I've just been informed that the fix has passed QA testing and we will be bringing all worlds online within the next 15 - 20 minutes. Some worlds will need to finish load balancing before they will be open for players

I've also received more details regarding the issue itself. Earlier today, we became aware of an issue with our login systems. To ensure that no data was lost, we brought all worlds and servers down to resolve the issue immediately. Our top priority was to resolve this situation before it could impact any of you. Again, we apologize for this unplanned downtime and we thank you for your patience.

All worlds coming down for unscheduled maintenance.

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We've just identified a major bug that requires unscheduled maintenance. Unfortunately we do not know the ETA on bringing the worlds back up. I or Aldryth will be posting updates every half an hour or so, although for a while these will probably be "no new status". We apologize for the inconvenience, particularly as we are entering prime time evening play hours.

Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

January Letter to the Players posted!

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We've just posted the January Letter to the Players -- a bit later than usual in the cycle than in previous months, but we think you'll still be happy to read about the upcoming changes.

Read it here.

Give us your feedback here.

As per the State of the Network, the January event is tentatively scheduled for next Wednesday, January 12.
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

Higher Wield-Req Weapons article posted!

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We've just posted a new article with more information on the new higher wield-req weapons coming in January.

Read it here!

Give us your feedback here!
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

Upcoming Server Downtimes
Tuesday January 4, 6:00AM - 8:00AM PST
All worlds will be brought down for scheduled server maintenance.

Tuesday January 11, 6:00AM - 8:00AM PST
Turbine billing and launcher servers will be brought down for scheduled maintenance. Players using Turbine billing may not be able to log in during this time.

Wednesday January 12, 6:00AM - 1:00PM PST (Tentative)
All worlds will be brought down to prop the January event, Assault. Please note that this date is tentative and may be changed.

N3 ~ Kwip's "A Light Assembled, Part III"

"This story is actually a flash-back... Funny thing is, I fully intended to write the battle tonite. Five hours and 3,000 words later, and I barely made it through character introductions. AND THEY'RE NOT EVEN DONE YET!"

"A Light Assembled, Part III"

Day in the life of Fist de Yuma

End of an era
The Future of AC
Salute to a great Monarch

December 28, 2004
End of an era

This is the last column of the year. It is also the end of my five-year run as a weekly column. From this column on, I’ll only be posting when I have something fun to write about.

Putting myself into a weekly column was not hard when the game started, because I had so much to write about. In the last year I have had to stretch my mind to come up with a good column. While I have been mostly successful, it had starting to become work.

Five years of weekly columns is something to be proud of. I’m surprised I lasted this long. We can thank Turbine for giving us such a fun, action filled game. When you are excited about an adventure, it is easy to write about it.

I might have a lot of columns when the expansion comes out. I cannot say for sure, but I have great hopes. Meanwhile, I’ll still have columns, but this is the end of the weekly columns.

I’ll do my best to make sure the word gets out when I have a column. If you are on my mail list, there is no problem. If you depend on logging on each Tuesday for a column, and don’t use the AC boards much, drop me a letter. I’ll make a special list to tell people when I have a column out.

A Christmas Story...

I know Kwip only has the best of intentions. So why do we, his staff, do this to
him? Because he's Kwip! Blessings to all this Holiday Season!

A start, but lets get to the meat
Fist’s Armorer’s VoD trip
Solo Hunting
A great loss

That expanded social horizon will also open you up for greater human tragedy. Things happen in this world that are not so nice. A sheltered existence in the real world will see these things, but they are hopefully few and far between. When your friends go from a handful of people to hundreds, these tragedies happen all to often.

Such happened to our group this week. A good friend was killed in an auto accident last week. This hit home to me hard. Chargin’, B’ob, Qu was a very active member of our allegiance. He started a buff bot service for us, giving our small allegiance two bots to choose from.


http://www.crackednuts.com/asheron/index.php3?journal=3

ASHERON’S CALL BILLING MIGRATION: IMPORTANT UPDATE FROM TURBINE

Turbine Entertainment Software is ready to begin transferring Asheron’s Call (AC) community members’ accounts to the publisher’s newly launched billing service. Ultimately, every one of the thousands of Asheron’s Call players will need to transfer their information, which includes account and character information, from Microsoft’s Zone to Turbine’s new system.

To complete the seamless migration of billing information, AC members will receive a pop up message when they launch the long-running MMORPG, prompting them to transfer their account from Microsoft’s Zone to Turbine’s billing system. Once they are in the process players will be asked to re-enter billing information to keep their accounts active. Start to finish, the entire process should take players less than 10 minutes. Members who bypass the initial pop up window request will eventually be required to migrate their account – meaning they will not be able to log into the game unless they complete the process.

The Asheron’s Call community is Turbine’s first live service community to transfer their information away from Microsoft. The Asheron’s Call 2 community will start the same process just after the New Year. As a convenience to players Turbine expects to maintain existing billing dates, so users should see no changes to their subscription schedule or monthly fees.

The billing account transfer is the final step in Turbine’s acquisition of the AC franchise from Microsoft, a process that began in early 2004.

More information on the billing migration can be found at http://ac.turbinegames.com/index.php?page_id=289.




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Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

http://forums.ac.turbinegames.com/showthread.php?t=17324

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Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

Hi folks! As you know, we’ve been talking for quite some time about the upcoming transfer of accounts from Microsoft’s billing and login system to Turbine’s new billing system.

Now we’re at the point where we have the details nailed down and can tell you how things are going to work.

Initially, MSN Gaming Zone accounts will be selected in batches for the opportunity to migrate. If your account is eligible for migration you will be prompted to transfer your account the next time you start up Asheron’s Call. When you accept, you will go to Turbine’s account creation system.

Once there, you will create your new Turbine Billing account and enter your billing information. After your credit card is confirmed, you will be able to download and install Turbine’s launcher. From then on, you will use Turbine’s launcher and your Turbine account to log in to Asheron’s Call. Shortly thereafter Microsoft will cancel the recurring billing on your MSN Gaming Zone account; once that occurs you will no longer be able to log in with your Zone account.

As we said, initially migration will be voluntary and in small batches of accounts, so we can slowly ramp up. As we continue into migration, we’ll make the group of eligible accounts larger and larger until all players can elect to transfer their accounts.

For those who do not go through the transfer process when prompted, Turbine will begin a required migration. This will occur sometime after voluntary migration begins. Once we move into the required migration phase, you won’t be able to log in to the game until you transfer your account to Turbine Billing.

That’s it. It’s that simple. You don’t need your original CD-Key; you don’t even need to know your current Zone account name. All you need to do is log in to the game.

The one thing you do need is to be an active customer. You can’t migrate if you can’t log in. If you are currently unsubscribed and want to re-subscribe, just go to the Asheron's Call Quicklaunch page on the MSN Gaming Zone and sign in with your .NET Passport. Click “Subscription” at the bottom. If you have issues re-subscribing or logging in, you can find support info here.

Obviously, there may be some special cases or other issues that aren’t covered in this post. That’s why we’re working on a full FAQ that will be posted soon. The FAQ will answer questions about things like accounts that have been banned by the Zone, accounts that you can’t re-subscribe to before the end of migration, etc. We already have an intitial FAQ online in our Fuze system.

So, last question – when does all this start? We’re currently shooting to start the first groups early next week. We’ll definitely let you know if this changes.

We’re pretty excited about this last step in the transition of Asheron’s Call from Microsoft to Turbine, and we hope you are too!
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

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Last edited by Ibn : Today at 04:43 PM.

Sometime within the next two hours, we will be pushing out an updated version of the December client. This client is identical to the existing December client - this isn't a game hotfix, in fact, the game servers will not be brought down for this prop.

The only difference is that this new client has additional code for billing migration. We'll be posting more about the migration shortly, later today.

Folks who are logged in when the new client gets pushed out won't be booted, they won't even need to log out. The next time they log in to the game, they'll automatically download the new client.

Please note that this new client may cause third-party apps like Decal and Dual Log to break - the maintainers of these apps may need to put out new memlocs/data as appropriate.

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Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

Update -- to complete this client prop the MSN Zone Lobbies will be down for approximately 1-2 hours. I do not have a precise ETA on when this will occur but we expect within the next hour or two. Accounts on the Turbine launcher should still be able to log in during this time.

Again, players who are signed in to the game will not be logged out, the game servers are not being brought down.

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Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

You're Probably Not Going To Believe This...

"So here's a funny story: I don't know if you know this or not, but I run this gaming-humor site, right? Well, at least it's about gaming, and there's humor here whenever Kaigon updates.

But still, I'd like to consider it a rather light-hearted site. One of the other things I think is pretty consistent is that I'm on good terms with a lot of developers..."

Kwip was approached to advertise a new website, and Kwip gives his response:
http://www.neenerneener.net/comic.php?id=39

"This is part two of A Light Assembled. It's very much a rough draft, and already I know there's at least three large changes I want to make, but it'll do for now. At least it's something to read, even if it DOES make your eyes bleed!"
(click here for full article )

You Just Have To Try Some Things Out Yourself

"I had to get a group of people together and have Jack experience first-hand how quickly Pookie would wipe out an entire party without even slowing down. The worst part being when you think you've found a good spot where Pookie will ignore you, and then he wipes out the rest of the party and notices you..."

Does Kwip purposefully set out to torment Jack in every MOG he shows to him? You decide.

N3 ~ Kwip's "A Light Assembled, Part I"

There was a story I wrote several years ago for FanStory.com. It was the story of Wong Ku-Luc, my first Asheron's Call character. It was a bit rusty, but it was a story that I often thought of over the years, because I started it and never really went anywhere with it. It's basically the story of the Olthoi return, and it's OLD by AC standards - taking place at the launch of Dark Majesty. But I've always like Wong, and I enjoyed the characters and settings I experienced while writing it.

So I brought Wong out of retirement, and I brushed him up a bit, and I'm going to continue his story. It starts here, but I plan on continuing with it over the next couple of weeks.

• A number of improvements have been made to Holtburg, Shoushi and Yaraq as part of our ongoing work to turn these towns into Social Centers.


• After a two-month delay, the fun of Masks and Guises has returned to Dereth! And don't let the snow on the ground fool you – the Scarecrows roam the land as well!


• In preparation for the upcoming Billing Migration, the Asheron's Call game client now checks to ensure that you are running a sufficient version of Internet Explorer. In addition we recommend that you check to make sure that you have SSL enabled in Internet Explorer.

• Using the @allegiance ban command without an argument will no longer crash your client.


• The life protection and regeneration fellowship spells were not increasing in mana cost for additional targets and required a player target. We have adjusted the spells so that they correctly increase in mana cost and are now self-targeted.


• The mana burn rate on Noble Armor has been changed to 1 point per 60 seconds, and the Hieromancer's Ward spells have been replaced with Brogard's Defiance.


• The Burun Floatee can now be hooked on rooftops.


• A generator that was spawning 80+ creatures in a 20+ area of Aphus Lassel has been removed.


• A portal on the island of Qin Xikit that was unintentionally tieable is no longer tieable. Any ties to this portal will no longer work.


• We've tweaked Gentleman Jake so that he is less likely to fail to give you a portal gem to the Bandit's Lair while on the Noir quest.


• Some changes have been made to the statues Hevk Loz, Jif Loz and Kir Loz to prevent players from getting into a broken state while answering their questions.


• The in-game credits have been updated.

• Typos in the description of several fellowship life protection scrolls have been corrected.


• The name of the Pack Burun Kukuur is now spelled correctly.


• A typo in the description of Priceless Ore has been corrected.


• When you hand in the token for having defeated all six Burun Kings, Guard Devon correctly announces that you have defeated all six Kings.

Game server downtime Tuesday December 14

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As recently posted in the State of the Network, all worlds will be brought down at 5AM PST / 8AM EST / 12PM UTC to perform necessary maintenance. The worlds will be down for approximately four hours.

This maintenance is in preparation for the launch of Billing Migration. You should be seeing more info on the migration before then.

Since I know you'll ask, no unfortunately it's not possible to do this work concurrently with tomorrow's event prop.
__________________
Alex "Ibn" Beckers
AC1 Online Community Relations

This and That
How lucky we are
Pace
Something I would like to see in AC
Role Playing
Don’t waste your salvage
Gaining power

One big thing I have noted as I have gained power with my players, is how hard things can become easy. I can remember when a good group of players would have a hard time with the mage armor upgrade quest.

Today, three of us did the last two parts of this quest. I did it with Deadeye Fist, and the other two were a lot weaker than him. Nevertheless, the three of us walked over the quests with ease. This is likely a combination of greater gear and experience, but it is quite amazing to compare yesterday to today. Yesterday; big group and lots of trouble. Today; little group, and no trouble at all.


http://www.crackednuts.com/asheron/index.php3?journal=3