It’s been 9 months since Cataclysm’s release, and interest is fading. From my own perspective, I haven’t logged in to do much more than raid in the last month or more. It seems the rest of the “old timers” in my guild are the same. At any given (non-raid) time, you can log in to see zero to five people logged on in the guild. Though, with the announcement of 4.3, I’m sure people will start logging in again.
What am I doing in my non-WoW time? I’m glad you asked! I’ve been playing other games of course. It started with Dragon Age (the original, yes, I’m months behind) and some inexpensive games on Steam (Terraria has been a go to since it’s release). I progressed into Guild Wars (23 HoM points!) and even more Steam games (if you don’t have/haven’t played Bastion, go, now, get it). Again, those games are not what this post is about.
This post is about an MMO that has been around for a while and is still (imo) one of the best games to grace the genre. That game is Asheron’s Call. What? You’ve never heard of it? Of course not, it got no press, it was released in the infancy of online games, and was overshadowed by it’s biggest competitor (Everquest). So, why make a post about a game that’s 12 years old (release date: Nov 2, 1999)? Because 12 years ago, the game was an innovator, and today the game is still doing things that other MMOs have never done. That’s what I’d like to point out with this (and future) post(s).
Starting with character creation, you’ll immediately notice a difference. Choosing a race is first. There are no pansy elves, or burly dwarves, or any other fantasy races for that matter (unless you count humans, of course). The original three race choices were all humans. Their cultures mimick three of our cultures (Asain, African, and Caucasian). Since that point, there have been several races added: Another human race (warlike, not indicative of our societies ~AT ALL~), undead, shadow, empyrean, and gear knights. The total number of races to choose from: nine (shadow actually have two racial choices). The significance of the additional races, only one was added in an expansion. The other five were just content patches (more on content patches later).
After selecting a race, you choose your “class”. There are a couple of pre-baked character templates, BUT they’re only initial creation and there is a “custom” template, as well. This is where it gets interesting. See, in AC you choose where your stat points go. You have a list of 6 stats (typical to fantasy games: Strength, Endurance, Coordination, Quickness, Focus, and Self). You have 330 points to spread between the stats (10 is minimum in any stat, 100 is maximum). Min/max’ers will find themselves with 3 stats at 100 and 3 at 10. Most others will find themselves with 100 in 2 stats, and a spread with the other stats. In addition to the primary stats, there are 3 secondary stats that are your pools for actions: Health – pretty straight forward, if it reaches zero, you die; Stamina – stamina is used to swing weapons and in some magic spells; Mana – pool for magic abilities.
After you select your stats, you select your skills. Another striking difference between AC and more modern games. It does not use the trinity of tank, healer, and DPS. For each character you create, you choose what skills to use. There are four skill states: unusable, untrained, trained, and specialized. You are given 50 points (skills take various amounts of skill points to raise from unusable/untrained to trained and even more to raise to specialized) to distribute how you see fit. Most characters, not necessarily on creation, will have at least 3 (of 5) magic skills. In addition to those, melee classes will select a weapon skill (sword, mace, etc) and melee defense. Mages will choose between the other 2 magic skills (war and void magic). Archers will pick up the same as melee except their weapon skill will be bow, crossbow, or thrown weapons. Tradeskills in AC are not secondary, though. They actually take (a small amount of) points.
Between the stat and skill choices, you can make any type of character you want. There are, of course, optimum choices, but you are free to create any character you’d like. You can create a fun character to play with skills that others don’t usually take, or create that min/max build that (once completed) allows you to destroy everything in your path.
After you choose your skills, you choose you appearance and your starting city. These two choices have limited lasting effect on your character as looks are unimportant, and there is a system in place to move your character from city to city (and anywhere in the world, for that matter). After you click the “Enter World” button, you are instantly transported to a tutorial dungeon. The starting dungeon has two options, run through it as you normally would, or speak to a different NPC and instantly exit the dungeon with the rewards you would have gotten had you completed the tutorial. Once you have done either option, you will take a portal/be teleported to the starting city that you chose.
Thanks for reading, if you’re interested in more information about AC, stay tuned. There will be more posts with information soon!
Mechanical Alts 