Turbine is doing a series of Nostalgia Blogs leading up to the epic 100th update to the game, here's the first penned by Allan "Orion" Maki.

One hundred updates, of those I contributed to forty-seven updates and portions of two expansion packs. Nearly half of the one hundred!

Where to start…they say that you never forget your first love – I am not certain who they are and how they know this is true, I have never been certain – they are right. Asheron’s Call was my first and it is still an important part of the designer that I am now.

My first offering was Danby’s Outpost located on the northern shore of the inland sea. It was a foray into something new, landscaping, npc creation, item creation and quest design. It was a colossal failure. Maybe not colossal to players but to those on the AC team it was more work for them from an armchair designer who meant to do well but had none of the knowledge of skills necessary to accomplish their goals. Without some serious assistance from Annuvin and Crowley it never would have seen the light of day. I learned a lot from that though. I learned that I needed to study the system to become a good designer. So I did.

Read more here.