PRoblem with this is.... I doubt your turbine... which means you cant sell this or charge a monthly fee, so you would have to be free to play..

Being free to play means limited resources, lots of garbage people as the hackers and banned people can just come right back in. UCMing and speedhacks were pretty common in AC1 where if you were banned you had to buy a new account... on a private server thats free to play it would be rampant.

the eagle thing aint so stupid... it may be also a way to control the speed of the game... and maybe they should put the portals at high lvls or with a specific set of skills

Originally posted by Pyrostasis

PRoblem with this is.... I doubt your turbine... which means you cant sell this or charge a monthly fee, so you would have to be free to play..

Being free to play means limited resources, lots of garbage people as the hackers and banned people can just come right back in. UCMing and speedhacks were pretty common in AC1 where if you were banned you had to buy a new account... on a private server thats free to play it would be rampant.

You are absolutely correct. I do not come from Turbine.

Don't be so sure about the available resources however. The new game is being backed up by an old fan of the old school type of games who has more money then he will ever be able to spend. I am not going to go into it, but he has had a rather unfortunate series of life events in the past year.

His dream is to bring back the style of mmo gaming that was only found in the late 1990's. I will say that there is easily over 500 million dollars accessible if needed to bring this to life, and that he has already stated that his cost will not matter, as long as this project is done correctly.

The game will be done correctly, and it will be done in as short a time span as possible. We already have a strong team of some of the best coders, developers, and managers working together and they are being paid not by the hour, but by the overall quality of the finished product with bonuses given if the game is completed before the goal date set. So, just as any employee that wants to make money, their goals of time and quality are of major importance to them.

Not only will this game be free to play, and free to download, it will also be free of hackers and cheaters who try to use 3rd party programs such as UCMers and buff bot tools etc.

Members of our team include people who have brought to you classic mmo games as well as very popular high end games of our time.

Oh. I would also like to mention that this game will have perma death of characters. Perma death happens to any character who is caught cheating or hacking in any way, shape or form. Failing to "not know" will not be excusable since they will be in big letters that must be accepted in terms and conditions prior to playing. (For example, to get through the terms and conditions, a one or two sentence explanation and example will be shown on the screen that you will have to read and accept. There will be over 20 "accepts" needed to begin creation of your first character. Any new characters made will need to go through the same process)

Originally posted by Kindelnol

Originally posted by Uzik

I would play this.

 

However, the "Eagle" thing sounds stupid.  Let WoW keep their travel system.  Portals worked just fine.

 The eagle thing does sound rather stupid.

My thoughts are:

 

1) Optimizing code is more important than graphics.  They've had rubber-banding forever, and that is more of an issue for me than dated graphics

2) Make leveling require less XP.  The main reason people macroed was because of the insane amounts of XP required.   Questing should be a more viable way to level.

I agree, questing should be offered as more viable, but fellowships should still be the primary source of experience. I would choose that over general tasks/quests any day. If the only option is soloing because one cannot find a group, then questing would be a desirable alternative.

3) AI needs improvement.  Tuskers standing all bunched up in a room endlessley running into a wall does not sound like "intelligence" to me.

4) Make towns useful for something.  When towns began to die, the game became a lot less fun.  Add something to fight over on PK servers, and socialize around on white servers. 

I think this stands for just about any game. The small towns in WoW or LotR rarely get visitors from my experience. This makes it feel absent of life when MMOs in general are supposed to provide the opposite feeling. AC kept many of there towns alive for a while, but it too gradually died. Then, with the conception of the marketplace, they did die. It wasfun entering a town and looking at what a vendor offered (because you never know what someone might have sold). It also made the game feel more alive.

5) Create more money sinks.  The economies became soo inflated over time because people could get endless amounts of money from hunting. 

 

This sounds like an interesting idea and I wish you luck.

I have yet to see an answer to a very important question (maybe I just missed the answer): are the developers of this game cooperating with Turbine or is it manufactured entirely by fans?

Cooperation with Turbine will have to be met. We have plans of buying rights to do this if necessary, however a near finished product will be introduced to them at a later date. We want them to be able to make sure that we will not be "insulting" their product. We also fully understand that we would need to pay them much more then they could ever possibly make off of their existing, but well dated Asheron's Call. Negotiations will be made and if the slim chance comes that it isn't possible to work with them, then enough changes will be made to our world and town names and other basically meaningless items in the game that it will still launch under a different name, but withl all the concepts that made Asheron's Call so much fun to play. This would cause no more then 2 or 3 months delay in a situation where we simply couldn't work a deal with Turbine, Inc as we already have the ability to completely change our world and locations of cities, mountains, deserts etc in rapid time, giving plenty of time in even two months to add attention to detail by hand.

If what your saying is, this is a game designed by gamers for gamers then that alone will be enough for me to give it the benifit of the doubt.

Originally posted by RKStephens

Cooperation with Turbine will have to be met. We have plans of buying rights to do this if necessary, however a near finished product will be introduced to them at a later date. We want them to be able to make sure that we will not be "insulting" their product. We also fully understand that we would need to pay them much more then they could ever possibly make off of their existing, but well dated Asheron's Call. Negotiations will be made and if the slim chance comes that it isn't possible to work with them, then enough changes will be made to our world and town names and other basically meaningless items in the game that it will still launch under a different name, but withl all the concepts that made Asheron's Call so much fun to play. This would cause no more then 2 or 3 months delay in a situation where we simply couldn't work a deal with Turbine, Inc as we already have the ability to completely change our world and locations of cities, mountains, deserts etc in rapid time, giving plenty of time in even two months to add attention to detail by hand.

 

Sounds like you guys are actually thinking this through. Sounds like it might be great!

Also, if you don't mind my prying, might the individual backing this have been a fairly well-known player (particularly on Frostfell) in AC, or maybe had a well-known toon? I ask because I knew a guy that was fairly well-known by most and seemed to have loads of cash.

Sure, i'd give it a try.

Only sandbox style game I've played is EVE and I really like it. Always regretted missing out on AC and would love to try a game like it sometime.

Very interesting. I've long said that a private investor is the best hope for sandbox MMO's since the big games companies are too commercially afraid to deviate from the linear-levelling pattern.

Very interesting. I never played Asheron's call, but I can say with cofidence that in addition to myself I know many other MMO'ers who would certainly want to have a look.

Originally posted by RKStephens

Originally posted by Pyrostasis

PRoblem with this is.... I doubt your turbine... which means you cant sell this or charge a monthly fee, so you would have to be free to play..

Being free to play means limited resources, lots of garbage people as the hackers and banned people can just come right back in. UCMing and speedhacks were pretty common in AC1 where if you were banned you had to buy a new account... on a private server thats free to play it would be rampant.

 

You are absolutely correct. I do not come from Turbine.

Don't be so sure about the available resources however. The new game is being backed up by an old fan of Asherons Call who has more money then he will ever be able to spend. I am not going to go into it, but he has had a rather unfortunate series of life events in the past year.

His dream is to bring back one of the best games he states he has ever played. I will say that there is easily over 500 million dollars accessible if needed to bring this to life, and that he has already stated that his cost will not matter, as long as this project is done correctly.

The game will be done correctly, and it will be done in as short a time span as possible. We already have a strong team of some of the best coders, developers, and managers working together and they are being paid not by the hour, but by the overall quality of the finished product with bonuses given if the game is completed before the goal date set. So, just as any employee that wants to make money, their goals of time and quality are of major importance to them.

Not only will this game be free to play, and free to download, it will also be free of hackers and cheaters who try to use 3rd party programs such as UCMers and buff bot tools etc.

Members of our team include people who have brought to you the original Asherons Call, Dark Age of Camelot, Diablo II, and Halo.

Oh. I would also like to mention that this game will have perma death of characters. Perma death happens to any character who is caught cheating or hacking in any way, shape or form. Failing to "not know" will not be excusable since they will be in big letters that must be accepted in terms and conditions prior to playing. (For example, to get through the terms and conditions, a one or two sentence explanation and example will be shown on the screen that you will have to read and accept. There will be over 20 "accepts" needed to begin creation of your first character. Any new characters made will need to go through the same process)

 

 

Sandbox + Free to play = my full support. Now I've never played AC (a little before my MMO time) but I have been a long time Eve player and support of all MMOs that have a sandbox theme. AC sounds like my perfect MMO I never had a chance to play. Huge fan of deciding how you want to play the game. And that Karma system sounds like a nice way to stem the constant greifers but still keep the world a harsh place. Big fan of that.

If you have a website or any other infomation (forums, blogs what have you) please keep us updated. I would very much like to support an MMO company that wants to revolutionize the currently bland MMO market place.

If you are serious and not just a clever troll I would love to play this game.  AC is my favorite game of all time and I would love to see it remade like you posted.  I'm not going to get my hopes up that this is true though.  Best of luck if it is.

There is no way Turbine will ever give up the name Asherons Call so already your post is unbelieveable just with the name.

I say this is a bs post unless you can show us how you can take the name AC and also more about yourself. Saying one thing then proving it is a whole other story.

Put up or shut it.

Interested.. sure. Especially at the lawsuits for IP infringement that would shut it down without 5 minutes of it being announced :D

Unless you bought the IP rights/etc, anyway, and had a budget to run the dev team to modernize it up like you say

I'm going to take a stab and guess that one of the old players with this is Elgarl -maker of El-Tank-

I had read before about him and an AC emulator for when and if turbine killed off AC, or any other means to try and use ac related material

-justs sounds too familiar-

I would give it a try and hope for a true sandbox game... i am sooo tired of all those stupid themepark MMOs

Even if  I would advise you to not use the term "sandbox game" since noone knows what it is I will admit that your post caught my interest. I'll just lurk around and await those screens you promised

Asheron's call was my first MMO, and still the one that drew me in the most - Mainly for it's huge go-anywhere world full of quests, adventure, and most importantly danger.

I would probably play a relaunch of AC if it included updated graphics, although whether or not this could be done without moving to a new engine I don't know.

If it were the same old graphics, I wouldn't bother. immersion is key, and I can't get immersed with graphics that were designed to run on a voodoo3.

Okay guys (and girls) I won't be back on here until probably Thursday.

Please keep the comments and suggestions coming.

When I return I will have screen shots showing early development. These screen shots will show you that we have improved on the mmo games graphics about ten fold, and are at minimum equal to Age of Conan graphics quality already.

By the end of October (this year) we will make accessible a fairly small download (800 mb) that will allow you to create a basic avatar and log into our server and run around and explore and kill basic mobs. We will have a few of the most basic skills available. This will be free, and we hope to stress our servers which have cost us a pretty penny. There will be 3 immediate worlds open with the ability to open as many as 44 if need be. There will not be any reason to power level, but rather to explore and test stuff out. It will also be a great place to join others and chat and help us brainstorm and come up with ideas.

Our website will also be made public in October (if not late September) where we will offer screenshots, downloads, and the first trial of our open world.

Keep in mind while the graphics will blow away what you are familiar with with the old mmo games, the mobs you will encounter are completely different at this point, as well as the lay out of the land and towns we have now. We currently have 11 towns offering npc services. The names of the current towns are Shylo, Dartmouth, Craigswall, North Bluff, Dansville, Poxsmith, Raskill, with 4 currently unnamed.

There are three continents as of now with a completely different land lay out, but the same familiar desert, high mountain, and forest terrains as well as Icelands and swamplands.

The mobs you will encounter as of right now will be of the familiar fantasy classics such as ettins, trolls, orcs, fairies, snakes, giants, ghosts, spectres, spiders, lurkers, etc.  We have created a few all new mobs such as blobs, kadormen, slithmites, and the deadly gravvix. Stealing the idea from the classic blob movie, blobs come in various species such as vapor blobs, blood blobs, sand blobs, plasma blobs, metallic blobs etc and will grow and get bigger the more victims that it eats. As its size grows, so does its power (and rewards for stopping it). It will be possible to see blobs grow to over 100 times the size of your avatar!

As you can see, we are very prepared to just make an all new version of a classic stealing only the basic principles that made it so great. We currently have plans to change almost all of our mobs to more interesting and unique enemies.

We will have no rubberbanding of mobs, nor will there be static mobs. Mobs will roam and actually fight each other based on their own needs/wants as intelligent or instinct designed creatures. This should make exploration more interesting, especially if you were to come across a blob eating a kadorman for example and be able to vanquish the blob at only a small percentage of its health. Keep in mind that only magic or elemental weapons will do any damage to blobs and that slicing certain blobs with sharp cutting weapons (ie sword) will have a great chance on creating two equally powerful blobs!

Mobs will also wander into towns from time to time and if they feel the need, they will attack npcs. Since there will be no guards in our world, npcs will be forced to fight for their lives. If an npc gets killed by a mob, the mob will gain experience and levels if enough kills are made. Npcs that are killed by mobs will not reappear for about an hours time (time to travel back to the town from its vital stone.. vital stone is our version of a lifestone).

Our plans are also to incorporate a single huge dungeon that will start out at low level mobs and at its depths will have only the highest level mobs in the game. An entrance to the dungeon will be made from at least one spot on each continent.

Housing is also something that will not be automatic but rather built on any flat land you desire with the all new carpentry skill. Plots of lands will cost gold to buy and your house can be destroyed by potential attackers only while you are logged into the game.

There is much more to this game already planned, but plans can certainly change and be adapted therefore the reason for me starting this thread.

Screen shots and new more information as well as answers to more questions comes Thursday!

Have a good week and thanks again for your immediate responses and interest!

RK Stephens

NOTE: Due to limitations and not wanting to risk ANY legal tie ups, all associations with any old mmo game, or any other game for that matter have been edited and removed. As of this time, we will NOT copy any mmo format or game to the degree that it will risk any timely and costly legal issues.  Sorry for the confusion, and my public apology also goes out to the companies behind any games I have mentioned.  We simply do not have the time to risk any such legal affairs and will proceed without breaking any legal or copyrighted material for our upcoming game.

Some of what ive read here sounds really good and what Ive been longing for for a long time. Other things Not so mutch. (Note never played AC1, Played AC2 Liked it but i know its Nothing like 1)

Will it be Pvp only? if so im out :( I like pvp but im a Explorer not a fighter, I Need PVE servers so i can just Wander arround and explore.

If I might be so Bold as to say. The things id Love in a Sandbox game are,

1. Huge Worlds, Preffer no zones But as long as its Not Instanced like AOC/GW im cool with it.

2. Restrict player houseing to Only Some areas. Played UO and hated the City parking lots there..

3. Place a Diplomacy system (Kinda like Vanguard but better) in to the game and make it so you could cause a Village to go to war with Another one.

4. 3 Types of Npcs, Normal(I.e. venders, Quest givers, Guards ect) Story tellers(I.e. Wizards, librains, Jesters.) Only have a Few Quests but can give you a Wealth of Lore and Some Buffs or something. And last Ghosts, Npc's that Arn't even in the game world Persay. Like in POTBS where you can see and hear them But cant even click them and are Done Client side.(I hate Huge citys with Only a few Dozen people in them.)

5. As a Sink for cash and Resources Let Us do Quests, jobs for the City of our Home To Inprove it and Better the Local area. You said No Guards, Why not let us Hire them? Let us have Options to Grow the city By placeing Resources to it. I.e. A List that you can go through(City Needs a New well, Let us Bring in the Stones and Pay the money to get it done) Need a New City hall after the last Ork attack Ect. With Diplomacy we could Become friends with the Shop keeper and Later help him Upgrade the Store.

6. Let us Move from a faction city to Outlieng Towns and call them Home. Make it so You can be From Player faction X and Now Belong to the town of BumFudge Vill. All Small towns Should have Something Inportant to them. IE a Wizard that Knows Secret parts to spells makeing your Better if you Studdy under him. A Forge thats the Only place that can Smelt a Certan type of ore Ect) And make it So the Faction standing of the small towns Changes Based off of the Karma of its players.

7. Make the World feel Less static.. Ac2 the Seasons Changed... Plz for the love of GOD and all things Holy Put this in to the game!!!!!!! I hate Zones that looks the same Year round. Its Not a world at that point but a painting and i HATE that.

Please Dont call it a Sandbox tho If we cant Change it anything.... I want a game where I and my Friends Need to Fight to keep our way of Life Presverd. The Hold the hand and walk in line and you get to be the Hero of the Whole Freeking world is Fun in a Few games... But at this point Its ALL of them :(

The game's budget will has 500 Million Dollars at its disposal? And It will be entirely Free... With every single feature every MMO'er has been looking for? I don't believe any of it. When things sound too good to be true, they simply "are".

Loved AC - it was the best MMO I have ever played!!

The only thing I would change would be the insanely slow leveling pace. I played my Battle Mage in AC for 4 years and got her to level 241 of 275. And, that was with daily playing LOL! I think 2 years should be the maximum time needed to max out your toon if you play daily.

And NEVER  let  unattended combat macros happen in your game!  They were like a malignant cancer in AC:( They destroyed the foundation of that game.

Your perma death idea is brilliant for cheaters and hackers btw:)