Quote:
Originally Posted by Zuranthium
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What aspects did you love about Asheron's Call? I have friends who played it, but I never did myself. I read it was supposed to have a very creative magic system, but it didn't really pan out like that. There was more character customization than in EQ, but the actual mechanics didn't seem as interesting. The game world looked much blander than EQ's, the cities and dungeons were barely anything, and the overall landscapes were less diverse and engaging (worse music and sound effects too). I rarely heard about anything epic happening in that game, it seemed to be small quirky player interactions the game revolved around.
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Monthly patches (not just for fixes, but content / quests / etc), lots of GM events, insanely deep character skill customization, actual fun / rewarding quests (no quest log either, like EQ...it was talk to random NPCs, read their text, and figure it out), and the best pvp + loot systems to ever grace the MMO landscape.
Character customization was simply put: you could pick any skills from the list to either "train" or "specialize" in, which cost you "skill credits" depending on how strong / useful they were (You had X number of skill credits ar char creation and would gain more as you gained levels). Your attributes (str / endurance / quickness / coordination / etc) would effect these skills all via different formula (IE: Melee Defense = quickness + coordination / 4). As you gained XP, you spent that XP like currency into your individual skills or attributes. So if you were specialized in the Sword skill, you used swords and if you "pumped some XP" into your sword skill you would hit harder and have a lower chance of being "evaded." The higher your melee defense, the more of a chance you had to evade other mobs / players melee attacks. Same thing applied for the magics + magic defense....with a whole shitload of other utility skills to go along with it. If you wanted your character to run faster or jump higher, you had to put XP into those skills (or spend XP raising the attributes in the skill's formula).
Mage spells and archer arrows could be dodged, the spell casting system allowed for certain animations to make your casts faster or harder to predict. The depth to PvP was insane. The strongest guilds battled over the best loot / xp dungeons constantly to allow their farming guild mates further into the dungeon more time to hunt uninterrupted for a chance to score super strong loot. Guilds tried hard to keep their newest / best spots hidden (there was no /who features at all), but would eventually leak out and create a new place to battle over.
The XP system allowed a vassal / patron relationship where your vassals who swore fealty to you would "pass up" some of their XP to you as their patron. It was an incentive to bring newer players under your wing and help them along. Eventually guilds figured out a way to maximize the system and formed XP chains, allowing the big boys at the top to spend their time defending the popular XP / loot spots from enemy guilds trying to come in and take it over for themselves.
I would say the only things EQ did better was (obviously) the idea of a "raid" scene and single group grinding just being more social and co-dependent.
AC was heads above anything else, though. Keep in mind they had a very active, live playerbase until early 2017 when they closed the servers down.
I just can't get back into the emulator stuff...so I decided to pay homage to a big title from that 99-04 era when I played AC and try EQ for the first time on P99 and I haven't been disappointed.