Asheron's Call

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Asheron's Call
Developer: Turbine Entertainment
Publisher: Microsoft
Release date: 10/31/1999
By Andrew Park

Turbine's 3D online role-playing game, Asheron's Call, was released in October 1999, and since then, it's changed and grown considerably. Asheron's Call continues to retain a loyal retinue of fans, thanks to its complex story-driven quests, its open-ended system of character development, and its ever-changing world. Asheron's Call takes place in the colorful world of Dereth, a land that has suffered for generations as a result of a powerful wizard's failed experiments. Asheron, one of the mightiest wizards ever known to Dereth, had accidentally opened portals to the homeworlds of powerful evil creatures, most notably the giant insect men Olthoi, thus allowing them to enter Dereth. Asheron realized his mistake and opened portals to other worlds to call upon hardy adventurers to come to Dereth and help battle the new menace, then he disappeared in a climactic battle in which he collapsed one of his own magic portals on himself and a group of exceptionally powerful creatures.

Though Asheron's Call is undeniably a fantasy role-playing game, its approach to its subject matter is decidedly unorthodox. Dereth isn't populated by conventional fantasy monsters or player character types, so you won't see dwarf clerics battling orcs or elf bards rallying their companions with song. Instead, the game is populated by completely original creatures of Turbine's own creation. So in your adventures in Dereth, you won't fight goblins and kobolds, but you may do battle with mewling drudges, chittering mites, ghostly virindi, and other outlandish and never-before-seen creatures. In addition, Asheron's Call doesn't feature nonhuman high-fantasy player races; all player characters in Asheron's Call are human, although these humans belong to one of three ethnicities, each of which has its own specific skills and appearance.

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In Asheron's Call, your character's ethnicity isn't the only thing that sets him or her apart. As mentioned, each of the three types of humans - the Sho, the Aluvians, and the Gharu'ndim - begins with a different set of bonus skills. For instance, Sho characters begin their lives proficient in the art of barehanded combat; Aluvians are unusually skilled with daggers; and Gharu'ndim characters are adept at using staves as weapons. However, any character race may adopt any sort of player skill, and there are more than 30 different player skills in Asheron's Call. You can begin your new character's life according to a templated "character class" (which is really nothing more than a custom-tailored set of suggested skills and attributes), but creating a custom character from scratch is far more intriguing and rewarding. New characters have a set number of attribute points that can be spent on basic ability scores, such as strength, endurance, coordination, quickness, focus, and self. Once you've chosen your character's basic abilities, you choose your character's skills by purchasing them with a pool of starting skill points. Dereth is a dangerous land, so it's a good idea to create a character that can handle itself in combat, and thanks to Asheron's Call's diverse skill system, you have a great many ways to create such a character.

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Your character can specialize in various close-combat weapons, including swords, axes, and maces; ranged weapons like bows and thrown missiles; and three different schools of magic, each of which can be used to either attack enemies directly, decrease an enemy's power, or strengthen a character's own abilities and those of his companions to be more effective in battle. What's even more interesting and rewarding is that these skills increase both with repeated use and when you spend accrued experience points on them. As such, as long as your character remains an active adventurer, he can continually improve whichever skills you wish on a regular basis. And since your character's identity is based on his set of skills, and not on some hard-coded character class, you can develop your character's abilities as you see fit, when you see fit. That is, if you've developed certain skills with your character, but are envious of another character's different abilities, you can simply have your character take up those different skills, though developing those new skills to extremely high levels of proficiency will require additional time. So an accomplished swordsman can become a journeyman archer easily enough, and an accomplished hand-to-hand fighter can learn the basics of Dereth's many powerful magic spells, though he'll have to devote more study, practice, and experience points to become a master of Dereth's magical arts.

Next: Read about Dereth's changing seasons