Archived AC News - 2009

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2009

Septrember

September 2009 update

The September 2009 update Cogs in the Machine is set to go live on September 22nd, 2009.

--An Adventurer 18:49, 18 September 2009 (UTC)

August

Turbine Sues Atari Over Dungeons & Dragons Contract

August 30th, 2009 - Link

Courthouse News reports:

"The complaint in New York County Court alleges that Atari granted Turbine a sublicense to "Dungeons & Dragons" and "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" so that Turbine could develop and operate a subscription-based MMO called "Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach.

Turbine says it employed "dozens upon dozens of people working hundreds of thousands of hours" to do so. Turbine claims it spent millions of dollars on the franchise and continues to invest money to operate and maintain the service.

Turbine claims that Atari's purported "termination" was part of a strategy it conceived prior to the May 13 agreements that it would either terminate Turbine as part of a shakedown, or proceed with termination in bad faith to benefit from its own competing product at Turbine's expense."

See also the report at Gamespot.

Scheduled Hotfix Friday August 21st 10am -12pm Eastern

August 20th, 2009 - Link

On Friday August 21st, all worlds will be down from 10am - 12pm Eastern for a hotfix. This fix will address an issue on the quest known as Thugs Part III, where if players talk to the NPC Fiona Woron before handing in the item, the NPC will lock up not allowing anyone else to complete the quest.

We apologize in advance for this extra downtime and we appreciate your patience.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

Patch scheduled for Thursday August 20th

August 18th, 2009 - Link

On Thursday August 20th all worlds will be down from 7am - 12pm for the August event, Reclamation.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

MMPORG Documentary Second Skin on Hulu

August 7th, 2009 - Link

Second Skin takes an intimate, fascinating look at the people whose lives have been transformed by virtual worlds in online games such as World of Warcraft, Everquest and Second Life. The documentary follows a group of online gamers whose lives are intensely woven together inside and outside the virtual worlds, a couple whose lives have changed since meeting online, an avid player whose life spins out of control due to his addiction to playing MMOs, as well as disabled players who have been given a voice and mobility in the virtual world. The film also goes into the controversial world of Chinese gold farming and presents astonishing facts about online gaming.

Available for free viewing on Hulu through August 13:

http://www.hulu.com/watch/87648/second-skin

July

Patch scheduled for Thursday July 23rd

July 21st, 2009 - Link

The July event Picking up the Pieces is scheduled to go live Thursday July 23rd. All worlds will be down from 7am - 12pm Eastern. The Release Notes, Fiction and Teaser Shots will be released tomorrow.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

Server Forums are now Live!

Turbine has created server specific message boards on the official forums. You can view them here

July 16th, 2009 - Link

The server forums are now live! Have a matter you want to discuss with your fellow players that is server specific? You now have a place to post. You can see the forums listed on the left_side navigation bar on the forums home page. Enjoy!

Frelorn AC Community Relations

June

Turbine Accepting Applications to the Private Test Server

June 17th, 2009 - Link

Want to Help Make Asheron's Call Better?

So as most everyone here knows by now, Asheron's Call has had a private test server for quite some time now that we use to help us get a gauge on upcoming content that we will be releasing each month. For the entirety of its existence, the players who were/are part of this server were picked by the various teams that ran Asheron's Call. With the upcoming 10th Anniversary of our beloved game fast approaching, we want to make sure we release the best possible product to our customers.

So for the first time ever, we are going to be accepting public applications for Asheron's Call players to join the fun on our test server. And by fun I mean helping us to make sure we release the best content we possibly can.

There are a few rules that we will need to follow before we accept anyone into this program. Here is the list of things you should consider before applying:

1. Must have a valid and active subscription to Asheron's Call
2. Must be at least 18 years of age
3. Must have a clean forum and game history
4. Must be able to interact with the community in a mature and constructive manner
5. Must be able to communicate well through forum posts and bug reports
6. You must accept the terms of the Test Program Non-Disclosure Agreement, the full contents of which will be provided should we accept your application.

If you are interested in taking part in this program, we encourage you to apply! Here is how you do it!!!

Send an email to ac1team@turbine.com. In this email, please include the following information:

1. Your full Real Name (please do not provide nicknames)
2. Your Username for Asheron's Call (this is the account name you use to log in to the AC launcher)
   NOTE: Please only provide ONE account. If you have multiple accounts/subscriptions, please provide information for only 1 of them.
3. Your Live Forum name (the name that displays on these boards) tied to the account in Bullet 2
4. The email address registered to the Asheron's Call Live account provided in bullet 2.
5. An explanation why you would like to participate in the preview program. This can be a summary of why you enjoy the game, what kind of bugs you've filed in the past, what kind of forum posting history you have, or any other way you think you can contribute to the program.

Assure this information is sent via email only. Please do not use Private Message or apply through this thread.

If you are accepted to the program, you will receive an email with instructions on how to get started. Applications will be reviewed on the first Monday of every month, with invitations sent to accepted applicants shortly thereafter.

Due to the number of applications we get and the relatively small number of resources we have in this program, we will not be sending responses to those we do not accept. We appreciate your understanding with this policy, and thank you for your interest in the program.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

June Patch Delayed

June 15th, 2009 - Link

The tentative date for the June update is now June 30th.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited

June 9th, 2009 - Link

We're very pleased to announce the start of our North American beta program for a major new upgrade to the game called Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited! What's in DDO Unlimited?

• More than a dozen new dungeons
• An all-new never before announced class
• A complete level cap increase to 20
• Over a hundred updated skills, quests, feats, and enhancements

DDO Unlimited introduces a new Free To Play option to the game! Players can download DDO for free and enjoy many free adventures. The new DDO Store allows players to purchase even more adventures, special items, and account services! The best part is - as existing subscribers, you're automatically enrolled in our VIP program for DDO Unlimited and will enjoy all the benefits that come with being VIPs! You'll continue to get unlimited access to all of the game's content, plus get some extra perks as our thank you just for being a VIP! We're sure you're very curious about what this means for you, so here are some handy links to all the excitement!

Tolero DDO Community Specialist

May

The Matrix Online to be shut down July 31st - Link

Launched in 2005, The Matrix Online will be be shutting down at the end of July with plans for some special events before closing.

Developer Interview - Link

Former AC1 and AC2 engineer Eric Heimburg was interviewed for a piece on Wired. The piece was also discussed on SlashDot. Eric and former AC developer Sandra "Srand" Powers also have a frequently updated blog at Elder Game.

Developer Interview - Link

Interview with Craig Alexander, VP for Product Development at Turbine as part of the LOGIN2009 conference. Transcript at the Vault.

Players Banned For 7 Days For Recent Exploit

May 14th, 2009 - Link

A short time back there was an exploit discovered by players that allowed them to get a Mana Forge Key approximately every 15 minutes. It was used by many until we were made aware of it, and promptly shut it down. Thanks to recent code added to the game we were able log all players who abused this exploit. As a result of this new logging, we have a record of everyone who abused this exploit.

Starting with Darktide today, and the other server to follow in the coming days, we will be banning all players who were found using this exploit for 7 days. Consider this banning the one final warning about exploiting. We will not tolerate players who exploit in the game and any caught after this will be subject to more harsh punishments.

We appreciate everyone who has reported exploits to us in the past and those who will continue to do so in the future.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

10th Anniversary Teaser Video

A teaser video of the 10th Anniversary of Asheron's Call has been posted on AC's official website. Frelorn announced it in this post:

May 5th, 2009 - Link

We thought everyone might enjoy seeing just ONE of the things we have coming to Asheron's Call for our 10th Anniversary.

Make sure you head over to http://ac.turbine.com/ to check out the exclusive teaser!

Frelorn AC Community Relations

--An Adventurer 15:06, 5 May 2009 (CDT)

AC Competitor Shadowbane Shutting Down May 1st

Ubisoft has announced the shutdown of Shadowbane, created by Wolfpack Studios and published on March 25, 2003. Shadowbane was a top-10 best selling PC game at launch, and was noted for two things. First, the majority of the game world allowed for open Player-vs-Player combat, making it an early pioneer title in the PvP MMO genre. Second, it was the first major MMO to offer dynamic world content as a primary feature of the game.

April

Patch Date April 28th

April 16th, 2009 - Link

So I was waiting until we had the final word from everyone involved before I posted anything. The patch has been delayed to the 28th due some scheduling conflicts. We apologize for not letting everyone know sooner, but nothing was finalized until earlier today.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

Customer Service Changes

April 9th, 2009 - Link

Some minor updates have been made to the phone support schedule. Phones will be opened at 2:00pm (Eastern Time) on Mondays and Tuesdays to help resolve the increased call volumes on those two days.

We will also be pulling some resources to help resolve standard account issues in a more timely fashion. What this means for our Premium Service customers is that there may be a slightly longer delay for all Premium Service requests. These requests may take up to a week or two to process. Unfortunately, these delays are necessary to allow us to properly support standard issues.

SDM Turbine Customer Service

Service Issues 4/1/09 update

April 1st, 2009, 10:02 PM - Link

We are currently investigating the issues with game logins and myaccount.turbine.com. We will update this post when we have more information.

Thanks for your patience while we work to resolve these issues.

UPDATE 11:53 PM EST (-5 GMT): Welcome back! We are still working on the web and authentication issues currently affecting Turbine game logins. We will continue to update the status of this situation as more information becomes available. Thanks for your patience everyone!

UPDATE: 1:00 AM EST (-5 GMT): Websites and forums are available, but you may experience sporadic page errors. We are still working to correct the billing and authentication errors that are preventing login to the games. Thanks for your patience!

Tolero Turbine Community Team

--An Adventurer 22:59, 1 April 2009 (CDT)

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4/1/09 - Turbine Services On and Off

Several of Turbines web pages and services have been on and off today. This includes turbine.com, lotro.com, ddo.com, ac.turbine.com, forums.ac.turbine.com, and the authentication servers. Frelorn had this to say:

April 1st, 2009, 03:28 PM - Link

We are aware and we are investigating. The game servers are up but authentication appears to be down. We will let you know as soon as we have more information.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

Later, Frelorn posted this:

April 1st, 2009, 03:35 PM - Link

It appears to have been a hiccup of some sort. The team is still investigating, but appears that everything is back up and running.

Frelorn AC Community Relations

However the problem is still persisting.

--An Adventurer 18:45, 1 April 2009 (CDT)

March

Important Information about the March 30-31 Datacenter Move

Patience of Turbine has posted some important news regarding the recent extended downtime:

Mar 31st, 2009 - Link

On behalf of the entire staff at Turbine we would like to thank you for your patience while we completed our recent datacenter move. Taking Asheron's Call, Dungeons & Dragons Online, and several of our websites to a new home was an incredibly complex and demanding task -one that we undertook in an effort to improve the quality of the service we provide to our customers. The move is now complete and was successful. All systems are now up and running in their new home!

While the move was planned and scheduled well in advance, the nature of this kind of effort means that things sometimes take longer than anticipated. Despite the best efforts of the teams who worked through the day and night, we ran into issues that significantly extended the amount of time the services were unavailable.

As a thank you for your patience during this process, we will extend all active and currently paid Asheron's Call and DDO subscriptions by one day on or before May 1, 2009*. Additionally, both DDO and AC will offer the following special activities this weekend as an extra thank you from us:

Asheron's Call
Bonus rare drops!
+25% bonus XP

Dungeons & Dragons Online
+25% XP
+1 bonus to loot
A special in-game item when Mod 9 launches!

As always, we remain focused on providing the best possible service to our subscribers and are looking forward to an improved level of reliability and performance from our new datacenter!

Thanks again and we'll see you soon in Stormreach and Dereth!

*To qualify for the 1 day subscription extension players must have had an active subscription as of 3/31/2009 and the subscription must be active on the date we apply the credit. Accounts which are inactive on the credit date will not be extended.

Patience Online Community Manager

--An Adventurer 14:36, 31 March 2009 (CDT)

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Monday, March 30 Datacenter Move - Link

In the fourth quarter of 2008, we relocated DDO, Asheron's Call, and some of our websites to a new datacenter. Our commitment to quality requires us to relentlessly evaluate our strategies for their effectiveness. Unfortunately, the move did not result in the level of service that we expected. That means we have to make a change in order to achieve our goal of maintaining the best game environment in the world.

On Monday we are relocating to a new datacenter that will provide the level of service and redundancy that we and you expect. This physical relocation is a huge undertaking that will unavoidably result in a significant downtime for DDO and AC players, as well as for the users of some of our websites. We apologize for the downtime, and are confident that this relocation will provide the performance and reliability that has been a standard of Turbine during our nearly 10 year history of operating quality games.

We appreciate your patience and understanding during this move, and are looking forward to delivering a much improved experience for all players.
__________________
TurbineSIG
Turbine Operations

--Tlosk 15:59, 26 March 2009 (CDT)

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Scheduled Downtime Wednesday March 25 7am - 12pm Eastern - Link

All worlds will be down on Wednesday March 25th from 7am - 12pm Eastern. During this time we will be fixing an issue which caused us to remove some NPC's and adding additional logging to the game servers.
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations

--Tlosk 05:42, 25 March 2009 (CDT)

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March Event 3/10/09 7:00am - 12:00pm Eastern - Link

The March event has been scheduled to go live this upcoming Tuesday March 10th from 7am Eastern - 12pm Eastern. The teaser images have been sent out, and the Release Notes/Fiction will go live on Monday.
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations

--Tlosk 20:10, 6 March 2009 (CST)

February

Conversion Rates on Alternate Currencies Discussion - Link

Turbine developer Django has started a discussion on what players think the relative values of the various alternative currencies are:

As we've been adding quite a few items to the alternate currency vendors we wanted to get feedback on what our players believe to be the conversion rates between the various alternate currencies.

For Instance:

GY Coin = 1

Colo Coin = 4

Olthoi Sac = 2

Meaning that a GY coin is the easiest to get and the smallest unit while Olthoi Sacs are worth twice as much as Colo Coins are worth 4 times as much. Converting this to buy prices would be the inverse of course. (for instance Colo items would end up costing 1/4 of that GY items in this case.)

We can figure out the exact numbers of how often players would be able to get coins. However that would say 4 Colo Coins/hr which I'm sure nobody runs Colosseum for as many consecutive hours as someplace like the Graveyard and there's also prep time on the Colosseum. Obtaining information on the perceived value would help us add items across all alternate currency vendors.

Thanks!

**Note - We're not looking to make a conversion in game. This is for the purpose of adding the same items to the different vendors. Not all items are applicable as some are area specific however certain items would be best obtained in your favorite hunting spot (for instance if I were to say add a Noble Armor upgrade kit as an item). This month's items are on 3 vendors and pretty much have the same stats, so it would have been good to know for them as well

Head over to the Turbine message boards and join in on the discussion. --An Adventurer 16:32, 9 February 2009 (CST)

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February Event Downtime 2/10/09 7:00am - 12:00pm Eastern - Link

All worlds will be down on Tuesday, February 10 from 7:00am - 12:00pm Eastern for the February event, Unfinished Business.

__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations

--Tlosk 15:53, 7 February 2009 (CST)

January

Asheron's Call on Facebook - Link

Are you a fan of Asheron's Call? Do you spend entirely too much time on Facebook? Join the Asheron's Call group on Facebook and have the best of both worlds!

__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations

--Tlosk 00:37, 29 January 2009 (CST)

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Tenative Patch Date - Tuesday, January 13th - Link

As things stand right now we are tentatively scheduled for the January event to go live on Tuesday, January 13th. If for some reason we need to change the date I will make the appropriate posting about it.
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations

--Tlosk 12:16, 7 January 2009 (CST)