Turbine Entertainment

The MMO landscape is littered with the burning heaps of failed projects and unoriginal concepts. Most companies collapse like a house of cards if they don’t get off on the right foot. Once in a while you find a special company who is really in the genre for the love of it. For over a decade Turbine has been delivering gamers online innovation; chances are if you find a great concept in a modern day MMO it’s already been done by Turbine.

At GenCon its three premier games were on display: Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeon and Dragons Online and Asheron’s Call. I was a tad disappointed as the powers that be decided to hold back Mines of Moria, the upcoming LOTRO expansion until PAX. So they were showing the latest free content release.

Asheron’s Call -- Still Going Strong

Asheron’s Call was my first MMO so seeing it still going strong brought a smile to my face as I reminisced with the producer. I can still recall the first content update / GM run event and have memories of exploring the wilds with friends and discovering a dungeon no one had seen. Concepts that today are foreign to MMOs.

The game has been going for nine years and for Turbine, the game isn’t about making money—it’s much more than that. The team was very proud to talk about its upcoming 100th free update. In case you’re wondering if that’s a record, it is, and according to the team it’s not even close. While other companies push out “updates” consisting of bug fixes and small smatterings of content, every one of AC’s updates has been substantial.

Content update 100 is all about the fan base, says the team. New loots, a new faction, player vs. player Land control, level eight spells and unprecedented armor are just some of what’s in store. The team has listened to its fan base for over a decade and this update is packed with as many fan requests as they could put in it.