Why a 9 yearold game called Asheron's Call is better than World of Warcraft

Scottc · March 2008

Character Creation. In Asheron's Call when you created a new character, you would start out by selecting a race like most MMORPGs, and then you'd move on to the attribute selection screen where you'd allocate 270 points into strength, coordination, quickness, endurance, focus, and self with 100 maximum of each attribute. These attributes would affect different skills. After that you would move on to the skill selection menu where you'd have 50 points to train new skills and specialize them if you want. The great thing about this is that you could really go whatever path you wanted, you could specialize war magic and train missile defense, melee defense, and bow, or if you wanted, specialize in jumping and running and train whatever else you like. The system offered freedom to the player to create whatever kind of character they wanted, whereas a game like World of Warcraft would let you pick your race, your class, and your look. It didn't go any deeper than that. After that you picked your look, your name, and your starting town (in WoW your starting town is defined by your race).

In World of Warcraft during character creation you would go no further than selecting a race, a class, and a look. You didn't even get to pick your starting town, the game picked it for you.

Character Development. In AC you had your attributes and skills and your levels. With each level as with most games the XP to level up increased. With each kill you were awarded XP into your level and into a pool of XP. The pool of XP could be spent to raise your attributes or skills in any way you like. But skills also raised when they were being used, albeit much slower. As you leveled you would gain additional skill credits which could be used to train even more skills. This allowed the player to develop their character in whatever way they wanted.

Compare this to World of Warcraft where your class dictates what you can do and how you play the game. The extent of character development involves buying new skills, but only non combat crafting/gathering skills, and skills raising as you use them. You can't be a jumping or running master in WoW, everyone runs and jumps the same speed and height, and you certainly can't be an archer that buffs itself or a mage whose a master of evading/dodging missile and melee attacks.

Spells. Asheron's Call had a really great magic system where there were buffs/debuffs for each element, skill, and attribute with levels of 1 - 7. The best part about it was unfortunately removed in a later patch. Basically you had to research spells, you would combine different components in a menu to attempt to learn a new spell. The components of a spell would determine the level of the spell (the level could be identified by how large the charging up animation was), the words spoken when it was cast, and the animation played after it was finished charging. From this, you could determine the components of a spell by watching another player cast it. It allowed the player to think and experiment. Alternatively players could just hunt for spell scrolls (monsters dropped them randomly) and learn them that way (the scrolls would autolearn the spell and the scroll would be destroyed).

Compare to WoW where you buy new skills/spells from a trainer, easymode.

Quests. In AC, quests are more than just simplistic kill tasks with instructions that a mentally retarded child could figure out. The quests tie in to the game lore, you hear about them through rumors from town criers, and sometimes NPCs that want you to retrieve some lost item of theirs from a dangerous dungeon. The rewards matter, and some of them are of use to you for years after you've gotten them. You don't do quests because you have to in order to level up, although there are quests that give experience rewards, but rather because the quest has an extremely useful item that you might want, or for a new useful spell such as something that teleports you to a new island. The interesting thing is that you aren't even told what to do, the player is left to figure things out for himself/herself by looking at the previous lore and other quests. Exploration plays an important part in questing in AC.

However, the absolute best thing about Questing in Asheron's Call were the live events where the developers would play main story characters and the players would have a chance to change what happens. On the PvP server I remember one of the most evil clans ended up joining an evil story characters allegiance played by a developer. The fact that the players actually took part in the story at some times and pushed it in the direction they wanted made the game far more interesting and immersive than anything else I've ever played. There were even epic one time quests where sometimes only one person would get the reward.

Compare it to World of Warcraft where quests exist for the sole purpose of leveling up and are intended to be done one after another. There is no deep story behind them, and they hardly tie into the game world. Each quest you do will tend to make the last quest item you got worthless, and you only do them because you have to.

Combat. Asheron's Call combat was a bit more than a select target and begin auto attack. Players could dodge spells and arrows and evade melee attacks by jumping away, maybe onto a building or something. This allowed a players skill to be a defining factor in combat. Your level helped to increase your damage and the chance to evade, but that didn't matter so much because if a level 50 was really good at a dodging spells and arrows, he/she could take down a level 100.

Compare to World of Warcraft where level, gear, class, and template determine 95% of the outcome of a fight and the other 5% is your ability to press buttons in the right order. You can't even dodge attacks by moving out of the way. This is my biggest gripe with current MMORPGs. If a 9 year old MMORPG lets me dodge attacks by moving out of the way, theres no excuse as to why a current gen one doesn't.

PvP. Asheron's Call gives you a choice between PvP and "White" Non PvP servers. If you choose a "white" server, you have two choices if you want to fight other players. You can go /pklite where there is no penalty for dieing, or you can shed your protection and become red. If you become red, you can be attacked at any place any time, and you drop a certain amount of items of the highest value proportional to your level when you're killed by another player. You can of course become white again on the non PvP servers. When you are red, only other red players can attack you, and when you're /pklite, only other pklites can attack you. On the PvP server, everyone is red always, and when they die, they turn white for 5 minutes where nobody can attack them. There used to be no safety except with guild mates on the PvP server until the developers ruined it and added houses with barriers that gave people a safe place to be.

Compare to WoW where on PvP servers your PvP is restricted to those of the other faction, and there is no reward or risk when you fight another player. You die and you lose nothing. PvP is meaningless. WoW doesn't even give players a true PvP choice.

Basically player freedom is what i'm trying to say. Asheron's Call gives the player far more freedom than World of Warcraft, thus its a far better game regardless of how bad the graphics are.

vickypollard · March 2008

Well looking at the sub base many people don't agree.

+ Don't bring up the argument about mcdonalds because people there eat for convenience.

coffee · March 2008

Originally posted by Scottc

Character Creation. In Asheron's Call when you created a new character, you would start out by selecting a race like most MMORPGs, and then you'd move on to the attribute selection screen where you'd allocate 270 points into strength, coordination, quickness, endurance, focus, and self with 100 maximum of each attribute. These attributes would affect different skills. After that you would move on to the skill selection menu where you'd have 50 points to train new skills and specialize them if you want. The great thing about this is that you could really go whatever path you wanted, you could specialize war magic and train missile defense, melee defense, and bow, or if you wanted, specialize in jumping and running and train whatever else you like. The system offered freedom to the player to create whatever kind of character they wanted, whereas a game like World of Warcraft would let you pick your race, your class, and your look. It didn't go any deeper than that. After that you picked your look, your name, and your starting town (in WoW your starting town is defined by your race).

In World of Warcraft during character creation you would go no further than selecting a race, a class, and a look. You didn't even get to pick your starting town, the game picked it for you.
We get talent tress and gear to customise our class as we lvl up. and the oportunity to completly change our class role if we so wanted.

Character Development. In AC you had your attributes and skills and your levels. With each level as with most games the XP to level up increased. With each kill you were awarded XP into your level and into a pool of XP. The pool of XP could be spent to raise your attributes or skills in any way you like. But skills also raised when they were being used, albeit much slower. As you leveled you would gain additional skill credits which could be used to train even more skills. This allowed the player to develop their character in whatever way they wanted.

Compare this to World of Warcraft where your class dictates what you can do and how you play the game. The extent of character development involves buying new skills, but only non combat crafting/gathering skills, and skills raising as you use them. You can't be a jumping or running master in WoW, everyone runs and jumps the same speed and height, and you certainly can't be an archer that buffs itself or a mage whose a master of evading/dodging missile and melee attacks.
In WoW a clas can be many things, a warrior is not just a tank, a priest is not jsut a healer.. we cna spec to be many other things. And every 1 does not run at the same speed, hunters, rouges, mages, shamans, druids all have skills to increase their speed, also pots and enchants can increase your speed...Have you played wow? As a hunter I can spec survival and massivly increase my dodge and evasion... other class can too.

Spells. Asheron's Call had a really great magic system where there were buffs/debuffs for each element, skill, and attribute with levels of 1 - 7. The best part about it was unfortunately removed in a later patch. Basically you had to research spells, you would combine different components in a menu to attempt to learn a new spell. The components of a spell would determine the level of the spell (the level could be identified by how large the charging up animation was), the words spoken when it was cast, and the animation played after it was finished charging. From this, you could determine the components of a spell by watching another player cast it. It allowed the player to think and experiment. Alternatively players could just hunt for spell scrolls (monsters dropped them randomly) and learn them that way (the scrolls would autolearn the spell and the scroll would be destroyed).

Compare to WoW where you buy new skills/spells from a trainer, easymode.
Yes WoW is lacking in that area.. how ever blizz did experiment with skill drops in AQ20/40 its not made the transition to TBC though for some reason

Quests. In AC, quests are more than just simplistic kill tasks with instructions that a mentally retarded child could figure out. The quests tie in to the game lore, you hear about them through rumors from town criers, and sometimes NPCs that want you to retrieve some lost item of theirs from a dangerous dungeon. The rewards matter, and some of them are of use to you for years after you've gotten them. You don't do quests because you have to in order to level up, although there are quests that give experience rewards, but rather because the quest has an extremely useful item that you might want, or for a new useful spell such as something that teleports you to a new island. The interesting thing is that you aren't even told what to do, the player is left to figure things out for himself/herself by looking at the previous lore and other quests. Exploration plays an important part in questing in AC.

However, the absolute best thing about Questing in Asheron's Call were the live events where the developers would play main story characters and the players would have a chance to change what happens. On the PvP server I remember one of the most evil clans ended up joining an evil story characters allegiance played by a developer. The fact that the players actually took part in the story at some times and pushed it in the direction they wanted made the game far more interesting and immersive than anything else I've ever played. There were even epic one time quests where sometimes only one person would get the reward.

Compare it to World of Warcraft where quests exist for the sole purpose of leveling up and are intended to be done one after another. There is no deep story behind them, and they hardly tie into the game world. Each quest you do will tend to make the last quest item you got worthless, and you only do them because you have to.
/face palm... there are many many quests in WoW that follow a story arc... take for example the onxyia quest chain 15 quests that ends in an NPC battle in stormwind castle.

Combat. Asheron's Call combat was a bit more than a select target and begin auto attack. Players could dodge spells and arrows and evade melee attacks by jumping away, maybe onto a building or something. This allowed a players skill to be a defining factor in combat. Your level helped to increase your damage and the chance to evade, but that didn't matter so much because if a level 50 was really good at a dodging spells and arrows, he/she could take down a level 100.

Compare to World of Warcraft where level, gear, class, and template determine 95% of the outcome of a fight and the other 5% is your ability to press buttons in the right order. You can't even dodge attacks by moving out of the way. This is my biggest gripe with current MMORPGs. If a 9 year old MMORPG lets me dodge attacks by moving out of the way, theres no excuse as to why a current gen one doesn't.
Melee attackers cant hit you if our not in front of them, spells cant be cast on your unless you in line of sight.

PvP. Asheron's Call gives you a choice between PvP and "White" Non PvP servers. If you choose a "white" server, you have two choices if you want to fight other players. You can go /pklite where there is no penalty for dieing, or you can shed your protection and become red. If you become red, you can be attacked at any place any time, and you drop a certain amount of items of the highest value proportional to your level when you're killed by another player. You can of course become white again on the non PvP servers. When you are red, only other red players can attack you, and when you're /pklite, only other pklites can attack you. On the PvP server, everyone is red always, and when they die, they turn white for 5 minutes where nobody can attack them. There used to be no safety except with guild mates on the PvP server until the developers ruined it and added houses with barriers that gave people a safe place to be.

Compare to WoW where on PvP servers your PvP is restricted to those of the other faction, and there is no reward or risk when you fight another player. You die and you lose nothing. PvP is meaningless. WoW doesn't even give players a true PvP choice.
This is jsut the way WoW went.. and 10millions players kinda shows it wasn't a bad move. we are getting more PvP on Wotlk with PvP zones, and daily PvP quests.
Basically player freedom is what i'm trying to say. Asheron's Call gives the player far more freedom than World of Warcraft, thus its a far better game regardless of how bad the graphics are.

Take the rosetinted glasses off.. i think Starcraft is the best RTS game ever but I am sure if i play it todat I'd be very dissapointed.

Scottc · March 2008

Originally posted by vickypollard

Well looking at the sub base many people don't agree.

+ Don't bring up the argument about mcdonalds because people there eat for convenience.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=4665392747&sid=1&pageNo=1

This thread seems to disagree. Those people who have played AC who are playing WoW seem to fully agree that AC was a far better game, and they're simply playing WoW because everyone else does. The masses of people who play WoW haven't played a better game, and thus they do not know that there is something better than McDonalds(sorry :P). I know thats a bold statement to make, but thats what I believe to be true. It's the only explanation I can come up with for so many people playing WoW. Because I have played it, and many others like me have played it, and we can all agree that a game can be far better.

Edit: also, please don't argue that because WoW has more subscribers its a better game. Just look at George Bush and see why you're wrong.

As for coffee, i'm not going to bother responding directly to your post, as you seem to have missed the point of my post. WoW's features are not comparable to Asheron's Call's features as WoW is so limited. Don't disagree with me for the sake of disagreeing. Just because you play WoW doesn't mean you have to defend its inadequacies. Your response addressed simplistic things, but regardless, it still did not adequately compare WoW to be as deep of a game as Asheron's Call. We're all gamers here, and you should agree with me for the sake of better games.

MrGeek · March 2008

Let's not forget AC's biggest assets: Player Housing!! From a small cottage to a giant guild castle, a place to call home!

Most other MMOs' I have played, also have player housing: SWG, Shadowbane, DAoC, and others.

And now Age Of Conan will not only have cities, but the ability to siege and destroy them ala Shadowbane.

Will WoW ever do that? Who knows!

And as far as Coffee... U got to be kiding! LOL! WoW mechanics were made by the same people that made those GEICO comercials... so easy a Caveman can do it! AC is more hardcore, as it also is Ultima Online. But in todays age of INSTAN SATISFATION WoW feels the need quite well. Heck, soon enough you will probably be able to create a character already at level 90, no more grind!

Scottc · March 2008

Originally posted by MrGeek

Let's not forget AC's biggest assets: Player Housing!! From a small cottage to a giant guild castle, a place to call home!

Most other MMOs' I have played, also have player housing: SWG, Shadowbane, DAoC, and others.
And now Age Of Conan will not only have cities, but the ability to siege and destroy them ala Shadowbane.

Will WoW ever do that? Who knows!

Ah yeah I forgot about that. It's too bad housing ruined the PvP server thought. The best part of AC's housing was that it wasn't instanced.

Pyrostasis · March 2008

As someone who has played both games for hundreds of hours I have to agree AC is a superior game.

WoW's Talent tree is no where near as customizable as AC's skill system. You cant have a warrior throwing fireballs in WoW you can in AC.

WoW's main success was it appealed to NON MMORPG'ers, pulling in a new croud, that most likely wont stick with the genre.

coffee · March 2008

Originally posted by Scottc

Originally posted by vickypollard

Well looking at the sub base many people don't agree.

+ Don't bring up the argument about mcdonalds because people there eat for convenience.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=4665392747&sid=1&pageNo=1

This thread seems to disagree. Those people who have played AC who are playing WoW seem to fully agree that AC was a far better game, and they're simply playing WoW because everyone else does. The masses of people who play WoW haven't played a better game, and thus they do not know that there is something better than McDonalds(sorry :P). I know thats a bold statement to make, but thats what I believe to be true. It's the only explanation I can come up with for so many people playing WoW. Because I have played it, and many others like me have played it, and we can all agree that a game can be far better.

As for coffee, i'm not going to bother responding directly to your post, as you seem to have missed the point of my post. WoW's features are not comparable to Asheron's Call's features as WoW is so limited. Don't disagree with me for the sake of disagreeing. Just because you play WoW doesn't mean you have to defend its inadequacies. Your response addressed simplistic things, but regardless, it still did not adequately compare WoW to be as deep of a game as Asheron's Call. We're all gamers here, and you should agree with me for the sake of better games.

I cannot agree with you if you dont give a balanced review.. you failed to give WoW a fair say, you said WoW lacked many things that it does not... your post was more of a troll than an informative balanced editorial.. next time please do better.

Take for example you wrote;

Character Development. In AC you had your attributes and skills and your levels. With each level as with most games the XP to level up increased. With each kill you were awarded XP into your level and into a pool of XP. The pool of XP could be spent to raise your attributes or skills in any way you like. But skills also raised when they were being used, albeit much slower. As you leveled you would gain additional skill credits which could be used to train even more skills. This allowed the player to develop their character in whatever way they wanted.

Compare this to World of Warcraft where your class dictates what you can do and how you play the game. The extent of character development involves buying new skills, but only non combat crafting/gathering skills, and skills raising as you use them. You can't be a jumping or running master in WoW, everyone runs and jumps the same speed and height, and you certainly can't be an archer that buffs itself or a mage whose a master of evading/dodging missile and melee attacks.

The parts I have highlighted in Orange are 100% incorrect, I can roll a warrior and be a Tank, a DPS and all parts in between, I can roll a druid.. be a healer, a DPS, Tank and all parts in between. Many classes have skills to increase there run speed, as well as player crafted pots and enchants. Many classes can spec for inproved evaision and/or dodge.

Please do better next time.

Scottc · March 2008

Originally posted by Pyrostasis

As someone who has played both games for hundreds of hours I have to agree AC is a superior game.
WoW's Talent tree is no where near as customizable as AC's skill system. You cant have a warrior throwing fireballs in WoW you can in AC.
WoW's main success was it appealed to NON MMORPG'ers, pulling in a new croud, that most likely wont stick with the genre.

My fear is that these people will continue to play crappy MMORPGs and we'll never see any mainstream good MMOGs.

Ugarit · March 2008

Because of MONEY

Scottc · March 2008

Originally posted by //\//\oo

*fixed
Why a 9 year old called Asheron's Call better than World of Warcraft.

I'm not sure what you fixed, seems you've broken it by removing important words from it that make the sentence grammatically correct.

Edit: Unless you're saying that Asheron's Call is not better than WoW even though you've never played AC before.

[Deleted User] · March 2008

The user and all related content has been deleted.

Scottc · March 2008

Originally posted by coffee

Originally posted by Scottc

Originally posted by //\//\oo

*fixed
Why a 9 year old called Asheron's Call better than World of Warcraft.

I'm not sure what you fixed, seems you've broken it by removing important words from it that make the sentence grammatically correct.

Edit: Unless you're saying that Asheron's Call is not better than WoW even though you've never played AC before.

OP, face it many dont agree with your post. deal with it and stop being childish... every 1 knows point out spelling or grammatical error is the lowest you can get on a forum.

You're joking, right? It looks like he's trying to point out my spelling/grammatical errors.

dreamer05 · March 2008

Originally posted by coffee

Originally posted by Scottc

Originally posted by //\//\oo

*fixed
Why a 9 year old called Asheron's Call better than World of Warcraft.

I'm not sure what you fixed, seems you've broken it by removing important words from it that make the sentence grammatically correct.

Edit: Unless you're saying that Asheron's Call is not better than WoW even though you've never played AC before.

OP, face it many dont agree with your post. deal with it and stop being childish... every 1 knows point out spelling or grammatical error is the lowest you can get on a forum.

Deal with it, WoW is better, don't argue! Thats basically what you're saying when, if you would actually play AC, you would see that the things the OP is pointing out are true. Also if you have looked at the posts that aren't sucking up to WoW you'll see most people here did agree with the OP and as one poster said you will find a lot of people who play WoW not because it's great, but because everyone else does.

coffee · March 2008

Originally posted by dreamer05

Originally posted by coffee

Originally posted by Scottc

Originally posted by //\//\oo

*fixed
Why a 9 year old called Asheron's Call better than World of Warcraft.

I'm not sure what you fixed, seems you've broken it by removing important words from it that make the sentence grammatically correct.

Edit: Unless you're saying that Asheron's Call is not better than WoW even though you've never played AC before.

OP, face it many dont agree with your post. deal with it and stop being childish... every 1 knows point out spelling or grammatical error is the lowest you can get on a forum.

Deal with it, WoW is better, don't argue! Thats basically what you're saying when, if you would actually play AC, you would see that the things the OP is pointing out are true. Also if you have looked at the posts that aren't sucking up to WoW you'll see most people here did agree with the OP and as one poster said you will find a lot of people who play WoW not because it's great, but because everyone else does.

Oh god here we go... neither the OP or myself wanted this to turn into a troll fest.

But the truth is most of the comments the OP said are incorrect in regards to what you can do in WoW.. the OP refused to admit the wrongs in his post and simply dismissed my comments as he would rather get post after post of "i agree". He needs to understand that people wont always agree.

//\//\oo · March 2008

Originally posted by Scottc

Originally posted by coffee

Originally posted by Scottc

Originally posted by //\//\oo

*fixed
Why a 9 year old called Asheron's Call better than World of Warcraft.

I'm not sure what you fixed, seems you've broken it by removing important words from it that make the sentence grammatically correct.

Edit: Unless you're saying that Asheron's Call is not better than WoW even though you've never played AC before.

OP, face it many dont agree with your post. deal with it and stop being childish... every 1 knows point out spelling or grammatical error is the lowest you can get on a forum.

You're joking, right? It looks like he's trying to point out my spelling/grammatical errors.

Ingredients for MMO-hate post:

3 pints of oversimpflication

400 grams of complete ignorance and use of commonly seen deprecations of the particular MMO

1 cup of omission of contradicting details

3 liters of fail

Blend all of your ingredients in a forum post and mix thoroughly....

C’est magnifique!

Garnish with , and

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Why a 9 yearold game called Asheron's Call is better than World of Warcraft

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