Turbine is actually releasing a new expansion titled Throne of Destiny.  The link to the details is here:

http://ac.turbinegames.com/index.php?page_id=265

They are upgrading to take advantage of DX9.0, as well as upgrading from 16-bit to 32-bit and redoing 6,000 textures.  They will also be raising the max level (to 275) and adding "augmentation gems" that looks quite interesting.  They are also adding a new race for players, called Viamontians.  On top of all that, they are adding various miscellaneous things, such as many new monsters, new items, new titles,  new faces/hairstyles, a minimum of 20 new quests.  And that is just what they are telling us.

Personally, I'm looking forward to seeing all these new things.

Cooldevo

Darkage of Camelot | Since Day 1 |

Seabasz 50 Hero | Lancelot / Hib
Seabas 50 Enchanter | Lancelot / Hib
Vlyden 50 Bezerker | Guinevere / Mid
Vlyden 50 Armsman | Bors / Alb
Hellzpyro 40 Wizard | Merlin / Alb

XP chains have been removed for a while now :)

Also, multi item self buffs are already in game, you click on your paper doll and it will buff every item you are wearing! Also in game for a while now :)

I am looking forward to AC1 expansion, been playing AC1 since Solclaim server opened.

www.darthmyr.com

One player's great game is another players derisive snort!

Im going to like how there will MABY be a new pvp server.....NEWB WARS!!!!!! I hope that this new rare system will be a hit too. You can pick what type of rare server you want to play from a server that gives 1000 rare drops a mounth to a server who gives 1 rare. It can be a very nice tinkerable set of armor or it can be a 500 use kit. These will be huge and id like to try the one rare server.

It wasn't what I thought it would be. They didn't update the graphics engine at all. They just re-textured a lot of stuff. Sure it looks better now than it did before, but take that in the context of the technology that exists today. "People might not have good enough machines to run it" just isn't an excuse anymore in this day and age - not with the kind of upgrade we're talking about here.

• IMHO they should have replaced the graphics engine altogether with something like what HJ and maybe included havok 2 physics engine as well.

• The ONLY thing Really holding back AC right now is it's graphics. If they followed my above suggestions and did a new advertising campaign after implementing those features they'd have previous and new players alike flocking back to the game.

• Also, as an aside, I'd like to take this opportunity to reiterate the need for ridable mounts in AC. They tried in AC2 but the concept was slightly off and the implementation was wrong. Mounts in an MMO shouldn't be something that is extremely difficult to obtain (costing oodles of gold/cash). Instead, they should only have a mild level requirement (say, 10% of max level) for a low-level version of a mount, and maybe a 60% of max level requirement for the 'uber' version of a mount.

• Another thing... What is up with the shields around player's houses? I never really understood the reason behind having these (other than on Dark Tide). So what.. a player can get inside your courtyard of your villa.. OOH big deal. The hooks and doors are secured separately and cannot be picked anyway, so isn't that enough security/privacy??

• While I'm on the subject of "things they did wrong" (or didn't do), I'd like to add that one of the major downfalls of AC began to take place approximately mid-life of the game. I am referring, of course, to the inflation of loot quality. You should never release updates to loot that makes previous items obsolete (not even when you upgrade those previous items). Also, if you ARE going to release better items into the game that make previous versions out dated, THEN for goodness sake, AT LEAST don't put them into randomly generated loot tables from normal monsters. Make them quest items and make DAMN sure the quests you have to do to get them are harder than the quests you had to do to get the previous versions of those items. This way it doesn't out date the previous versions, it just makes a higher tier of that item that you have to work harder for if you really want to get it (i.e. it doesn't inflate the quality of the loot).

• One thing they really did do right was the addition of random rare/unique loot item drops in the expansion. It adds something special to look forward to as you grind out those levels.

• Another thing they really did right (at least in the beginning) were those cool story arcs like the shadow wars in which actual GM-controlled characters would step in and run live events on each server to progress the story in real-time, and with real involvement from the players. Although I thought that predetermining the outcome of these events was a little shallow and disappointing of them. An example of this would be the time that Martin was defeated near the entrance portal to old hub, and then they just resurrected him and pretended like it never happened. Another example would be when Elysa Strathelar was defeated in the battle of Bael'Zharon's Crystal Prison during the shadow wars - after which, she just 'respawned' and everything continued like it hadn't happened. They should have just run with these events and written the story to reflect the actual events that DID take place in the game during the live events! Yes, I realize they have the "lifestones" and they can just use those to explain away what happened saying, "Oh Asheron just resurrected her at the lifestone" ..... well then why didn't Thorsten Cragstone get resurrected at the lifestone and why would Martine be resurrected at a lifestone if he died??

Hey, Pham. Long time no see.

I think that AC should have let their players develop the storyline as it went like you said, but it would've been heck to keep track of multiple servers with their own version of the storyline. I agree with the house shields too.