Asherons Call: December LttP is Up!

Letter to the Players
posted on 01-Dec-2004
Welcome to the December Letter to the Players!

Over the last month in Dereth, the Burun Kukuur have mounted several incursions in the depths of ancient Falatacot temples. Each time, they have been repelled by the force of arms of Isparian heroes.

Finally, King Browerk, greatest of the Kukuur, entered Dereth. Again the Burun attempted to make their foothold on our world permanent, and again they were repelled. With the defeat of Browerk, it would appear that the Burun threat has finally ended. Again the heroes of Dereth have been tested, and again they have prevailed!

Now, let us look ahead to the December event.

Changes to the Team
As we've mentioned previously, the Live Team has been in the process of moving to Turbine's new Santa Monica studios, where we will work right alongside the Throne of Destiny development team. The move is complete as of today.

As part of that move, changes have been made in two key positions on the Team. Our Producer, Kim "Mirin" Payson, and our Lead Designer, Allan "Orion" Maki, have both moved on to other projects at Turbine. Brandon "meanbeard" Salinas, one of the designers for Throne of Destiny, has taken over as Lead Designer of the Live Team.

As for the Producer role, Sandra "srand" Powers is scheduled to return to the position once development on Throne of Destiny has finished. Until that time, the Producer responsibilities will be divided between meanbeard, Executive Director Steven "Ski-Dawg" Kaminsky, and me - Alex "Ibn" Beckers.

Billing Migration
We're continuing our internal work on migrating all of you off of Microsoft's .NET Passport and MSN Gaming Zone billing and authentication, and on to Turbine's proprietary billing system and launcher. One change that you may notice in December is that Asheron's Call will begin checking the version of Internet Explorer on your PC. This is because we are using some security features of IE for migration, and these features are only found in IE 5.5 with 128-bit encryption or IE 6.

If a sufficient version of Internet Explorer can't be found on your computer at launch, Asheron's Call will prompt you to upgrade. For the moment, you can cancel this upgrade and play the game normally, but be aware that you will not be able to migrate without upgrading.

There are a few things that you can do to prepare for migration. The first is to make sure that your .NET Passport account is secure. We recommend that all players change the passwords of the .NET Passport account associated with their Asheron's Call accounts, you can do this at the Passport website.

This is particularly important for any account that may have been shared between players in the past. If another player with access to your account were to migrate it, that other player would be the account owner from Turbine's perspective. Don't let this happen to you! Change your password at your earliest convenience.

We'll be putting out more information regarding the migration in the next few weeks.

Coming Soon
(These are items that we plan to implement in the December event. Many of these items were mentioned in prior articles. These changes are in addition to the new quests, dungeons, and items that we'll be introducing in the December event.)

Before we say anything, let's stress again what's written above: Anything you see in the Letter to the Players is in addition to new quests and items that you'll be seeing in each monthly event.

Masks and Guises
As we've mentioned in previous Letters, the creature masks and guises that traditionally enter the game in October were held back until the December event due to resource scheduling issues. Starting in December, you'll be able to find all your old favorites, as well as a few new ones!

Social Centers
As also mentioned in previous Letters, over the next few months we will focus on the towns of Holtburg, Shoushi and Yaraq. Our goal is to increase player traffic through these towns, to make them more desirable places to spend time in-game.

In December we'll be making a number of improvements to these three towns. These include:

Making the portals into the towns more consistent and increasing the number of portals out of the towns.
Moving the casinos closer to the towns.
Adjusting the starter quests based in these towns.

In addition to the three bullet points above, there are some improvements that we can't mention here - things that players will discover over the course of the December event.

In the near future we'll be putting up a new article explaining exactly what our goals are for the social centers, and the steps that we're taking to get there. Look for that in the next few weeks.

In Development
(These are the game changes that we are working on for the January event. None of these items are guaranteed to be added for January as scheduling and priorities can change. These changes are in addition to the new quests, dungeons, and items that we'll be introducing in the January event. Your feedback on these topics is particularly valuable.)

Higher Wield-Req Weapons
We've been teasing these for several months now and we're happy to be able to announce that the first tiers will likely be added to loot in the January event. These include new melee weapons with a 350 wield requirement, missile weapons with a 315 wield requirement and magic casters with 290 and 310 War Magic wield requirements.

The higher wield-req melee weapons will simply do more damage than existing weapons. The missile weapons and magic casters will gain a damage bonus based off a specific elemental type. For example, a 290 or 310 wield-req caster might receive a damage bonus to all fire-based War spells. For all other spells, it would act the same as a standard caster.

We'll be presenting more details on this in the near future, before the January Letter to the Players.

In Concept
(These are the game changes that we are thinking about for February and beyond. We cannot guarantee when - or even if - any of these changes will be added to the game, as scheduling and priorities can change. These changes are in addition to the new quests, dungeons, and items that we'll be introducing in each monthly event. Your feedback on these topics is particularly valuable.

If not mentioned elsewhere in this Letter, topics listed as In Concept in prior articles have not changed status.)

High-Level Hunting and Life Magic
An issue that's been raised by the community frequently over the last several months has been an apparent imbalance in hunting at high levels, particularly between mages and melees or missile characters without Life Magic.

The basic issue is that missile and melee damage is reduced by the creature's effective armor level to the given element in addition to its natural resistances, while war magic damage ignores armor levels and only is reduced by resistances. This means that melee and missile attacks require that the creature be Imperil'd to do the same damage as a war magic attack.

The Live Team is committed to increasing the amount of high-level hunting, before the expansion pack, as part of it, and after it. We're also committed to making sure that all players have the ability to progress at a reasonable rate, whether or not they have Life Magic.

To that end, one thing we are considering is the introduction of a high-level hunting ground or dungeon populated by creatures that are immune to all non-projectile magic. This would allow us to give them an armor level that is fair to melee and missile characters without having to worry about whether or not the creature becomes too easy once Imperil'd; the creature would be immune to Imperil spells. However, War Mages and Martyr Mages would still be effective against these creatures.

Depending on our research and resources, as well as your feedback, it is possible that the first of these areas could go into the game for January. However, it is more likely that this would occur in February.

It is also important to stress that this is not by any means what we would consider a final solution to the Life Magic/high-level hunting issue. As we mentioned at Turbine Nation, we would like to re-evaluate the Armor Levels of many of the creatures in the Valley of Death and the Caul. We have other ideas that we're discussing as well.

Now you're caught up on the Live Team's plans for December and beyond. We've got some nice content surprises for you as well, but we're not giving any hints yet!

See you in Dereth!

-- Ibn