29th August, 2007
Asheron's Call Update
29th August, 2007

Hello everyone and welcome to this weeks edition of the Asheron’s Call update!

It was an interesting weekend we just had, as everyone knows by now. All the evidence we have at this point says that we had what is classified as Network issues. We still have one of our Operations managers out on site, doing some more work to the servers and the network hardware located out there. As a result of this past weekend, we are going to be returning to our regularly scheduled weekly maintenance window. We want to be very clear that we are going to do everything within our power to make sure that something like this does not happen again. As of right now it looks like the maintenance window will be on Tuesdays, but nothing is set in stone yet. Once we know more, we will post the scheduled downtimes in the launcher and here on the forums.

We also wanted to take this opportunity to once again thank everyone for their patience during the weekend downtime. We know that many of our players only get the chance to play during the weekends, and this downtime made it impossible to do so. Our Operations team spent the entire weekend getting things back up and running and in fact, most of them worked well over 24 hours straight until the issue was resolved. Our Friend Ramen also spent a great deal of her time here making sure everyone knew what was going on, and trying to keep everyone as calm as possible. She did a great job, though some people made some less than appropriate comments towards her. I have since moved the thread and I will be going over each post at some point and taking the proper action towards those people. We know that everyone was upset, but there is a line that does not need to be crossed, and that type of behavior will not be tolerated here.

We are still in the discussion stage of what we might do as a thank you to everyone who was patient with us during the downtime. Once we have determined what we want to do, we will post an announcement about it.

The Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) was a big hit this past weekend, along with the Asheron’s Call player gathering. Having the chance to talk face to face with so many players is one of the things I really enjoy doing. We had a chance to just sit down and talk AC. Also, special thanks to Gouru for once again putting everything together, and getting us all in one place. Everyone in attendance at the dinner received one of the new Asheron’s Call T-shirts we had made especially for PAX this year, and they seemed to really like them. We also gave out more autographed copies of the game, and even had a guest appearance by one of the old Devs, Orion, who was kind enough to do the Drudge dance for the crowd in the Cheesecake Factory. Orion is always a hit at parties with that dance. ;p

This week the team is busy getting things ready for the September event, putting the finishing touches on the writing, and in some cases, testing on the newer content. As always they are hard at work making sure they deliver the most exciting content that they can to the players, and we are all looking forward to the next few months of content.

The Live Events schedule has been updated with some changes to reflect some of the missed events due to the downtime. The updated schedule is as follows:

Harvestgain- August 23, Thursday, 8pm EDT
Leafcull- August 24, Friday, 8pm EDT
Thistledown- August 27, Monday, 8pm EDT
Morningthaw- August 27, Monday, 9:30pm EDT
Verdantine- August 28, Tuesday, 8pm EDT
Wintersebb- August 29, Wednesday, 8pm EDT
Solclaim- August 29, Wednesday, 9:30pm EDT
Darktide- August 30, Thursday, 8pm EDT
Frostfell- August 31, Friday, 8pm EDT

That is about it for this week. As we stated above, when we have any new information, we will post the updates here on the forums. Thanks again everyone, and have a great week. See you all in Dereth!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc

23rd August, 2007
August 2007 Portal.Dat file
August, 2007

Patch Day
21st August, 2007

Patch Day for the "Corrupted Sovereigns" monthly event and all of Dereth celebrates.

Rollout Article - August 2007

17th August, 2007
AC Heaven's Exclusive Teaser Image;
August, 2007

Click on the above image to enlarge it.

Fiction
 August, 2007

In the warm, smoky tavern of the bustling Aluvian town of Arwic, a man approaching middle age sat alone at a table by the fire. His wide shoulders and bulky arms marked him as a warrior. His alert eyes and wary posture, even as he nursed a mug of beer, marked him as a sensibly paranoid man in a time when strange disruptions were occurring all over Dereth. His name was Girion the Unlucky, and he was about to be surprised, despite his best efforts.

A hand touched him softly on his shoulder. Unaware that anyone had approached him, Girion reacted instinctively. He twisted his shoulder and launched himself up and back out of his chair, trying to knock down whatever fool had decided to try to get the drop on him. Expecting his elbow or shoulder to hit his opponent, he was put off balance when he met only empty space behind him, and a blow to the back of his knee from his unseen assailant was enough to drop him on his back.

Girion blinked away his surprise and noticed someone looming over him. The face was familiar. The last time he’d seen it was over a year ago, in the Chapterhouse of the Whispering Blade…
Read More ...

Release Notes;
August, 2007

We wanted to take this time to discuss some changes we want to make to The Colosseum in the coming months. As we had said when we first introduced The Colosseum, it is going to be an ever changing place where players will have multiple options.

The first of these upcoming changes will be the introduction of Colosseum currency. The basic concept will be that as players work their way through The Colosseum, they will earn Colosseum coins, depending on how far they make it through. The more levels you complete, the more coins you will collect. Players will then be able to spend these coins at a special vendor in The Colosseum, who will sell some unique items found only on that vendor. This vendor will work the same way that all of our vendor work, but instead of taking pyreal, he will only take Colosseum coins.

Some of the items we are looking at making available for purchase would be things like; 24hour passes to certain Colosseum bosses, Colosseum Tickets, Keys to open the Colosseum chest, and more. The items listed above are of course only tentative, and could change at any time during our development of this new currency.

Another thing we are looking at adding to The Colosseum is a practice area. This would be a place where players would be able to go in to a Colosseum like room, click on a statue representing a particular stage of The Colosseum and do “practice runs” on the levels of their choice. Players would not earn xp for these practice runs, but they would be able to learn and adapt to certain stages that may be causing them problems. This could be something that will help people get better at making Colosseum runs, without having to waste an entire run through The Colosseum.

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

15th August, 2007
Asheron's Call Update
15th August, 2007

Hello there and welcome to this week’s edition of the Asheron’s Call update!

The August event, Corrupted Sovereigns is scheduled to go live on Tuesday August 21st. We will be having the normal downtime window of 8am EDT – 3pm EDT. As always, this date is subject to change if we find that we need more time.

A reminder that PAX is creeping up on us fast, so if you are going and would like to meet some of the people who make Turbine great, please feel free to stop by our booth on the exhibition floor. Also, if you want to take part in the AC dinner that Gouru is putting together, please let him know soon. You can read all about that dinner here.

The forums are being scheduled for an upgrade and an update in the coming weeks. Among the features we are planning to add, is the CMS system, which will allow us to place news and updates on the front page of the forums. You can view an example of how this will look by checking out http://forums.lotro.com/. We feel this will help us get news and important announcements out to the community much easier. We will also be adding an infraction system to the forums that will allow us to moderate and keep track of things much easier. Once this new system goes live, we will give you all of the details.

When the September event goes live, we will no longer be paying the housing maintenance across all worlds. We want to be sure that everyone has plenty of notice on this, so we will be adding this announcement to the launcher, including the actual date that this will happen. Please make sure that you make arrangements to pay your maintenance once we have stopped doing so.

Last but not least, we will be running a series of live lore based events for the August event. We have a set schedule for these events, but we will also be running them randomly as well. Our goal is as always, to let as many people as possible participate in these events. The scheduled events are as follows:

Frostfell- August 22, Wednesday, 8pm EST
Harvestgain- August 23, Thursday, 8pm EST
Leafcull- August 24, Friday, 8pm EST
Morningthaw- August 25, Saturday, 3pm EST
Solclaim- August 26, Sunday, 3pm EST
Thistledown- August 27, Monday, 8pm EST
Verdantine- August 28, Tuesday, 8pm EST
Wintersebb- August 29, Wednesday, 8pm EST
Darktide- August 30, Thursday, 8pm EST

Thats about it for this week. Everyone have a great day, and see you all in Dereth!__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc

"Corrupted Sovereigns" August Monthly Event Announced
 15th August, 2007

The August 2007 event "Corrupted Sovereigns" has been announced, and is scheduled for Tuesday August 21st, 2007. If for some reason that date changes, we will give you as much notice as possible
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc

09th August, 2007
Asheron's Call Update
09th August, 2007

Hello there and welcome to this week’s edition of the Asheron’s Call update!

First and foremost I would like to remind everyone that Turbine will once again be at this year’s Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, Washington. The people from Turbine attending this year will be some names you know from AC, some from LOTRO and some others from DDO. Those folks we have lined up as of now are, in no particular order: Orion, Annuvin, Patience, Saffron, Quarion, Frelorn, Marketroid, and more. So please feel free to stop by our space at PAX and say hello. This is one of the few times during the year that they let us out of our cages.

Also, don’t forget that our friend Gouru has taken on the task of trying to gather all of us AC players in one place for dinner. If you would like to attend this dinner, please let him know. You can find all the information about the dinner in this thread.

This week the team is busy working on things for August event, as well as going into the beginnings of what we want to do for September and beyond. We are very pleased that the server issues have still not arisen again. This of course means that everyone is back to focusing on compelling new content, and improving the game. Some of the guys are a little tired and burnt out after doing so much extra work the last few months, but they are very excited to get back to focusing on new content and features.

We are continuing to advertise Asheron’s Call in a variety of places. The latest being Beckett Massive Online Gamer magazine. You can pick up the latest issue of the magazine at newsstands everywhere, or you can head over to their website.

Next week we will be announcing the title and date for the August event, as well as releasing the teaser images. We are undergoing some policy changes with how these things are distributed and announced, so that they will come on a more regular schedule going forward. This should help not only the players, but those great folks who run the fan-sites as well. I know firsthand how frustrating it can be waiting on something you really have no control over. It’s not exactly what I would call fun.

That’s about it for now, everyone have a great day and see you all in Dereth!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc

01st August, 2007
July 2007 News Archive
 August, 2007

The July 2007 News Archive has now been posted, Enjoy!

Cheers
Sucamarto