Asheron's Call

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Main game topics:	Getting Started \| Gameplay \| Player Character \| Items \| World \| Patches \| Live Events
Sub-topics:	Asheron's Call \| Player Guides: New Players, Returning Players \| Character Creation \| User Interface \| Glossary \| FAQ

Asheron's Call

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

Please visit our Home Page to explore everything our wiki has available.

New to Asheron's Call? Check out the New Player Guide.

See the Returning Player Guide if you have to decided to come back.

Game Info

See also: List of Categories

The following list is not exhaustive.

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

Rules

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

History of Asheron's Call

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1995 - 1999

Game Development

Development of Asheron's Call began in 1995 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.
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.
- See the ACCWiki's Microsoft Zone Archive to take a look back at the site.
- See also Category:Microsoft Zone Archive and Category:Patch Announcements.

2003

Turbine buys Asheron's Call license back

Turbine bought back all franchise rights from Microsoft in 2003^[2] 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. ^[3]

Turbine Green Lights AC Expansion Pack

An announcement is made that fans of the award-winning online role playing game Asheron’s Call® will receive a new expansion pack (Throne of Destiny) in early 2005.^[4]

Turbine Jolts Asheron's Call® and AC2: Fallen Kings® in Europe

Turbine Entertainment Software Corp., a premier provider of online subscription entertainment, announced today that it signed a deal with Jolt Online Gaming Ltd., Europe's largest independent online gaming network, to operate the company's critically acclaimed Asheron's Call® franchise games in Europe.^[5]

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.

Game Awards

July 2001 - GameSpy's Top 50 Games of All Time	April 2001 - Gamespot's Top 10 Multiplayer Games of All Time	2000 - The Academy Interactive Arts & Sciences - Adventure/RPG of the Year
1999 - Gamezilla's Game of the Year	1999 - Gamer's Voice - Best Online/Multiplayer Game	1999 - Gamer's Voice - Best of E3 Awards
1999 - Gamecenter's RPG of the Year	1999 - Game Industry News' Game of the Year	1999 - IGN Vault Network Awards: Outstanding Technical Achievement