Dunno, group health IS displayed you just need to have the group "window"
up.
Archers aren't really all that over-powered. I play a "Ranger" that I
created. He's specialized in archery & axe. I find myself using the axe
FAR more often in dungeons and the bow more often on the surface. Archers
are supposed to be powerful in open areas where they can peg you from 300
yards. Underground the tanks rule.

As for secure trading that IS an issue but then again I was never a big fan
of "secure" trades. I've never been rooked and items are pretty easy to get
so most people don't bother trying to run a scam. Remember, this isn't
evercamp. You can get the same nice items as anyone else from totally
different places. You don't have to camp mob XYZ to get item WWW anymore.
So the "secure trading", while an issue, doesn't seem to be as big a factor
as it is in EQ (where you have to camp 24+ hours for some items at a camp
that has waiting lists 36hours long)

Overall I'd say they both have pro's and con's. As I said, I haven't quit
EQ but if I don't see any of my friends who I play with online I head
straight to AC. (Did I mention I can have ICQ up in the background and
ALT-TAB to it if someone buzzes me to get my but on EQ? ;)

Kinda nice. And worth taking a look at.

-----Original Message-----
From: Will Day [mailto:willday@...]
Sent: Sunday, March 12, 2000 8:07 PM
To: eqbards@onelist.com
Subject: [eqbards] Re: Trying out Asheron's Call (Way off topic but I
had to post this)

From: Will Day <willday@...>

A short time ago, at a computer terminal far, far away, Lyrnia Jongleur
wrote:

>Last year I tried out Asheron's Call beta and really hated it. The

graphics

>sucked, the interface was kludgy etc. So when final came along I didn't

get

>the game. I was totally un-impressed. Needless to say my tune has changed
>now. I tried it out this past two weeks while I was on a business trip...
>All I can say is "I'm impressed". I'm not going to go into all the nitty
>gritty but I'll post some of my impressions that I got from the past 2
>weeks....

I picked it up last weekend when it was $25 at Best Buy. To answer the
recent question: yes, you get a free month.

>2) Better support. They post regular updates as to what's been fixed, why
>it was fixed and what to expect from it.

The detail in the update reports did impress me quite a bit.

Most verything else you pointed out was pretty nice, too (landscape
graphics, dynamic world, skill sets, less paranoia of players advancing).

For the character appearance, though, I have to agree with another post I
saw somewhere: it's a nice idea, but you rarely ever see people's faces, so
it's a lot of design effort gone (mostly) to waste.

>3) Better support. They listen to the players. Usually when a bug is
>reported it's fixed by the next patch, if not the one after. There's not a
>single bug left in the game that was reported from beta (*cough*)

Personally, this is what killed it for me:
- no secure trading (did they never play Diablo? how long ago was that?)
- no banking (everything is on your person, or on player named "Will's
Mule")
- the first-person mouselook is entirely unusable. There's no mouse
acceleration setting, and the horiz and vertical are fixed at entirely
different settings, so turning is slow, but your head keeps snapping up
to the sky or down to the ground. Then, if you move forward and try to
turn while running forward, it _stops_ and does the turn, and you have
to press 'forward' again. Entirely, utterly, unusable. You have to
play the game third-person, with the keyboard, which completely kills
any immersion factor for me.

So, I'm not entirely convinced on the better support from listening to
players; I'm sure these have been reported over and over since the beta
started, and are pretty major design flaws IMHO.

Other things I've heard about but didn't get far enough to see:
- no group health display
- unbalanced heavily towards magic and archers, and against melee
- no guards, so people can have fun pulling monsters into the town square

--
Will Day <PGP mail preferred> OIT / O&E / Technical Support
willday@... Georgia Tech, Atlanta 30332-0715
-> Opinions expressed are mine alone and do not reflect OIT policy <-
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary
Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
Benjamin Franklin, Pennsylvania Assembly, Nov. 11, 1755

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

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