Current events

Indoor Casting Range Update - Link

The spellcasting range for non-projectile spells was reduced to 30 yards as part of the July 2008 Shattered Lines event. After much player discussion, Frelorn posted this:

So after gathering much feedback and having many internal and external discussions, we have decide to increase the spell range to 50 yards in the next update. We want to thank everyone for the feedback they have given us regarding this change.
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Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo

--An Adventurer 14:50, 1 August 2008 (CDT)

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Asheron's Call Nostalgia Blog #1: Allan "Orion" Maki - Link

As we quickly close in on the 100th update for Asheron's Call, some of our old friends have decided to stop by and give us their thoughts on us making it to 100 content updates. Up first is Allan "Orion" Maki, who lets us in on his thoughts about this occasion and what it was like for him to work on Asheron's Call! - Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo

Orion reveals an easter egg.

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July Patch - Link

The July event is tentatively scheduled for Wednesday, July 23rd from 7am - 2pm EDT. The Release Notes and fiction will be released next week.

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The Societies are Coming! - Link

The very first in-depth information about the upcoming 100th content update has gone live! Check out the upcoming Society System!
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Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo

--An Adventurer 14:45, 14 July 2008 (CDT)

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Hotfix: Tuesday June 24th 9:00am - 12:00pm EDT - Link

Update: To ensure everything is completed and tested thoroughly, we will be extending the downtime window until 12:00pm EDT.

All worlds will be down on Tuesday June 24th from 9:00am - 11:00 am EDT for a hotfix. This downtime will address the recent closing of the new quest involving Rytheran.
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Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo

--An Adventurer 17:12, 23 June 2008 (CDT)

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Dispatch Teaser Images

Links to the June patch's Teaser Images available here.

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Turbine plotting something special for the 100th Asheron's Call patch - Link

The Daily News site for MMOs, Massive.com has an article briefly describing the upcoming 100th aniversary patch. The article was also referenced on the main page of Slashdot.org - Link.

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Hotfix

On Wednesday May 28th, all worlds will be down from 7am -2pm Eastern so that we may apply a patch to the game. This patch will have a fix for the pet attacking issue as well as a few other minor game changes. May 12, 2008 - 3:49 PM - by Frelorn

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Compensation NPCs Permanent - Link

Frelorn posted in this thread that Turbine has no plans to remove the new compensation gift NPCs in a future patch.

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Tell The AC Community Team - Link

Tolero from the Turbine Community Team has posted a new thread over on the Turbine Boards:

I'll be asking you questions, and here in my thread, you tell me: What comes to mind; what you think; how you feel; etc, as it relates to the question(s) at hand. If you missed the previous week's questions, they'll be listed below and you can answer them here too. Thank you so much to everyone for offering their answers!

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Question 1

If you could describe your favorite play style in one word, what would that word be?

Question 2

What is your favorite thing about AC?

Question 3

If our CEO gave you three wishes, what would you wish for?

Head over to the thread, read the posting guides, and post your responses.

--An Adventurer 12:53, 13 May 2008 (CDT)

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May Event "Introductions" Thursday May 15th - Link

The May event is scheduled to go live on Thursday May 15th. All worlds will be down from 7am - 2pm Eastern. You can find out more by checking out the May Event page. -- Freelorn

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Turbine picks up $40 Million in new venture capital - Link

Turbine has raised $40 million, [possibly] to expand the Lord of the Rings Online around the world more quickly; Crowley says the Asia expansion alone will bring millions of subscribers to that game. Turbine also wants to fund the expansion of properties like Dungeons & Dragons Online, which on its own isn’t generating enough revenue to fund expansion. And then the company has a couple of more secret projects in the works. . . "We do have some unannounced projects. We have not articulated those yet, with the exception of the announcement of the Moria expansion to Lord of the Rings Online. We have a couple of more announcements as the year goes on. It’s very exciting in terms of expansion of our IP portfolio and geographies." - Read more.

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Important Announcement Regarding Recent Downtimes - Link

Greetings,

It’s been a long week, so I’m particularly pleased to be able to announce that the Asheron’s Call team will be bringing you in-game rewards as part of the May event!

We’ll save the specifics for the May Release notes but just to give you an idea: Rewards will range from a pack doll to a free level, with many other cool things in-between (and maybe a surprise or two).

No one likes extended downtimes – especially us. We know that many of you missed out on planned play time due to the maintenance. While we can’t replace that time, we hope you enjoy this in-game reward as a token of our gratitude for your patience.

Thanks for playing Asheron's Call!
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Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo

--An Adventurer 14:07, 18 April 2008 (CDT)

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Maintenance Extended

Update: In order to ensure that everything is working properly, we are extending the Authentication downtime window until 5pm Eastern.

--An Adventurer 13:54, 18 April 2008 (CDT)

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Authentication & myaccount.turbine.com Critical Maintenance 4/18/08 9:30AM – 2:30PM E - Link

The game server authentication system and myaccount.turbine.com will be undergoing critical maintenance on Friday, April 18 from 9:30AM – 2:30PM Eastern (-5 GMT). During this time players will be unable to log into the game, register new keys, or make changes to their Turbine accounts on myaccount.turbine.com. Thank you for your cooperation and patience as we work out the issue!
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Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo

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Authentication Issues: Thursday April 17, 2008 - Link

Saffron of Turbine posted this announcement: We are currently troubleshooting an issue with authentication. The myaccount.turbine.com site is currently down. If you encounter trouble logging into the game, please try again. Thanks for your cooperation while we work on the problem!

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Turbine Global Maintenance 4/14/08 7am Eastern - 11am Eastern (-5 GMT) - Link

All Turbine services will be down on Monday April 14th from 7am Eastern - 11am Eastern (-5 GMT) for maintenance. During this time the billing and authentication servers will be offline. In addition, all turbine forums will be viewable, but players may not be able to log into their accounts. Players who are already in the game at the time of the maintenance should not be affected.
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Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo

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Upcoming functionality addition: Cooldown Timers - Link

As we continue to move forward with our technical capabilities, we will be adding new features to Asheron's Call. Coming in April we will be introducing Cool Down Timers on some previously existing items, as well as some new ones.

The first items that will be utilizing this new tech will be the Blackmoor's Favor and Asheron's Benediction Gems(Asheron's Lesser Benediction as well). Beginning with the April event, there will be a 30 second cool down timer on each gem use. Each gem will have separate timers so players will still be able to use both at the same time. Players will however, now have to wait 30 seconds before being able to use the gems again.

This new tech not only opens up several options for items going forward, but it also allows us to become more creative with some other quests and content going forward. Some of the new uses of this tech will also been seen in April in addition to the timer on the existing gems.

This is just one of the new tech features we have planned for Asheron's Call going forward.
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Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo

--An Adventurer 17:50, 1 April 2008 (CDT)

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March Event Downtime Extended until 4pm Eastern - Link

We are extending today's Downtime window until 4pm Eastern, in order to make some server side changes that we hope will resolve the recent problems we have been having with server performance.

In going over the most recent set of logs we have been gathering, some server errors were found that we feel need to be fixed and may be directly related to the server issues we have been having over the last couple of months. It was decided that we want to apply this fix as soon as possible, so rather than having another downtime tomorrow or the next day, we are going to extend today's downtime by 2 hours.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause our players who were expecting the worlds to be up sooner.
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Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo

--An Adventurer 10:49, 25 March 2008 (CDT)

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March Teaser Images

Teaser Images for Foolish Ambition are now available.

--Tlosk 04:47, 20 March 2008 (CDT)

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Tentative Patch Date - Link

The March update is set to go live on Tuesday, March 25th barring any major disasters.

--Tlosk 20:57, 15 March 2008 (CDT)

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Update on Server Issues - Link

In speaking with the team we felt that an update on what has been happening was more than overdue. We know that this is a very frustrating situation for everyone who plays Asheron’s Call.

We have been tracking this problem for some time and have identified the subsystem that is likely to be causing this problem. The behavior we are seeing with the servers is consistent with what we would expect if this particular subsystem was failing. So while we have identified the area of the infrastructure where the problem occurs, we don't know what player or hardware behavior patterns are causing it. Worse, the subsystem is one of the oldest and, um, crustiest of the AC infrastructure.

While we are working on it, the AC infrastructure is complicated and works differently than the more modern systems we have on newer games. We are in the process of developing additional diagnostic tools to analyze the problem. Unfortunately this process is time consuming and as much as we want to get it into place for this weekend, and tonight in particular, it is not possible to develop, test, and deploy a set of new diagnostic tools in that time frame. This is frustrating to us especially because Friday night is generally when the problems happen most frequently.

In the coming days you will likely see the results of us developing and deploying additional tools to identify and fix this issue. Thanks for being patient.

--An Adventurer 11:45, 14 March 2008 (CDT)

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Sunday 3/2/08 Server Issues - Link

We are aware of the server issues that caused many players to get booted from the game. These issues are also preventing many players from logging back in. Our Net Ops team is investigating the issues and we will continue to update players as we get more information. Please see this thread for updates.

--An Adventurer 13:43, 2 March 2008 (CST)

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February Event Date! 2/20/08 - Link

On Wednesday February 20th all worlds will be down from 7am EST - 2pm EST for the February event The Beast With Many Heads.

--An Adventurer 14:43, 14 February 2008 (CST)

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January Update: Thursday January 24th 8am EST - 3pm EST - Link

Frelorn has announced that the January Event, Recollections, will be going live on Thursday, January 24th. The servers are expected to be down from 8am EST to 3pm EST.

When the servers are online, be sure to check out our Patch Page for the latest information. And if you have some information not on our page, feel free to contribute to it yourself. Just create an account here and start contributing to the community.

--An Adventurer 13:09, 21 January 2008 (CST)

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January 08 Teaser Image - Link

Frelorn posted this early teaser shot on this thread.

--An Adventurer 16:13, 13 January 2008 (CST)

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Plans for the New Year - Link

In another thread from earlier today the question came up about what we have planned for the future, more specifically this year. So after meeting with the team, they are forcing me to give you all a little sneak peek at what the team is busy working on.

There is a very special milestone upcoming for Asheron's Call and Turbine upcoming this year, as some of you may know. This is something that has not been accomplished by any other game or game company as far as we know. During this year, Asheron's Call will have its 100th content update! This is something we want to celebrate with our players. This is something truly special that need to be marked by a truly special event.

What we have planned for everyone is still in early development, and as time goes on we will begin discussing this special occasion in much more detail, but for now I will leave you all with something to think about and discuss.

With the 100th update, one of our goals is to implement a new faction system into Asheron's Call. Now before you ask, we are not at the point yet to share more details, but when that time does come, we will let everyone know. This is just a little teaser to let everyone know we do have goals and we do have plans going forward.

--An Adventurer 18:38, 9 January 2008 (CST)

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Character Name Change System Coming Soon

In this thread Frelorn has made it public that there is a character name change system in the works. Some details about the system:

For those worried about griefers using this to hide, we will have a few step in place to prevent this. First off, there will be some sort of charge for this service, it will not be something that you just do anytime you want. There will be limits on the number of changes that can be made and the frequency of the changes. There will also be background checks made on each individual before we grant that name change. For example, our other two products have this service and when someone tries to purchase a name change, they rep will check the users history up to six months back. If that person has had any disciplinary actions taken against them, they will not be allowed to purchase that name change.

One of the key factors behind us doing this is two fold. One is alternate revenue. The more money we make for the franchise, the better. That just make sense. The other is we want to be able to offer our players as many conveniences as we can.

--An Adventurer 18:38, 9 January 2008 (CST)

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January Live Events! - Link

We have scheduled some live events for each server in the month of January. These events are lore based, and will run one time on each world. We look forward to seeing everyone there!

Frostfell - Saturday, January 12th 12pm EST

Harvestgain - Tuesday, January 8th 9pm EST

Leafcull - Sunday, January 13th 12pm EST

Morningthaw - Friday, January 11th 9pm EST

Solclaim - Thursday, January 10th 9pm EST

Thistledown - Wednesday, January 9th 9pm EST

Verdantine - Saturday, January 12th 3pm EST

Wintersebb - Monday, January 7th 9pm EST

Darktide - Sunday, January 13th 3pm EST

--An Adventurer 16:16, 3 January 2008 (CST)

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Update on the December Event - Link

Due to operational constraints and stability issues with the December Patch, Turbine has made the decision that delaying the December update until January is in everyone’s best interest. We know this will be disappointing for those players who enjoy our monthly content, but after weighing all of our options we feel that this is the right decision given the circumstances.

In the meantime, our live events staff will be providing more events over the remainder of December and into January. Our goal with these in-game events is not only to have fun with current players, but also let those players who may return to us over the Holidays see what our live events team has been up to!

--An Adventurer 11:50, 13 December 2007 (CST)

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Asheron's Call Referral Program - Link

Refer A Friend & Play For Free!

We’re proud to announce the Turbine Referral Program, a great way to earn free game time by introducing your family and friends to Asheron’s Call! It's so easy a Drudge can do it!

The Turbine Referral Program lets paying subscribers of Asheron’s Call refer friends to play the game and receive free game time for successful referrals, subject to certain terms and conditions (see myaccount.turbine.com/referral/rules/ac ). Each of your referred friends will be sent a Guest Key to try the game for free for fourteen (14) consecutive days!

For every friend that buys the retail edition of the game, registers a retail product key at myaccount.turbine.com, and subscribes to the game, you'll get a referral credit that can be redeemed for 30 days of FREE game time to be added to your subscription for the game! So get started today by visiting myaccount.turbine.com!

--An Adventurer 10:43, 6 December 2007 (CST)

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