This Years ACPL
By VirulLord

My vassels and I arrived just in time for check-in at 9:00am. It was really stunning to see so many Asheron's Call players waiting to get inside of the Holiday in and get their swag bags, which fortunately everyone got since this years ACPL budget had some money left.

The event opened with a fantastic movie depicting the events of the previous night with Gaelran decimating everything in his path, followed by a clip from Asheron's Call 2. It was really impressive to see a dev-controlled character throwing swirling bolts at players comprised of all four elements. The crowd cheered when Gaelran mowed down player after player with a massive ring spell.

After the intro movie was played we were greeted by Ken Troop who told us the theme of this year ACPL was "Keep Hope Alive". From there the Dev team of AC1 was introduced to us before starting into the AC1 Question and Answer. I was a bit too excited about the entire event to record all of the questions, but some of the ones I did make note of were in regards to speculation over the current dev teams size. Ken Karl told us that for AC2 the dev team would be doubled from that of the AC1 dev team (which consisted of about 8-10 people). He also reinforced the fact that AC1 is totally scaleable and will have a long life after the release of AC2. And for those of you sitting on pins and needles about macroing issues, Combat macroing IS against the AC2 Code of Conduct and will not be tolerated.

Once the AC1 Question and Answer had been finished we were shown another video, this one the teaser for the July patch. From everything we were shown, things in AC are about to get very interesting. The video will be available on the zone at a later date.

With the video completed we broke for lunch before Jason Booth and Jesse Kurlancheek gave the Asheron's Call 2 demonstration. At that point no more photography was allowed since they were showing some still sensitive subject matter. Some of the things shown were the Vault campaign, rebuilding of the workshops, Kingdoms and some special abilities only available to those people actually in the Kingdoms.

The question and answer session for AC2 started in the middle of the video as people were very excited about what was being shown to them, myself included. A lot of the questions were in concern to general game play, if it members of different Kingdoms could be part of the same allegiance, which they can be, and about Archer's in Melee. Archery in melee is possible, however some of the ranged skills cannot be. To be honest my notes during this question and answer session were non-existent, I was far too awed by the contents of the screen.

And of course finally how can you end a perfectly good event other than to get a bunch of people to do improve comedy in front of 200 attendee's. The Who's Drudge is it anyway contests. Please forgive me if I don't get into it too much, I am trying hard to forget.

With the days agenda complete the Habitat for Humanity raffle took place. Prizes given out were the traditional mattekar robe, faran robe with hood, and a Silver Olthoi with pyreals. With this raffle left, all that was left were the ten beta accounts to raffle off. This did not end up happening however. The Turbine folk all put on a wonderful show about loosing the box and then asking for non-existing numbers on our tickets before shouting out "Your all in Beta!" I couldn't think of a better way to end such an exciting event. I will defiantly be attending again next year!

Asherons Call 1 Dev Team	Crowd Gathering	Jesse "Devilmouse" Kurlancheek
Ken Karl and Auz of AC2S	Kim Payson	Maggie the Jackcat
VirulLord and my two vassels	Nik "Azeraphel" Davidson	Outside the Holiday Inn
White Bunny Slippers	Turbies dance to Wierd Al