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| [i]It's been 4 years and 48 episodes later and AC is still going strong. WarCry decided to check in with some of the original creators who have given us what we all love today and see what they remember of the creation of Asheron's Call.[/i] |
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WarCry: What is your name and what was your role with Asheron's Call?
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Jason: Jason Booth; I was originally hired as an artist on the project, became lead artist at one point, and slowly created the roll of 'technical artist' from there. I spent a lot of time helping to develop the core technology for creating the landscape and dungeons tools, while doing a ton of art integration.
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WarCry: What is your back ground? How did you learn the skills that enabled you to get a job working on Asheron's Call?
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Jason: When I was younger, I spent a lot of time programming computers (TI994a and Apple IIc) and running a BBS, which was basically a small online RPG. When I was 13, the FBI took away my computer for being involved in some, well, extra curricular activity with the phone company. When I was 14, I helped the local police retrieve some data from a child molester's computer system, which the news blew up into a big ego-bloating affair. Without a computer to soak up my time, I spent the next few years focusing on music, and, well, Street Fighter II. The music eventually brought me to Boston and Berklee, where I studied Music Production and Engineering. I spent my last year and a half at Berklee blowing off class to teach myself 3d modeling and animation, and getting involved with local theatre productions.
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WarCry: How did you first get your foot in the door of the video game industry?
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Jason: I had just finished coming back from a car trip across the country with a friend and realized I had nothing to do for the summer. I saw an add on a mailing list looking for 3d modelers and animators to do a game, and decided to give it a go. At the time, I had just completed an animation which involved a field of grass waving in the wind, so I made a copy of it and drove down to meet them. I was hired that day, drove home and brought my computer in (everyone used their own computers back then) and basically slept on the living room floor that night.
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WarCry: Do you still play Asheron's Call? Do you currently play any other MMOGs?
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Jason: I drift back to AC from time to time, but after 8 years of working on it and playing it, I'm a little burned out on it. Right now I'm playing YoHoHo: Puzzle Pirates, which is a brilliant little MMP.
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WarCry: What MMOGs out there are you looking forward to playing?
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Jason: I'm interested in seeing what Blizzard does with WoW, but other than that, nothing is really exciting me right now outside of these walls.
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WarCry: The Bael'Zharon story arc has been looked back on by many players as the finest arc in Asheron's Call history. What was your favorite part of that arc?
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Jason: Watching players jump up and down on Jesse when he accidentally gave himself so many hit points that he wrapped back around to 0 hit points. Really, the whole dynamic on Thisledown was just so cool, and it's something I don't think any MMP has really ever had since.
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WarCry: Asheron's Call was one of the first MMOGs to put out monthly patches that forwarded the story as well as adding new content. Turning out content at that rate must have been a monumental task. What kind of hours were you working to get stuff out the door?
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Jason: I generally work more than 40 hours a week, but I don't believe in doing it because I need to get something done, but because I want to get something done. That's what makes overtime ok, really, is if you're motivated to do it. If that's the case, you sort of loose track of the time.
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WarCry: In your own words, describe a good day and a bad day working on Asheron's Call.
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Jason: A good day was seeing something new come online, or having a cool, interesting, or funny idea to implement. There was one period in AC1 when Jesse and I were sitting right next to each other; it was a recipe for jokes. Not everyone thought the jokes were funny, but quite a few of them got in. The lag beast and pack dolls, for instance. They wouldn't let us put in the disco spells though. What were they again? Disco Inferno was a war spell. Brick House was a buff. I can't remember the rest, but there was one for each school of magic. Bad days on the live process include dealing with issues which we didn't control but greatly affected the quality of our title, or during initial development dealing with the internal problems of starting a company.
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WarCry: MMOGs like Asheron's Call are played both through the game and on message boards and fansites by their fans. There have been some epic dust ups on message boards over changes that have gone on in Asheron's Call. As a whole what was your take on the fans? Where they a help or a hindrance?
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Jason: I don't post on message boards anymore. The fundamental problem is that I have total consequence for anything I post, and it will be archived, where anyone else has no consequence for what they say or do. This creates a huge behavioral problem, where one group feels free to behave at the lowest common denominator of human standards when dealing with me, yet I have to be held up to the highest pedestal of perfection. I'm the kind of person who likes to talk straight to people, doesn't like to beat around the bush, and doesn't take crap from anyone. That said the message boards are a very important part of the community. They are a barometer for reading the effect of changes you make in the game and cannot be ignored. What you listen to has to be filtered very carefully though; as the information can be both a help and a hindrance. Often fans spend a great deal more time than you ever could playing your game, and know aspects of it which you cannot. However, they will often ask for things and then complain when you give them exactly what they asked for.
For instance, in AC1, there was a huge outcry to increase the effect of specialization on your skills. After a lot of debate and warning people that this would cause problems down the road, we raised the effect of specialization an amount which many people complained was "not enough". Two months later, the very same people asking for the specialization increase were complaining that they were gimped and that specialization was the only option, thus they had to re-roll, which is exactly what we had warned them about. This is, of course, the trap of the message boards. The whim of the tide can pull on your decisions, and cause repercussions which they, or you, didn't expect. I can't really say I know how to filter all the info that comes in, or that there's any way to correctly filter it. I think what I've learned over the years is that you have to listen to the information being provided, trust your own instincts, and never make a decision in haste.
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WarCry: With the continuation of the Bael arc, we came to the Twilight's Gleaming Event which saw the off-camera destruction of both Awric and Tufa. In the weeks leading up to that event the Shadows had been pulling players aside and giving them a "choice" about what town was to be destroyed. I think we all know that you were pulling our leg at this point with that. But, can you give us an insight in to the thought process, planning and implementation that went into blowing up the most crowded town in Osteth, as well as the least crowded one?
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Jason: I started to transition off at this point, but Arwic was initially targeted because of overcrowding and lag issues.
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WarCry: The Shard of the Herald was...inspired. No where else in the entire arc was it more apparent to players that they could affect the world, and even though in the end that may not have been quite true, the effect was there. Can you give us a run down of your activities, feelings and opinions on everything that went on during the Should the Stars Fall event? (My favorite patch ever, by the way)
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Jason: The thinking was that maybe players would fight over the choice; but we expected they'd just go for the loot. And we were right for six out of seven servers. However, the scope of what happened was a wonderful surprise, and is really as much the responsibility of the players as anything we designed. We left the option open, and someone took it in a big way. Once we realized they were going to be successful in defending the shard, we scrambled to come up with a way to complete the tale within context of the story. That was an important point - it had to be in context, and make sense to players. Once we'd settled on bringing in a player from the trails that had happened previously, we made contact with one and got him to agree to the plan. Executing that plan was a bit more difficult than we had thought. See, we figured Jesse would go in, kill everyone with an uber character. Then our hero would waltz in and finish the job. Meanwhile, I'd film the whole thing to post to the web. But things didn't turn out how we had planned. First, Jesse's little raid didn't go so well and the defending party was jumping up and down on his corpse. Then the shard had been leveling up all month, and had an insane amount of unspent XP. We'd edit its hit points, it would raise them back. We'd lower defense skills, back up they'd go. Meanwhile our hero was dying. Eventually, we figured out what was happening, and managed to have our hero kill the thing. The initial reaction from the defenders was "That's it! I hate you, I hate this game, I quit! I'm taking my $10 a month elsewhere!". About 3 days later they came back and said "You know what - that was the coolest thing ever".
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WarCry: There has always been an interesting relationship between Darktide players and the rest of AC. They demand certain changes to the game that the rest of the players don't seem to agree with or understand. What was your take on balancing out the needs of the red players to the rest of the white players?
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Jason: They have different needs, and somehow you need to rectify both camps. It's not easy, but you have to try to do it. Personally, I've had a lot of fun on both servers.
