Asheron's Call

Asheron's Call

Asheron's Call (AC) was a fantasy Massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Turbine, Inc. released on November 2, 1999.

Asheron's Call 1 and 2 services ended on January 31st, 2017. (source: forum post)
Asheron's Call private servers were not released. (source: forum post)

Game Info

See also: List of Categories

The following list is not exhaustive.

Dereth
- Creatures
- Locations
- Lore
- NPCs
- Quests
Gameplay
- Allegiances
- Combat
- Housing
- Magic
- Fellowships
- Game Mechanics
Player Characters

Asheron's Call Updates

Game Release and Expansions

1999 Release	2001 Dark Majesty	2005 Throne of Destiny

Major Monthly Updates

See Patches for a list of all the regular monthly updates made to Asheron's Call.

Event	Main Content/Features
	August 2008: 100th Update Societies of Dereth Land Control 7th Loot Tier New Item Sets
	October 2009: 10th Anniversary Update Quest Journal Gearcrafting Skill Two Handed Combat Skill Trinkets Quest XP Passup
	April 2010: "Big" Update Tailoring Barbers and Hairstyles Aetheria Playable Shadows
	December 2010: "Big" Update Olthoi Play Luminance Void Magic Playable Empyreans
	May 2011: "Big" Update New level 180+ hunting and questing area Contracts Prismatic Ammunition Shield Tailoring Alternate Currency Exchangers
	February 2012: Skill System Overhaul Dirty Fighting Dual Wield Finesse Weapons Heavy Weapons Light Weapons Missile Weapons Recklessness Shield Sneak Attack
	August 2012: "Big" Update Weather Effects New quests and hunting areas Atlan Weapons Update Isparian Weapons Update Exploration Society Letters Update
	February 2013: "Big" Update New UI Legendary cantrips introduced New Summoning skill introduced Loot Tier 8 introduced Creature loot tiers adjusted
	August 2013: "Big" Update Weapon Tailoring introduced New Loot Tier 8 hunting area, the Rynthid Infested Plains, introduced

Rules

By playing Asheron's Call, all players agree to the following documents:

History of Asheron's Call

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1994 - 1999

Game Development

Development of Asheron's Call began in 1994 after Turbine and Microsoft had entered into a developer/publisher agreement where legal ownership of the property and subsequently-developed properties were owned by Microsoft.(source?)
All of the games Servers and the initial beta testing were also hosted on Zone.msn.com as part of the publishing agreement with Microsoft.
"Empyrean" was the code name Microsoft used to refer to Asheron's Call in 1997 when the game was still in development. ^[1]

Click image for full size version.

Early Development Screenshots

1999

Beta Testing and Release

The AC Beta consisted of three phases which spanned from May until October of 1999.
- See the Asheron's Call Beta page for full details and links.

Other important events that occured before and during beta testing:
- Turbine's beta page, http://www.zogblaster.com/tweb/asherons-call, goes live.
  - See the ACCWiki's Zogblaster Archive to take a look back at the site.
- Microsoft's Asheron's Call page, http://www.microsoft.com/games/zone/asheronscall/, goes live.
  - See the ACCWiki's Microsoft Games Archive to take a look back at the site.

November 2, 1999 - AC goes retail, it is the third major MMORPG to be released at this time.

2000 - 2003

Microsoft Gaming Zone

In addition to the hosting of the game Servers, all AC announcements including patch teasers, rollout articles, letters to the players and patch notes were released onto the AC section of the Microsoft Gaming Zone. Some announcements were also made on the Microsoft Games AC site.

See the ACCWiki's Microsoft Zone Archive and Microsoft Games Archive to take a look back at the sites.
See also: Category:Microsoft Zone Archive, Category:Microsoft Games Archive and Category:Event Announcements.

Solclaim server goes live

The first Asheron's Call server to be added since the game's release goes live on 6th of June 2000.^[2]

Wintersebb server goes live

The second server goes live on January 24th 2001 to accommodate the ever increasing population of Asheron's Call.^[3]

Microsoft announces the AC expansion pack: Dark Majesty

Microsoft announces on June 25th 2001 that the Asheron's Call: Dark Majesty Expansion Pack will be available later in the year. The expansion pack would include the original Asheron's Call, new additions such as housing and storage, and the new landmass Marae Lassel including many new creatures, dungeons and quests.^[4]

Turbine buys Asheron's Call license back

Turbine bought back all franchise rights from Microsoft in 2003^[5] and consequently took responsibility for server hosting. The servers remained at a facility in Washington State until 2008 when all server hardware was replaced and relocated to a facility in Massachusetts near Turbine headquarters. Due to various quality of service issues that caused extended downtime the servers were moved to a new facility on March 30th, 2009.

2004

Turbine unlocks Asheron's Call: Dark Majesty for all AC subscribers

Turbine announces that all Dark Majesty content will be available to every subscriber regardless of whether they have purchased the expansion pack in the past or not. ^[6]

Turbine Green Lights AC Expansion Pack: Throne of Destiny

An announcement is made that fans of the award-winning online role playing game Asheron’s Call® will receive a new expansion pack in early 2005.^[7] The name of the expansion is announced at a later time.

History Articles

The Turbine Story - In depth history written by the founder of Turbine Entertainment, Jon Monsarrat.
Postmortem: Turbine Entertainment's Asheron's Call - Behind the scenes account of what went right, what went wrong. Written by Toby Ragaini, one of the original developers.