Current events
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
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.
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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:
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!
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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.
Patch Date April 28th
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.
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Frelorn AC Community Relations |
Customer Service Changes
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.
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SDM Turbine Customer Service |
Service Issues 4/1/09 update
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!
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Tolero Turbine Community Team |
--An Adventurer 22:59, 1 April 2009 (CDT)
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:
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.
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Frelorn AC Community Relations |
Later, Frelorn posted this:
It appears to have been a hiccup of some sort. The team is still investigating, but appears that everything is back up and running.
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Frelorn AC Community Relations |
However the problem is still persisting.
--An Adventurer 18:45, 1 April 2009 (CDT)
Important Information about the March 30-31 Datacenter Move
Patience of Turbine has posted some important news regarding the recent extended downtime:
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.
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Patience Online Community Manager |
--An Adventurer 14:36, 31 March 2009 (CDT)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
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)
Live Events 12/12/08 - Link
Starting sometime after 7pm EST, new events will be taking place across all worlds. Make sure you are on around tonight to be part of all the fun!
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
--An Adventurer 12:56, 12 December 2008 (CST)
Live Events! 12/11/08 - Link
As mentioned in the Release Notes this month, we will be beginning our Live events for this event tonight around 8pm EST.
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
--Tlosk 15:15, 11 December 2008 (CST)
December Patch Date Set - Link
The next patch is scheduled for December 9th.
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
--An Adventurer 16:17, 4 December 2008 (CST)
Django returns to AC Staff - Link
No AC staff was moved to work on other games. AC's staff is AC's staff (and LotRO's and DDO's tools are very different, it took me a few months to get completely used to DDO's tools).
On that note I'm back on the AC staff so I don't have to say things like "I don't work on AC right now." any more.
Welcome back Django.
--An Adventurer 15:26, 27 November 2008 (CST)
"November" Patch delayed until early December - Link
Frelorn has let us know that the patch intended for November is going to be pushed back into December.
We are still having a patch, though it does appear that it will be delayed until early December. With the upcoming holidays and other scheduling conflicts within Turbine, we would rather wait and put out a better product then rush it out the door for the sake of getting it out there.
__________________
Andy "Frelorn" Cataldo
AC Community Relations
Turbine, Inc
--An Adventurer 15:26, 27 November 2008 (CST)
Changes coming to ac.turbine - Link
So the new site has been live for some time now, and we are happy with how things turned out. As always there is room for more, so we will be adding a new Lore section to the site.
In the coming weeks we will be adding a series of images and background stories for some of our favorite characters in Asheron's Call history. Not only will these lore pages be a good place to reference information, but it will give us a place to showoff some really cool art.
As a preview here is one of the images we will be using in this upcoming section. Enjoy!
--An Adventurer 15:46, 21 November 2008 (CST)
Tubine Opens New West Coast Studio in Redwood City, CA - Link
“The opening of our West coast studio is a major milestone in Turbine’s long-term growth plans as it allows us to complement the outstanding talent we have on the East coast with the pool of extraordinary talent available on the West coast,” said Jim Crowley, president and CEO of Turbine, Inc. “Turbine is fast becoming the place to be for those looking to create the new generation of cross platform MMOs. We are delighted that Dave, Jeff and Matt have joined us in this effort and we look forward to further announcements as we continue to expand this team.”
--Tlosk 09:09, 4 November 2008 (CST)