"Cover your ears, Asheron's call is here"

There once was a game called Everquest, and everyone went out and bought it. Joey, the kid that lives next to you is now a female woodelf ranger, and Veronica is now a spunky Dark elf necromancer. Everyone had a great time sitting on their butts waiting for the Ancient Cyclops to spawn all day, and this is how life went. Well Well Well, Lord Microsoft was not happy when he looked into his crystal ball, not at all. ''Why, what is this? Is some one trying to steal my spotlight? HAH, i will show them! i will show THOSE fools!'' So awhile after Everquest was owned by millions, Little microsoft decided to say ''ME TOO!!!'' and started working on our tiny little confection that we now know as Asheron's Call.

Well well well, Something new i presume?

I was once an Everquest addict I admit it, until it started to fall short. I dont knwo i guess it kind of sucked being on the same level for weeks at a time. So it kind of lost it's appeal. Wow, Asheron's call huh? i think i will give it a try.BYE BYE EQ ACCOUNT!

After going through the nice little instalation process which took like 20 min. i start making my AC account. 10 bucks a month? not bad, same as EQ, so it's all good. After that was all over and done with, i log onto the least populated server, thinking of how everquest was so darned crowded and how i never wanted to go through that again. So i get on and, wow, i have to update, thats ok, EQ updates all the time, EQ only took like 5 min to update.. so how bad could this be?

an hour later the update is at 75 percent....

Well thats all over, lets make a character here...so i make a custom character cause that seemed cool and made a guy who specialized in the mace and healing ability. I'd say he was a cool guy. So lets make him a shwa'zeooo or what ever that chinease class is. And i give him a name...Boomerange.

I start out in a small town close by to a real big town, but i thought i might as well power up my character.

Let me tell you, when i stepped foot into that newbie dungeon i thought i had just died and gone to heaven. I must say i had fun, i really liked that idea that i had the whole place to myself and how i could take on 3 Cat thingies all by myself. The game was looking up. Well 5 levels latter i got the stupid book that i was supposed to get and returned it to Kun-Fu master Cho, or whatever his name was and decided to look for something to hunt out in the fields.

See, this is where things just got bad. It also explained why they had an auto-run button. ''MY GOD, THIS IS HUGE, REALLY HUGE, NO ZONEs? AWSOME! LETS TRAVEL AND EXPLORE ALL THE GREAT THINGS TO SEE!!! YIPEE!!''

And i traveled....and traveled....and traveled....

I saw very cool trees, and some pretty colored rocks, and some white cat things and a bunch of level 20 things that were next to a camp of level 2 things killed me a couple dozen times. I had no idea where to go. Now i as starting to relize that this game was just about as much fun as a big bundle of hay. The world is just nothing but a ton of tedious running to place to place, the portals never take you to where you want to go. And seeing anyone while you travel is EXTREMLY minimal. I have a hard time seeing why Turbine let the world be so freaking big, because the whole world is nothing but fields, rocks, trees, and scattered camps of like 12 guys who are usually not your level who pummel you to goo and you start off in a town about 100 miles away. There were a lot of things i liked about AC. I really liked the character creation and how i could distribute exp. points how i please and could completley customize my character.I liked how the world looked so darn prety, and i liked the whole Patron/Vassel system. But What is there to do? the world si a whole big lot fo nothing. Traveling is so tedious and boring, it just drives you insane. Portals arent much help either, i have yet found a portal that took me too a place that i actually WANTED to go to. Maybe if Dereth was a little more interesting and was actually designed a little better, the game would have beena lot more fun. Maybe it is just me, or how i was so used to EQ, but i just couldent get into this game.

DONT EVEN GET ME STARTED ON THE MAGIC SYSTEM EITHER. MAking spells just by trying a bunch of ingrediants ISNT my idea of fun, i hate it, absolutley hate it, a good idea, but poorly executed.

So all in all i gave the game a 4, It had some cool things, but the Bad things just greatly out numbered them. Struggling with the camera just to see well, isnt my idea of fun, niether is running around on a bunch of dirt and grass.

If you really must get into a MMORPG, Go with everquest, or even better, wait for one of the better ones to come out. Anarchy Online looks promising...

Yea well, sorry for babbling so much, SEE yah

~ZiekeTuvai

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 12/10/00, Updated 12/10/00