11-7-2001:Sg's account is going up on Ebay this week if anyone is shopping for an account. View the ad at this link. or view account information and screenshots at this one.

4-28-2001:Ok, so I'm a lazy bum. Sue me. :) I haven't updated in ages, so here's a little something to get a laugh out of based on what is pretty much an outright scam on Ebay.

2-15-2001: Patch Day! Rumor is there will be a new mage quest this month. I don't know if this will be the new life/creature/item VIIS (which would be an everybody quest and not a mage quest, but I'm nitpicking.) I'll try to get the new stuff up as it comes together, but keep in mind (as with the hilt quest) that first day information is usually sketchy. All I know is what I discover or hear from other players in-game, so its likely to have some errors in it when first posted. Keep an eye on COD for early information, and as always on patch day, try not to do anything extremely important or dangerous as the server load will be huge and the possibility of a rollback or time warps is much higher on patch day than during the rest of the month. Good adventuring to everyone!

2-15-2001: Same as my last update, I'm still playing instead of doing anything for the site. I did start to take followers and we're going to use the channel #nerfed on irc.sorcery.net rather than try to get a website together unless I get a really web-design crazy follower that volunteers to do a site. I've always wanted a separate window for chat so messages don't scroll off instantly when in combat, but since they haven't implemented that yet in AC, we'll be using IRC instead. For anyone that didn't know, I'm playing Brexx currently on WE and am pledged under the monarch Sg.

2-15-2001: On the shutdown a few days ago: The change that resulted in some downtime the other day was to dissolve the Sentinel/Chancellor teams. From what I've been told, the Advocate teams will be dissolved on the 15th. The leaks about the coming end of the Sentinel program resulted in quite a bit of Sentinel abuse (having fun before they lose the sent accounts. Who wouldn't?). In any case, I think this is a great move since the harm done by the "bad sents" outweighed the efforts of all the good people that just joined to try to help people. I think it is very important for the reputation of the game for it to be kept fair, and for any player to have an equal chance to discover the new content rather than have the same insider's club get full patch information leaked to them and then use sent/admin abuses to get to the content before anyone else. In any case this should all come to an end now, so in theory there should be no more abuse problems. The cost of this of course will be that there will be far fewer people available to take help calls. The best way to deal with this is to just carry death items for the occasional bug-related death or lost corpse. Learn to squelch people that are offensive instead of reporting it to the abuse channel. Basically learn to take care of yourself and to rely on friends and other players for help rather than the old support team. All the good support team members will still be playing and helping people like they always have, and in most cases help is just a few words of advice or an explanation of how some things work. The only difference is that they will be helping players as players rather than in their old support team attire.

1-27-2001: Sorry for the lack of updates, but I've been off playing on Wintersebb almost nonstop. I have been stopping of course for the many many server crashes :(. I swear they seem to crash as soon as I wake up, and then come up when I go to sleep. Good luck to everyone on WE, and hopefully the server will become more stable in the future.

1-23-2001: WINTERSEBB ANNOUNCEMENT! Wintersebb should be up when the servers come up after this patch. While we don't know how long that will be, it is better than not knowing anything at all. Get ready to lag folks, and welcome to our new home. :)

1-23-2001: Another dark day for Asheron's Call. The widespread use of a landblock-crashing bug to dupe will probably bring servers down today and cause another rollback. This of course will not help Wintersebb to come up any sooner. It also won't help the devs get much done for the next patch. It's been a pretty crappy week for Asheron's Call for both the developers and the players. Hopefully next week will be better. :)

1-23-2001: Thanks to Sinock for this hilarious graphic.

1-22-2001: The interview with Crowley (Lead Content Designer at Turbine) is up. Apologies for a lack of detailed information on Wintersebb or the lag problems on Darktide, but they can only say what they're allowed to say. Damn those NDAs. :) Anyway it should make for some good reading. Thanks again to Crowley for taking the time out of his weekend to do this.

1-21-2001: Bored? Try swinging by www.shockwave.com and checking out the game Inklink(Pictionary). Yahoo games has a version of scrabble that's pretty cool. The zone has a cheesy little game called Bejewelled that can suck up some time. If you're REALLY bored, you can check out the mp3(s) I'm about to throw up here. A little music to PK by for those playing on DT until WE opens. It'll be mostly speed metal, so grab it if you like. Music downloads will be tossed in the header section for now.

1-19-2001: On the rollback: I think the rollback is really the best solution to the platinum scarab bug problems. The people who were hurt most by it were the people who were NOT exploiting, and traded valuable items like GSA, shards, and motes for platinum scarabs or trade notes. Rolling back is the only way to return the items to the people who were not exploiting, while removing the effects of the bug from the game for those who were using it as well. A rollback sucks for everyone, but not doing a rollback would have hurt those who didn't know about the exploit and were duped into trading away their valuable items for garbage. It sucks, but it was the right thing to do I'm afraid. There hasn't been a time warp in AC in about eight months as far as I remember, and in UO they were almost weekly occurances, if not daily. We're still lucky to have things as good as they are, so despite how upsetting it may be, I think everyone should keep in mind how much better off we are in AC than people in other MMORGPs. :)

1-18-2001: Og-Archer added to templates section in response to way too many questions about it on IRC. :)

1-18-2001: Dev chat time! I was of course bored like the rest of you, and Wintersebb still isn't up. To kill some time I went over the dev chat and filled it with my own commentary and heckling to try to make it more entertaining. Most likely it is still as boring as the original, but if you want to check it out...here it is! Allerion's version of the dev chat.

1-16-2001: As part of my ongoing efforts to make everybody happy and get rid of my black and red color scheme, we'll be enlisting THIS FAMOUS WEB-DESIGN GUY to re-style the site. I hope everyone enjoys the new look!

1-16-2001: "As we announced a few weeks ago, we will soon be introducing a new world to Asheron's Call: Wintersebb. Unfortunately, technical problems have arisen in bringing Wintersebb up; however, we do not anticipate these delays taking much longer, and the new world will soon be available. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused." --per the State of the Network page. It was actually closer to a month ago, but hopefully soon we'll be playing instead of nitpicking. I've got one more big interview scheduled, but it won't be up for a few days. In the meantime I'm as bored as the rest of you. Maybe I'll get something put up that is worth reading.

1-13-2001: Wintersebb should be opening SOMETIME soon, so I threw up a PK board and a trade board for people to start setting up rank mule trades, pledges, and whatever they plan to do on WE. Once WE opens, updates here will probably be few and far between, but hopefully the boards will get some use.

1-13-2001: Interview with Devilmouse, a Turbine developer added. While this doesn't contain any really controversial content due to NDAs, there is plenty for you to guess at, as well as an endorsement of the Og-archer for PVP and some advice to people moving to Wintersebb. Thanks again to Jesse for taking the time to do this.

1-12-2001: Mythandria, level 109 Specialized Life Mage of Thistledown has an interview up that touches a lot on ROLE-PLAYING issues! (Yes, there are role-players in this game, and no they aren't all under level 20.) Also some commentary on player ability to effect the game world, risk vs reward in questing, and some opinons on PVM and PVP templates, as well as Mith's strategy for levelling a mage on Wintersebb.

1-12-2001: I just thought I should throw up a quick reminder to everyone that I love Asheron's Call and think it is hands down the best game to come out in years. I have a great deal of respect for Turbine for both making a great game, and communicating with the fansites, the players, and remaining generally approachable. Anyone who has dealt with Verant or OSI can appreciate the difference and the efforts made by Turbine to pay attention to its player base. There are many places on this site where I and other people insult particular actions or decisions of Turbine staff and the support team. This should in no way be interpretted as "Allerion says Turbine Sucks." I do my best to try to lay everything out as I see it, and to allow other experienced players to get their views and data laid out so that people of less experience can benefit from it. Nothing here should incite anyone to go starting flames on the fansites, nor should it be looked at as insulting the efforts of the developers, though sometimes that is exactly what I do. This is simply a site filled with experience from high level play. Sometimes we are wrong, and many times we are extremely opinionated on certain subjects. Finally, anyone that is NEW to Asheron's Call will find more information here to hurt them than to help them, as most of the template and skill advice is aimed for level 70+ play.

1-12-2001:Nerf Golem interview finally up after some heavy editting. Check out his opinions on melee, melee defense, staff, running a large allegiance, macroing, Ebay, and the effects of support team abuse on gameplay. Some interesting stuff, as well as a lot of controverial revelations. We're all bored to death waiting for Wintersebb to open, so please drop suggestions on the boards for what you would like to see on this site to keep you entertained until then. If you're going out of your mind with boredom and looking at templates, try checking out Bejewelled over at the Zone. Neat little addictive tetris-style time-killer.

1-10-2001:Added a quick page on sword vs dagger based on test results with the new weapons. In a nutshell I advise dagger over sword assuming you pick up the obsidian dagger, though I'm sure many will disagree.

A hilt quest was added to give double-strike capability to swords and daggers. This will doubtlessly cause many people to scrap their UA/staff melees in favor of sword or dagger. I'll hold off any advice on the subject until we get some real numbers and take a look at what this buff really did. Level VII war spells are now in-game (35 mana 110-180 damage) 40k scarabs, 300 skill for 50% fizzle rate :P. No, I'm not impressed with the war buff. Bigger bullets aren't the solution to the problem of a broken gun. At 40k per scarab, I could probably do more damage dumping the 40k pyreal burden on a monster's head than with the new spells. Oh, and the hilt upgrade also makes weapons value 0 aka no-drop. Undead now drop peas, and relics were upgraded to level 167 and 17k exp each. Relic-macroers everywhere rejoice! Gimps and those that cannot correctly manage their component stocks will be happy to know they added portal summon gems at the archmages, including portals straight to the archmage, so you never have to be stranded again, despite your best efforts.

PATCH DAY! Possibly new patch notes here, but they are unofficial at best.
Still no announcement for Wintersebb, but they didn't announce Solclaim's opening until 30 minutes before it opened. No idea if we took the day off for no reason or not yet. Go hit the new opinion poll, and leave suggestions for MEANINGUL polls for next week on the boards please. If Wintersebb opens, good luck to everyone!

1-8-2001:New Opinion Poll is up, along with a short story, and the interviews with Massive of Solclaim and Animal of Frostfell. Look for interviews with Nerf Golem of Frostfell, and hopefully Mythrandria of Thistledown soon!

1-8-2001:Special thanks to Sodie of Frostfell for providing this most excellent screenshot I'd like to title "How NOT to macro." These folks were PKs macroing in the bottom of the Hebian-to sewers.


1-8-2001:Interviews section started. I'll be trying to get high level representatives of some of the more famous (and infamous) templates with both PVM and PVP experience to give their opinions on what works, what doesn't what needs to be fixed, and what they'd like to see added to the game. Working on getting our tusker-bashing results page up based on some debate started on the boards, as well as a great story from last night's adventures in Shade Stronghold with our newbies.

1-7-2001:Added a few more sections today in the skill explanation page. Good news! The horrid layout and color scheme on my page combined with everybody's love of popup ads has prompted enough death threats to get me to move my site to a real server and maybe even change the color scheme! Green on black with a red/white candystripe background anyone? Fear the power of my elite notepad skills and my cutting edge copy of Frontpage '97! Seriously, thanks to the people that offered to host my content and un-suck my site a bit.

1-6-2001:Added a basic mage advice page including some things people mentioned I should work in on the boards. Only three more days folks!

1-5-2001:Started a section with an analysis of the value of different skills under Templates. While only partially complete now, everyone should read the section on healing to clear up some common misconceptions. I switched the message board/backup message board links as the trouble with the cyboards system was just too annoying for me or you all to put up with any longer. Working on a rumors page now to dispell some of the most common misconceptions in Asheron's Call.

1-4-2001:Thanks to Amid of Thistledown for plugging my crappy website in his monthly predictions for the next patch build notes.

1-3-2001:Crappyass Cyboard message boards are up. Added a backup board that seems to be quite a bit faster. Take your pick.

1-2-2001:Crappyass Cyboard message boards are down. Looking at some other board systems for a backup or replacement. If they were reliable, I guess they wouldn't be free. :)

1-1-2001:Added a section on optimizing starting attributes under Templates. This harps on the virtues of the 10 10 100 10 100 100 template a bit at the bottom, but it is really an extremely tough attribute set to level up and of course is useless to melees. Hollow rant added.

1-1-2001: Well some people actually started filtering in so I guess I better put something new up. :) One of the board posts got me going on my "Mages vs Turbine" kick again and reminded me to throw up a link to Mu's site. If anyone here plays a mage and hasn't read Mu's mage nerfing rant, it is a must-read. Have a great new year all and I'll see most of you on Wintersebb soon!

12-23-2000:Waiting for Wintersebb to open up has been pretty boring so I threw this together real quick and hope to get it fleshed out with some useful or at least entertaining AC tips and strategies.

Who the hell am I?
I was Allerion on Frostfell before I sold in the first half of 2000, a level 74 mage with a level 53 archer, a level 58 life mage,a level 57 archer on Solclaim, a level 25 archer on DT, and a level 20 xbow/dagger gimp. After a few months away from AC I came back on 7.26.2000 and built a level 83 four-school archer, a level 74 Og, a level 72 Gimp Melee, a level 78 non-spec'd mage, and a level 79 trade skill mule. I've tried dozens of templates including a specialized thrown weapons character, template vagabonds, and a variety of hybrids and feel my experience playing most templates to high levels makes me unusually qualified to make judgement calls on what works and what doesn't. I've done every quest in the game (I believe) multiple times and know Dereth like the back of my hand. I don't have a life. I don't have to get up and go to work or school. For those of you who do, hopefully this site will allow you to learn some of what I have without having to spend thousands of hours playing.