Archived AC News - 2009

December
Tentative Event Downtime Thursday December 17th 7am -11am Eastern - Link Frelorn has posted this over on the official forums:
 * We have tentatively schedule the December event for this upcoming Thursday, December 17th. On that day all worlds will be down from 7am -11am Eastern.
 * __________________
 * Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
 * AC Community Relations

--An Adventurer 23:14, December 14, 2009 (UTC)

Fall Events will be turned off on Monday, Dec. 7th - Link Pumpkin Buffers, Al-Jalima undead attack, and Glenden Wood/Majestic Pumpkin will go away next Monday.

-- 23:20, December 3, 2009 (UTC)

November
'''Increased Quest XP Holiday Weekend! 11/25 - 11/30''' - Link Frelorn just announced this over on the official forums:

''On Wednesday November 25th we will be increasing the amount of XP earned on all quests by 50% until Monday November 30th.

''Since we had done many increased XP weekends in the past, we thought having some incentive for the questers would be a nice change. We will of course still be having straight up increased XP weekends in the future.

''Have fun! __________________ Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo AC Community Relations

--An Adventurer 17:00, November 20, 2009 (UTC)

Ask the Devs - Link The first edition of "Ask the Devs" has been posted, including questions about lag, storage, weather effects (rain), a new level cap, and augmentations. There is also a discussion thread on Turbine's boards.

-- 20:46, November 19, 2009 (UTC)

AC Video Contest Winners Announced - Link First Place went to Connor the Craftmaster for Derethian Times Daily Newscast. Second Place went to An Adventurer for Fall of the Empyrean. And Third Place went to Damien Sarin for Asheron's Call 10th Anniversary.

-- 01:26, November 10, 2009 (UTC)

Letter From the Producer - Link Rob "Severlin" Ciccolini has been promoted to AC Producer and has released a Letter From the Producer.

-- 23:44, November 6, 2009 (UTC)

Turbine Pumpkin Carving Contest Results  - Link 1st Place - Psycotika of Harvestgain 2nd Place - Cutcha Guy of Solclaim 3rd Place - Fraxcat of Solclaim 4th Place - Jaguar

Congratulations to all the winners. Full details available here, including links to the winning pumpkins along with many other entries from AC, DDO, and LotRO.

--An Adventurer 14:24, November 4, 2009 (UTC)

Some 10th Anniversary Live Events delayed - Link 1 Link 2 Due to the Leafcull server crashing at approximately 10pm EST and later being brought down for fixes at 10:30pm, the night events for all servers were canceled and will be rescheduled for another time soon.

--An Adventurer 15:41, November 3, 2009 (UTC)

October
Patch Tuesday - Link All worlds will be down on Tuesday, October 27th from 7am - 11am Eastern for the October event, Gears of Change.

-- 14:51, October 26, 2009 (UTC)

Turbine Releases Guide to Gearcrafting - Link The guide goes into comprehensive detail regarding the new gearcrafting skill. Archives of the guide can also be found on at A Guide to Gearcrafting (Page 1) and A Guide to Gearcrafting (Page 2).

-- 18:16, October 24, 2009 (UTC)

10th Anniversary Patch Page Live The October Patch Page, Gears of Change, is now available. The event is scheduled to go live on October 27th, 2009.

--An Adventurer 19:57, October 23, 2009 (UTC)

More 10th Anniversary Wallpapers - Link Turbine has released two new wallpapers - one of Asheron and another of Aerfalle. Check out the link to download them.

--An Adventurer 14:45, October 20, 2009 (UTC)

New Wiki Forums We now have a threads style General Forum where you are all welcome to post comments or questions about the wiki or about Asheron's Call in general. This is an ideal location to request improvements to pages or new content that you think would be useful. All of the old content from our single page style Forum has been migrated to the new forum. An attempt will also be made to recover the posts from our very first bulletin board style forum and migrated as well.

-- 16:32, October 15, 2009 (UTC)

Possible Flickering Sky Fix - Link Severlin posted that there may be a fix for this glitch added in the 10th anniversary patch.

--An Adventurer 14:36, October 15, 2009 (UTC)

Asheron's Call Video Contest - Link Turbine is holding an Asheron's Call video contest. Top prize is a lifetime subscription to AC! Full details available here.

--An Adventurer 20:23, October 13, 2009 (UTC)

New 10th Anniversary Wallpaper - Link Turbine has created a new AC Wallpaper for the 10th anniversary. Full details available here.

--An Adventurer 19:24, October 13, 2009 (UTC)

ACCW Home Redesign Our main page has been updated! Please join the discussion on further improvements over on the forum.

--An Adventurer 17:40, October 13, 2009 (UTC)

Turbine Pumpkin Carving Contest 2009 - Link Turbine is holding a pumpkin carving contest. Full details available here.

--An Adventurer 15:03, October 13, 2009 (UTC)

September
September 2009 update

The September 2009 update Cogs in the Machine is set to go live on September 22nd, 2009.

--An Adventurer 18:49, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

August
Turbine Sues Atari Over Dungeons & Dragons Contract

Scheduled Hotfix Friday August 21st 10am -12pm Eastern

Patch scheduled for Thursday August 20th

MMPORG Documentary Second Skin on Hulu

July
Patch scheduled for Thursday July 23rd

Server Forums are now Live!

Turbine has created server specific message boards on the official forums. You can view them here

June
Turbine Accepting Applications to the Private Test Server

June Patch Delayed

Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited

May
The Matrix Online to be shut down July 31st - Link


 * Launched in 2005, The Matrix Online will be be shutting down at the end of July with plans for some special events before closing.

Developer Interview - Link


 * Former AC1 and AC2 engineer Eric Heimburg was interviewed for a piece on Wired. The piece was also discussed on SlashDot. Eric and former AC developer Sandra "Srand" Powers also have a frequently updated blog at Elder Game.

Developer Interview - Link


 * Interview with Craig Alexander, VP for Product Development at Turbine as part of the LOGIN2009 conference. Transcript at the Vault.

Players Banned For 7 Days For Recent Exploit

10th Anniversary Teaser Video

A teaser video of the 10th Anniversary of Asheron's Call has been posted on AC's official website. Frelorn announced it in this post:

--An Adventurer 15:06, 5 May 2009 (CDT)

AC Competitor Shadowbane Shutting Down May 1st


 * Ubisoft has announced the shutdown of Shadowbane, created by Wolfpack Studios and published on March 25, 2003. Shadowbane was a top-10 best selling PC game at launch, and was noted for two things. First, the majority of the game world allowed for open Player-vs-Player combat, making it an early pioneer title in the PvP MMO genre. Second, it was the first major MMO to offer dynamic world content as a primary feature of the game.

April
Patch Date April 28th

Customer Service Changes

Service Issues 4/1/09 update

--An Adventurer 22:59, 1 April 2009 (CDT)

4/1/09 - Turbine Services On and Off

Several of Turbines web pages and services have been on and off today. This includes turbine.com, lotro.com, ddo.com, ac.turbine.com, forums.ac.turbine.com, and the authentication servers. Frelorn had this to say:

Later, Frelorn posted this:

However the problem is still persisting.

--An Adventurer 18:45, 1 April 2009 (CDT)

March
Important Information about the March 30-31 Datacenter Move

Patience of Turbine has posted some important news regarding the recent extended downtime:

--An Adventurer 14:36, 31 March 2009 (CDT)

Monday, March 30 Datacenter Move - Link

''In the fourth quarter of 2008, we relocated DDO, Asheron's Call, and some of our websites to a new datacenter. Our commitment to quality requires us to relentlessly evaluate our strategies for their effectiveness. Unfortunately, the move did not result in the level of service that we expected. That means we have to make a change in order to achieve our goal of maintaining the best game environment in the world.''

''On Monday we are relocating to a new datacenter that will provide the level of service and redundancy that we and you expect. This physical relocation is a huge undertaking that will unavoidably result in a significant downtime for DDO and AC players, as well as for the users of some of our websites. We apologize for the downtime, and are confident that this relocation will provide the performance and reliability that has been a standard of Turbine during our nearly 10 year history of operating quality games.''

We appreciate your patience and understanding during this move, and are looking forward to delivering a much improved experience for all players. __________________ TurbineSIG Turbine Operations

--Tlosk 15:59, 26 March 2009 (CDT)

Scheduled Downtime Wednesday March 25 7am - 12pm Eastern - Link

''All worlds will be down on Wednesday March 25th from 7am - 12pm Eastern. During this time we will be fixing an issue which caused us to remove some NPC's and adding additional logging to the game servers.'' __________________ Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo AC Community Relations

--Tlosk 05:42, 25 March 2009 (CDT)

March Event 3/10/09 7:00am - 12:00pm Eastern - Link

''The March event has been scheduled to go live this upcoming Tuesday March 10th from 7am Eastern - 12pm Eastern. The teaser images have been sent out, and the Release Notes/Fiction will go live on Monday.'' __________________ Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo AC Community Relations

--Tlosk 20:10, 6 March 2009 (CST)

February
Conversion Rates on Alternate Currencies Discussion - Link

Turbine developer Django has started a discussion on what players think the relative values of the various alternative currencies are:


 * As we've been adding quite a few items to the alternate currency vendors we wanted to get feedback on what our players believe to be the conversion rates between the various alternate currencies.


 * For Instance:


 * GY Coin = 1
 * Colo Coin = 4
 * Olthoi Sac = 2


 * Meaning that a GY coin is the easiest to get and the smallest unit while Olthoi Sacs are worth twice as much as Colo Coins are worth 4 times as much. Converting this to buy prices would be the inverse of course. (for instance Colo items would end up costing 1/4 of that GY items in this case.)


 * We can figure out the exact numbers of how often players would be able to get coins. However that would say 4 Colo Coins/hr which I'm sure nobody runs Colosseum for as many consecutive hours as someplace like the Graveyard and there's also prep time on the Colosseum. Obtaining information on the perceived value would help us add items across all alternate currency vendors.


 * Thanks!


 * ** Note - We're not looking to make a conversion in game. This is for the purpose of adding the same items to the different vendors. Not all items are applicable as some are area specific however certain items would be best obtained in your favorite hunting spot (for instance if I were to say add a Noble Armor upgrade kit as an item). This month's items are on 3 vendors and pretty much have the same stats, so it would have been good to know for them as well

Head over to the Turbine message boards and join in on the discussion. --An Adventurer 16:32, 9 February 2009 (CST)

February Event Downtime 2/10/09 7:00am - 12:00pm Eastern - Link

All worlds will be down on Tuesday, February 10 from 7:00am - 12:00pm Eastern for the February event, Unfinished Business.

__________________ Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo AC Community Relations

--Tlosk 15:53, 7 February 2009 (CST)

January
'''Asheron's Call on Facebook - Link

Are you a fan of Asheron's Call? Do you spend entirely too much time on Facebook? Join the Asheron's Call group on Facebook and have the best of both worlds!

__________________ Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo AC Community Relations

--Tlosk 00:37, 29 January 2009 (CST)

Tenative Patch Date - Tuesday, January 13th - Link

As things stand right now we are tentatively scheduled for the January event to go live on Tuesday, January 13th. If for some reason we need to change the date I will make the appropriate posting about it. __________________ Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo AC Community Relations

--Tlosk 12:16, 7 January 2009 (CST)