Asheron's Call

Lore & Background

The story of Asheron's Call spans several worlds and thousands of years. The primary worlds are Ispar, the origin world of human characters, and Auberean, where the island continent Dereth is located. The history of Auberean spans 35,000 to 40,000 years, dominated by the Empyreans, tall slender humanoids with lifespans of 1,000 years, divided into cultures including Falatacot, Dericost, Haebrous, and Yalaini. The Yalaini Seaborne Empire became dominant, and a member of the royal family, Asheron Realaidain, was born approximately 2,500 years before players arrive in Dereth. Shortly after his birth, a war began between the Yalaini and an army of Shadows led by Bael'Zharon, the Hopeslayer. After over 500 years, Asheron and the Yalaini council of five mages used planar magic to seal Bael'Zharon in another plane, causing a great explosion that killed all council members except Asheron, who was protected by Falatacot Blood rites. The Yalaini later mastered planar magic to create portals, exploring Auberean and other worlds including Ispar. They encountered the Olthoi, giant insect species, and brought them back for research, leading to a rebellion that pushed the Yalaini back to the island of Dereth.

Reader's Guide

Asheron's Call holds significance as one of the earliest major MMORPGs, launching alongside Ultima Online and EverQuest. Its seamless 3D world, covering over 1,300 square kilometers without loading screens or zones, was innovative for its time. The game's allegiance and fealty system created formal links between players, rewarding cooperative play through patron-vassal relationships and temporary fellowships. The magic system originally required discovering spell formulae through trial and error, later simplified to using foci and scrolls. The game's monthly updates and live world events provided episodic narrative content, keeping the story evolving over 17 years. Despite initial success, subscription numbers dropped as newer MMORPGs entered the market. The servers remained online until January 31, 2017, when they closed at 12 EST, despite community attempts to purchase or lease the intellectual property. The game's legacy includes its unique approach to player-killer mechanics, with the Darktide server being a PK-only environment where all players were always open to attack.

Did You Know?

• Asheron's Call was the third major MMORPG to be released, developed at the same time as Ultima Online and EverQuest.
• The game world was over 1,300 square kilometers with no zones or instances on the surface, allowing players to cross the world on foot without loading screens.
• Players could connect their avatars to 'lifestones' for resurrection, with a 'vitae penalty' that temporarily reduced constitution and required gaining experience to remove.
• The Darktide server was a PK-only server where all players were open to being killed by other players at any time.

Origins & the MMORPG Pioneering Era

Asheron's Call arrived on November 2, 1999, as the third major MMORPG to reach players, developed in parallel with Ultima Online and EverQuest. The project was built by Turbine Entertainment Software with extensive backing from Microsoft, which also handled publishing until 2004. Targeted at Microsoft Windows PCs, the game dropped players onto the island continent of Dereth and its surrounding archipelagos on the fictional planet of Auberean. What set it apart from the start was its ambition: a large, seamless three-dimensional world capable of hosting thousands of simultaneous player avatars without the fragmentation of loading screens. After a promising launch, the title enjoyed initial success, but its subscriber base gradually eroded as a wave of newer MMORPGs flooded the market. Despite that commercial decline, the game's infrastructure proved remarkably durable. Turbine kept the host servers running for more than seventeen years after the original 1999 release, a longevity that spoke to the dedication of its player community even as the broader industry moved on. The game was eventually discontinued, ending a chapter that had spanned nearly two decades of online gaming history.

A World Without Walls

One of Asheron's Call's most distinctive design choices was its commitment to an unbroken landscape. The playable world stretched across more than 1,300 square kilometres, and unlike many contemporaries, it contained no zones or instanced areas on its surface. A player walking across Dereth would never hit a loading screen or an invisible barrier; every hill, forest, or coastline visible on the horizon was a genuine, reachable object in the game world. To help players cover that vast distance more efficiently, the developers scattered a network of one-way portals throughout the terrain. Some of these shortcuts opened directly into intricate dungeons, many of which were woven into quest lines and guarded unique treasures. The game's resurrection system anchored players to lifestones: if an avatar fell in combat, it reappeared at its linked stone, losing half its Pyreal currency, one or more carried items, and suffering a temporary vitae penalty that reduced its primary and secondary attributes. The player then had to travel back to the death site to reclaim the dropped belongings. Monthly updates, supplementary content drops, and live world events kept the narrative and questing fresh throughout the game's long run.

Classless Progression & the Art of Crafting

Asheron's Call broke from the rigid class structures common in its genre. Players chose one of three races, distributed a limited pool of attribute points across stats like Strength, Coordination, and Quickness, and then selected starting skills such as Unarmed Combat, War Magic, or Melee Defense. Crucially, characters were never locked into a single class; previously chosen skills could be reallocated later, letting avatars evolve in unexpected directions. Experience points earned through combat, quests, and NPC interactions could be reinvested into attributes or skills, and additional skill points unlocked at milestone levels opened entirely new disciplines. The magic system itself evolved over the game's lifetime. The original design required casters to discover specific spell formulae through trial and error, making magic rare and demanding. This was later supplemented by a simpler framework using foci for each of the four schools—creature, item, life, and war—alongside taper candles and scarabs, with spells learned from scrolls. Beyond combat, the tinkering system let players imbue loot with special effects, while Alchemy produced oils, gems, potions, ammunition, and even foods like cake, beer, and nougat to sustain their avatars.

Alliances, Warfare & a Seventeen-Year Farewell

Asheron's Call built its social fabric around formal player relationships. The allegiance and fealty system let a lower- or equal-level avatar swear itself to a higher-level patron, becoming a vassal. The patron collected a small bonus-XP percentage from everything the vassal earned, while the vassal gained access to money, items, game knowledge, or protection. Fellowships offered a lighter bond, temporarily splitting experience gains among members. For those who craved danger, the player-killer system let avatars voluntarily flip a status flag to attack and be attacked by other PKs. On most servers this was opt-in, but the Darktide server removed that safety net entirely: every player was perpetually vulnerable to every other. Despite these rich systems, the game's later years were defined by a slow bleed of subscribers as newer titles entered the market. The community made repeated attempts to purchase or lease the intellectual property to keep the servers alive. Those efforts ultimately fell short. On January 31, 2017, at twelve noon Eastern Standard Time, Asheron's Call shut down its servers for the final time, closing a chapter that had endured more than seventeen years after its 1999 debut.