Letter to the Players June 2006

[Muneman]

Hello there and welcome to the June 2006 edition of the Letter to the Players.

Before you read any further, we have a small trailer we have made for the June event. You can view this trailer by clicking below.
http://download.turbine.com/ac1/video/a ... mv(6.60MB) for the smaller web friendly version
http://download.turbine.com/ac1/video/a ... _small.wmv (50.5 MB) for the larger version.

Now lets get on to this month's Letter to the Players!

With the return of the Shadow Spire to the world and the indications that Grael has risen from the depths of his slumber, what is in store for Dereth now? Will anyone be able to stand in Grael's way? And what of Count Dardante? What side effects might he have from being in the presence of the Heart- Render?

On June 8th we attempted the first step in improving the performance of Asheron's Call. As most of you know by now, this did not exactly work out as planned. Part of what was going to be done on the 8th was replacing a lot of older hardware used by the database servers. Unfortunately for everyone a lot of the new hardware was late in arriving to the datacenter, which caused our people there to try and rush to keep with the schedule we had set. We had one person there in particular who did not leave the server room for 13 hours, while trying to get things done. To make a long story short, the work was not completed and we are still running on the setup that was in place before. What does this mean for the hardware upgrades going forward? On Thursday June 15th we had scheduled an extended downtime in addition to the normal scheduled patch day window, to complete the hardware upgrades. We have decided to change this window to make sure that things can be done right.

The Thursday June 15th downtime will now be from 8am EST – 4pm EST. The following Wednesday, June 21st we will be bring the worlds down for approximately 4 hours from 10am EST – 2pm EST to complete the hardware upgrade to the database servers and the world servers. We feel this is the best way to complete the upgrades with the least amount of risk to the world data.

The kickoff of Digital Distribution was a big success and while we won't get into specifics, the amount of times that the game was purchased from Direct2Drive has well exceeded our initial expectations. We are going to continue to try and bring new players into the game as well as going forward with changes and improvements to keep our existing players happy. As part of this we are pleased to announce you can now buy the digital version of the game from The Turbine store, for the same price of $19.95. We have also discounted the physical version of the game, which includes the game box, instruction manual, and the game disk. You can purchase this version for $19.95 as well. We are focused on making sure that Asheron's Call continues to be the great game that it is now and into the future.

New Content and Updated Functionality
The latest tier of the Runed weapons has been made available. These weapons are geared towards characters in the level 140 range, with a different set of cool effects from the earlier releases of the Runed weapons.

Some of the towns around Dereth have noticed strange rumblings around the old Shadow Spire craters. Players with mules or other characters in these towns may want to be careful when they log them in after the June event goes live.

For the Mukkir Awakening quest players should now speak with Riordin Nightbane instead of Sarkin Killcrane.

The Augmentation timer has now been moved down from 30 to 27 days.

On the high level section of the Glenden Wood Invasion quest it was found that the Royal Vivimancers were casting a level 7 Hetacomb spell, allowing them to potentially one-shot a player. We have removed this spell and replaced it with a less damaging spell.

In Concept
These are game changes that we are thinking about for upcoming events. We cannot guarantee when or even if these changes will be added to the game, as scheduling and priorities can change. These changes are in addition to the new quests, dungeons, and items we will be adding to the game. With each monthly event we will be discussing an in concept topic, in order to give you as much information about the item that we can.

Equipment Sets
One of the ideas that we have discussed before is the implementation of equipment sets. An equipment set would be made up of different pieces of armor that when equipped would give the character wearing the armor certain bonuses. For example; Player A has 2 pieces of a 5 piece set. When he puts on the first piece of armor, there will be no noticeable effect on the player or the armor beyond the armor's initial enchantments; however when he puts on the second piece an effect is added to the player that was not previously there. When that player then puts on the third piece, another effect or an even better version of the previous effect will be cast on the player. Each piece of this set that the player wears will improve the spell cast or to be more precise, cast an even greater spell or another spell on the person wearing the armor. If that player then removes any of those pieces the effect will be gone. The only way a player can get these special effects is by wearing the pieces with each other.

So there are just some of the things we have in store for Asheron's Call in June and beyond. Please remember that along with everything listed here, there are several new quests and exciting things going into the game for the June event.

[thenetworkgod]

Hello there and welcome to the June 2006 edition of the Letter to the Players.

Before you read any further, we have a small trailer we have made for the June event. You can view this trailer by clicking below.
http://download.turbine.com/ac1/video/a ... mv(6.60MB) for the smaller web friendly version
http://download.turbine.com/ac1/video/a ... _small.wmv (50.5 MB) for the larger version.

Thanks Mune, but you need to edit those links.

[Nash the slash]

Thanks for the update Munny!

[Muneman]

Nothing wrong with the links. I tested them, works fine for me.

[Panzerfaust]

Turbine has got to get some better Voice Over peeps. That guys needs a lozenge.