed in-game have captured many a gamer for hours of great entertainment. This game does not require the usual upgrade of  modest hardware that many other game platforms have required in the past. Running cross country one finds the artwork from dull, boring to interesting, varied with quite beautiful landscapes. Most dungeon environments are dark and ugly and lack imagination. With black and red being the prevailing theme of many dungeons one thinks of the bordellos of yesteryear.

The basic combat arms professions available are Mage, Melee (i.e. Sword, Dagger, Unarmed Combat) Archer, and all around Scoundrel. Initially  the game actually  had tradesmen available that allowed you  to  create products from  raw material to sell. This, however went  by the wayside as Turbine decided it didn't like a free trade economy within the game controlled by  the players. This attitude forces the player to become a trash collector in  order to continue game play. Kill a beast, collect the trash and sell, buy components to kill  beast, go kill  and collect more trash. Among the trash, you  might  find what is considered high-level "Loot". So, much  time is spent trashing, looking for items that might help in  game play. Yes, there are paupers and kings, but then this game is based on economics. From purchasing the basic necessities required for game-play to housing,  it all requires  in-game schekels(pyreals).  The game itself IS NOT for the casual game player. Its almost impossible to build a character, survive at low levels,  and start dungeon-eering by yourself without the frustration of constant deaths, as there is really no usable documentation provided by  the manufacturer. To successfully  play  this game one must have a "patron". This lack of adequate documentation, this flaw, has spawned a cottage industry of player support sites determined to  make the game succeed. Various 3rd party applications have been created to assist in game play as the user interface is designed with  redundancy as a paramount feature. Playing without 3rd party apps., most times drives one up a wall in disgust. One of the best support sites available is http://vnboards.ign.com/ . This site provides information on quests and forums for various discussion as well as providing help in creating characters and general player helping player support. Another useful site is Maggies site . This is informative and contains much of the old information. Its especially  good in setting up  new characters. 

Quests - there are over 150 quests  available to augment the basic single or small group meanderings.  Many beautiful  scenes can be found in various areas of Dereth. Watch the sun set and rise as the clock is set to about 20 minutes of daylight and 20 of darkness. 

The Bad - Over the past 5 years, turbine has experienced the continual problem of lag. Turbine has made half-hearted attempts to resolve the issue but has been unwilling to  invest resources to clear this nasty  problem. This lag monster has no boundaries and and can be found in almost all areas of the map. When more than a few people assemble to  fight mobs,  lag becomes an issue to the point of getting you killed. Lag is especially bad in  the higher level hunting areas. Larger mobs of monsters require larger hunting parties for survival. It's obvious even to  the layman that the old equipment which could not handle the traffic with smaller populations can't handle the higher levels of creatures and players. Be prepared to die. Not from  lack of ability, but from the lag.   

Additionally Turbine seems to cater to the the whiners.  The most challenging character to created is the mage, yet an all out effort has been underway  to constantly  "nerf" (cripple) this character. A quick example is here; A level 120 archer or sword  usually out-kills a level 200 mage. This is due to a few elements. 1 - high level bows (skill level 360), swords and other melee weapons (skill level 400) are readily  found throughout the game for those professions, yet the mage weapons (scepters skill level 355) are virtually impossible to  find, and  confined to the the most difficult game areas to  hunt. 2 - Melee and missile warriors  have the ability to build their 'speed of attacks" even with the most powerful weapons while the mage is tied to the slow cast speed of the level 7 spells. When the mage uses the lower lever spells, although faster casting, they cannot compete with the melees and missile in damage points due to weapons made available to  those groups. Usually  the melee/archers will  get the kill and kill points.  Turbine calls it "game balance". Yet this Game balance is absurd as the rewards are not there based on  difficulty of character creation. Bottom line, over the past 5 years, the melees whine and the mage gets "nerfed" with the justification that the mage is too powerful. No aspect of this game appears to be up-front. Turbine NEVER provides something for nothing. If a new item/concept is introduced into the game, something else has historically been "nerfed" or taken away.

The Extremely Ugly- While tech support and billing is some of the best in  the industry, Asheron's Call In-Game Customer support is about the worst. The In-Game administrative (+Envoy) support makes playing Asheron's Call similar to visiting a New Orleans brothel. Basically, you  pay to play  and get screwed by  the +Envoy's at their leisure. Its obvious there is Microsoft Zone training in  the background, with the basic philosophy being, Screw you ! Our product, our  rules, we are not required to respond to  you,  piss-off! Your purchase rights are not relevant as you  agreed to this unilateral contract. You  purchased the game in good faith, but when you  play it, you  need "our permission" and "consent". This attitude can be seen by  going to  the support site linked below. There is no way to contact supervisory personnel when administrators error. If you  do not respond to an admin request to do a song and dance within 30  seconds, you are banned from  the game for what they call unattended combat. The typical Microsoft Zone philosophy of, "do a song and dance for me" or get booted and banned! It doesn't matter if you are a slow typist or if your attention  is diverted for a few moments. 

Asheron's Call Admins(+Envoys) have specific duties assigned, however there are some employees that go beyond the assigned duties and troll the worlds looking for people they have "Black-Listed".

HR:MN:39 "Player" has been placed in limbo.
HR:MN:54 +Envoy Havre tells you Player, "Hello Player". This is a UCM check. 
Please respond to me within 30 seconds."
HR:MN:55 +Envoy Havre tells you Player, "Hello Player". This is a UCM check. 
Please respond to me within 30 seconds."
HR:MN:56 +Envoy Havre tells you Player, "Hello Player". This is a UCM check. 
Please respond to me within 30 seconds."
HR:MN:31 +Envoy Havre tells you Player, "You have not responded. 
You will be banned for at least 3 days for UCM.

Excerpt 2nd Appeal email - You booted me and locked me out of my account Tuesday because I did not respond in time to your request. The ban was to expire at 830pm EST today Friday. I now see an additional 4 days of ban when I try logging in. Is there an issue?  No response from the FU team addressing the 4 day extension. 

Why is an additional automatic 4 day  lockout applied if an appeal is submitted?

Why does the Envoy doing the banning handle the appeal? Is this not a conflict of interest?

Why  has the in-game support company been been labeled "affectionate and alienating"? Presently the site is referred to as the FU site as the name fits the actions of some of the the +Envoys.   http://www.fuzeqna.com/Asheron'scall/

Why does fuzeqna.com threaten a long time player that didn't respond within 30 seconds? The player involved in this situation has been playing multiple characters since Feb, 2001 on this account as well as additional  accounts. The player missed 1 check (the above) and his daughter missed the other as she had never been checked before and panicked.  The father who was playing with her at the time was also booted when he questioned the +Envoy. Father said "What the hell is going on?". Envoy  booted father for bad language. Ummm hello? Do we see a pattern of malcontent and abusive admins here? How many others 

To many players, this is the best MMORPG on the market and we tolerate many problem areas as we have faith in turbine 
and its ability to eventually get resolution of the many negative game issues. However, the support company (the FU site) needs a little tweaking.

Scenario - There is a 5 person fellow in Vile Sanctuary. In addition, there are a couple of UCM'ers camped. No problem 
with the UCM'ers as they are not bothering anyone.

Admin +Envoy Havre sweeps through and crap goes to hell in a hand basket!!!!
1 - Admin boots and bans a guy sitting in front of his machine talking trash with his wife who is playing on another pc. Guy wasn't paying attention. When an immediate appeal is submitted, the 3 day boot is automatically extended to 7 days by Havre.
2 - Havre does not check the rest of the players  in the fellow
3 - Havre leaves the 2 UCM'ers alone as well
4 - When an immediate message is sent to the Envoy about the boot you are sent to that silly(FU) site where you 
can argue with yourself! I have never heard of a reversal since the FU site was incorporated into game infrastructure support. There is no immediate telephone supervisory support available as fuze/turbine apparently feel that paying, playing clients have no rights and are at the mercy of the fuzeqna.com (FU site). One gets the feeling this is a 3rd rate seat-of the-pants operation  to cheap to install telephones and proper staffing. Reminds one of Microsoft standard operating procedures.

Umm hello ? Is there a problem ? 
There were no complaints as there was more than enough cannon fodder for all. Who called the FU admins? No one! 
Why the selective targeting and profiling? Again, No one in the dungeon reported problems! What's with these silly sweeps that disrupt game play? Do the admins not have enough of a work load? Or, is this just a bit of "ego flexing"? Who needs it!

Bottom Line: The FU support site is virtually impossible to deal with and the Envoy doesn't want to hear about it! The support company appears to live and breath the philosophy of .. "It's good to  be the King",  and "Never mind that you are a long term loyal customer.
The above is just one of the many problems encountered when dealing with Asheron's Call in game 3rd party  support personnel.  

Customer Service:  Our Director of Customer Service flew out to Redmond to meet with the current Admins for several days and spend time with them on the job, to see the current process in action.  The Online Services Group has also done an outstanding job of interviewing and hiring support representatives and supervisors in a short period of time.  All of them have customer service experience and play MMORPGs, almost all of them play either AC1 or 2 (for example, the AC Customer Service Manager has over a decade of customer service management experience and over four years as a player of AC1) and a few of them have experience with in-game support at other companies. 

Our first class of Envoys (i.e. Admins, or in-game support representatives) is in training right now, with another class set to start on February 17th.  Right now, we're planning on transitioning the in-game support to Turbine's control on Monday, March 1st, although you'll probably see more of an in-game support presence before then, as new Envoys start taking some calls on the retail worlds.