Asheron's Call Review
Having been a beta-tester for Ultima Online, and a player of both Ultima Online and EverQuest, I was always interested in trying out Asheron's Call. After all, these three are the top three on line RPGs at the moment, and Asheron's Call does have a big following.
I think the main reason I left this one for last was the lack of playable races. You can only be human. You can choose from a Japanese-style, European-style or Middle-eastern style character. You can then choose from a variety of professions, each with its own strengths and weaknesses.
When you start the game, you start out right in front of a training area. You can then go through the training to learn how to move, to fight, and do other things. This takes care of your first task. You then start to learn about other people who have tasks for you, and wandering through the larger world.
Like in the other games, you can choose to do things on your own or form groups. You can choose to be a hack-and-slasher, a trader, or just about anything else in between. The things you do and actions you take help form your character going forward.
The graphics are very nice, and I found many people around on the system no matter what time of day or night I went on. The interaction was smooth, and the built in mapping and inventories were all easy to use.
It's also good that player killers are kept in their own world. That lets them have battles and attacks and everything else without subjecting non-PK types of characters to that threat.
On the down side, this has got to be one of the most crash-prone games I've ever used, and I've played quite a few. I had more problems than I can care to count in getting it to run smoothly on my 750 with 356mb RAM. Even when things ran smoothly, there were still lags. I didn't have any of these problems on the other two systems.
As a final comment, I found the pyramid-scheme XP fealty a bit much. Every time a new player joins, there are lurking players who start badgering him or her about joining his group, just to get a share of the XP. This can be intimidating for a new player who doesn't understand what the system is about. It'd be better if only a level 5 or above player could enter into the system, so that new players are left to learn about Asheron's Call and get into it before being harassed about XP.
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