Gather round: Story time of Asheron’s Call

You probably all have heard that we’ve gotten to Asheron’s Island. You probably heard of the portal storm… But you have not heard the full story, about the man who dreamed it and then rallied an entire server to try something that’s never been done before.

Asheron’s Island was fabled to be the final stage in Asheron’s Call. You meet Asheron himself. He tells you why he brought you here. And then you get closure. When Asheron’s Call was to end, this guy was supposed to be here congratulating you for role you played in a grand orchestra beyond your knowledge. “Thank you for heeding the call faithful servant. Your determination and will to persevere has afforded us victory over Bael Zaron and the forces that would enslave not just Derath, but your world to. You’re free to return to your world, a hero. Your people may never know or appreciate what you’ve done here, but you’ve ensured their future to have a chance for freedom and prosperity.”

I envisioned this to happen if Asheron’s Call closed or something. The island, however, was visible from land. It was on the map. The developers had it coded in the game. So if it is in the game, we could get there. What was on this island? How can we get there? There are no portals to it. It is water locked and there is no way to go through water. How do you get to a place like that?

We often talked and talked about this with my friend Gregory Usberti who was dorm mates with me. His original character Asharak, we would play non stop every day after Carnegie Mellon. Its all we did, this game was AMAZING! And thoughts and talk of Asheron’s Island was there from time to time.

One day… At the height of all the portal storms in every town I was getting frustrated. “Why even play? Every time I go to down, I get whisked away before I can even sell.” I got frustrated and started going to a low sell value out of the way town. As I fought and sold, the idea that I was getting ripped off in selling because of all these portal storms forcing me to a cheapo town… The portal storms raged in my mind as an oppressor. Always on my mind, portal storms, but the wind blew in the oft thought fancy of Asheron’s Island by happenstance. Since portal storms will not stop raging in my mind, when fanciful Asheron’s Island journeys came to me… My eyes widened and said,”Nah… That could never happen. Wait in theory… They’re about the right distance to get zoned to.”

I told my friend Greg, and he was like,”WHOOOOA! That would work!” His stokedness got me stoked and I devised a plan.We called everyone from every town to the Soushi’s Gromnie beach. We told people faithful to the idea to roam from town to town announcing it as shouts. We told em to tell friends to do the same thing. It was like a shockwave of communication and morale raising. It was glorious. We rallied an entire server by ranting and raving in every town,”COME TO THE BEACH! WE PORTAL STORM TO ASHERON”S ISLAND! TELL EVERYONE!”

Then as we saw a few people go to the beach, we joined. Then on the beach we were watching people come running out to the ocean like crazed surfers getting off their gas station job. As more and more people came, people started saying,”It’s happening! I’m seeing purple!” “The portal storm is coming! The portal storm is coming!” Then the tells started rolling in,”Didn’t work, back at Soushi.” I reply,”Aw, come back, we gotta keep this up.” Another,”Hey, I ain’t portaling.” I reply,”Just wait, not everyone gets portaled.” Then it happened,”Dude, this one guy claiming he’s on Asheron’s Island” I’m like,”For real? We gotta confirm with more.” More and more tells come in seeming hopeful.

Then poof… I look around, green everywhere. Purple and yellow flowers. It is a more beautiful scenery than most on AC. There are people spinning, kinda walking a few steps, disbelief for sure. And I say,”Lets fan out and see if anything cool here!” We all go running like calves let out of a stall in all directions, we climb this mountain even… But nothing there. Just grass and flowers. We were not disappointed though… That was an exciting time and not everyone can say they were to Asheron’s Island. Not everyone was dreaming how to get there, but I’m sure many of you were like Greg and I.

CrazyJim- unarmed combat/lugian fortress wall licker macro/cracked shard macro guy #1 Starcraft World/Warcraft3world/Diablo2 world, soul gamer since 1980 who loves Asheron’s Call so much, I’m out to make a Dragon Ball Z aka Tekken MMORPG white whaled since 2003. First I’m launching www.starfightergeneral.com the mmo in the next few days. Also if you liked my story of dreaming about Asheron’s Island and wishing to be a hero, know that there truly is a spirit realm of love, and if you hold love in your hearts and choose to help humanity no matter what your fellow man does to you, you’re on your way to a land where dreams come true. Love is the way. Praise God we were born in the era of video games.

2) Networking that pushes the envelope where no networking has gone before. People laugh at this like it is impossible to innovate, but I marketed it to Midway in 2003, and they laughed too. Meanwhile it was working in house as a Tekken style(3d fighter) MMO with part of what today is known as rollback code. Midway’s manager was mocking what is today’s standard thinking rollback and such was impossible. Infinite action players same zone, limit only by video card and other hardware, networking ain’t a limiting thing anymore.

4) First MMO designed for late game. Everyone enjoys mmos until power capped and then get bored.
There is no power cap to begin with(just a log log logarithmic progression), but there are many many many other end game design elements to make it so want to keep playing end game! The grind is there, but better and more fun things are around too! You can build up a super big fleet and it get destroyed to pieces and you start over again. You have a power floor level that you can’t go below so you’re always building permanent power, but temporary spikes of power surges and galactic dominance for fleeting moments give a rush. The larger the fleet, the larger the fleeting moment.

8) PVP bounty system. Everyone can PVP at all times. Stakes are low if your ship explodes. If you get attacked without declaring aggressive mode or an opponent to duel, the aggressor gets a bounty on their head in accordance with the damage dealt to you. If this bounty gets high enough, and they get caught, they will be put in jail. When they log on for the next few hours or days, their character can play only in jail, and visitors come see him and such. Enjoy roleplaying being a prison inmate, or just use a different crew member on your account. Developing many crew members is a thing for when you fly capital ships.

10) Omnipotent roleplay: Earn your right into a a movie anime by great roleplay! Live game masters in about 6-12 months after the content updates roll through. We bias people with Founder’s RP tokens some and good manner role players who stay in character(we have chat logs and even game logs). This promotes good role play even when not live GMing. Who doesn’t want to bring their friends to a movie and surprise em with their own character in it? So stay in character for a better game! https://www.starfightergeneral.com/live-role-play/

Punky-Pulpy action, Levels, stats, skills, talents, items, fleet amassing, and great apocalyptic space plots, trippy Lewis Carrol level Mad Hatter humor along the way. It’s really weird to see how this synergizes from a game design standpoint. Players naturally want to level up and power up… That’s the twink min maxer in all of us. So when humor, plots, intrigue, or NPCs getting your blood boiling to action vs them happens, you get stoked, rewarded, happy and tossed off your axis. Then when resolved, you look back and get serious about powering up. The core of a RPG gamer is always powering up, it is something we can’t get rid of, but the core of a game designer is to get you out of a spreadsheet mindset temporarily… And then you appreciate both more. So tacky humor, along serious pulp action and serious leveling up game mechanics… It is like a symphony of fun.