Gen Con 2001: Asheron's Call: Dark Majesty

Microsoft is showing quite a few new games at this year's Gen Con, including Dark Majesty, the very first official retail expansion for its 2-year-old online role-playing game Asheron's Call. The expansion will take place off the coast of the game's mainland continent of Dereth on a huge island area known as Marae Lassel. The actual landmass of the new area will be roughly double the size of the Vestun Islands, an area that was added to the gameworld as part of a previous in-game event.

One of the most significant additions that Dark Majesty will make to the original Asheron's Call is housing. Players will be able to purchase three different kinds of houses, though the largest housing, the mansion, is intended for associated legions of players. Housing in Dark Majesty seems more or less complete. Once players purchase houses, they'll get a deed to their property and "activate" the house with a special crystal outside of it. Houses can be used to store belongings, both in an empty chest (which has 50 item slots) and on specific spaces that can be decorated with rugs, furs, and other types of furniture. Houses in Dark Majesty will be completely secure--house owners will have special guest lists to which they can add player names, and all other players will be kept out of the house through a magical force field. Should uninvited guests somehow sneak onto the premises, they'll be limited to walking, jumping, and talking, and they may not interact with any items or guests in the house. Mansions will let associated guilds of players congregate in one place, and they will actually feature an empty add-on dungeon area (accessible by teleport portal) that'll let large groups of players travel to and fro without getting stuck. Player vs. player combat will be strictly forbidden in houses between guests and intruders, though guests may fight against each other, so groups of friends will be able to stage friendly duels easily without having to worry about hostile monsters or interference from other players. The development team has yet to finalize the cost of housing in the expansion, but it's clear that housing will likely be an expensive luxury. The expansion will ship with about 1,000 available houses, though the development team may add more as time passes.

Dark Majesty will also feature new towns, overland areas, dungeons, items, and monsters. The reptilian tumeroks are more frequent in Marae Lassel, and they even have their own dungeon area, where some of the larger members of their species can be found. Dark Majesty will also feature the fierce carenzi, which are small, aggressive, wolflike creatures that attack intruders and defend each other with a pack mentality; the siraluun, a large, colorful bird that resembles a peacock; and new breeds of olthoi, the sinister humanoid insects that originally assaulted the land of Dereth. What's more, Dark Majesty will include the most fearsome computer-controlled enemies ever: human enemies, such as bandits, that are equipped with the same weapon skills and magic spells as players. The expansion will in fact require players to have a 3D accelerator card installed in their computer, and it'll clearly take advantage of that requirement--each of the new monsters and areas looks substantially better than any that are currently in the game.

Asheron's Call: Dark Majesty is scheduled for release at the end of the year.