Game: Asheron's Call 2: Fallen Kings

NVIDIA: A lot of players are just getting into massively multiplayer games, and Asheron's Call 2 might be their first experience. What can new MMOGers expect to find in the game?

Ken Troop: I think a lot of gamers have been either turned off by or are scared of massive-multiplayer gaming. They've heard that these games require massive amounts of time and energy if players want to advance and have fun, and that these games are really difficult and complex, requiring hours of poring over websites just to know what's going on and how to play the game.

Asheron's Call 2 sets all of these MMOG stereotypes on their heads. It was built on the premise that players want a fun but easily accommodating game. Players are in and playing the game within five minutes after installation. The focus from the beginning of the AC2 experience is to learn the game through playing the game. We wanted players to make their character advancement choices as they play, so that they don't find themselves spending 40 hours on one character only to find they made a bad decision in their character creation that wasted all that time. Any choice you make with your character in AC2 can be undone if you decide you want to go in a different direction. There is complex gameplay-players have 450-plus skills to choose from to make their character a formidable opponent-but the complexity comes as you advance in the game, and have learned how to make the choices that are right for you.

AC2 places its focus on the casual player. All the information you need to discover and complete quests are located inside the game, not on a website. Players can play for an hour or two a week and still make significant advances in their character. And the best part is that they can do all this with a friend, whether it's a couple of close friends hunting monsters on a weeknight, or a social alliance of 20 players working together to solve a challenging quest on a weekend. That's really the best part of the AC2 experience-getting to play with and know other people, in the beautiful and player-friendly environments in AC2.

NVIDIA: Conversely, for the player who's already familiar with the Asheron's Call universe, what can they look forward to seeing in AC2 in the way of improvements, enhancements and changes?

KT: The first Asheron's Call is a great game, and a true trailblazer in this genre for doing both monthly episodic content and expansion packs. Everyone in AC1 loved the monthly updates, and the vibrancy they added to the game world in AC1, which is something no other MMOG game has been doing. AC2 continues to expand and evolve the game through monthly updates, adding even more content and features than we did in AC1.

There are a number of other huge differences between AC1 and AC2. The immediate thing that everyone notices is how visually advanced AC2 is, compared to AC1 (although that's true in comparing AC2 to any other existing MMOG). The amazing graphics really help the world to come alive-our artists have done a terrific job using the engine to the fullest to allow players to escape into this fantasy world.

Another huge difference between the two games is AC2's sound system. There are different sounds and music for each environment and creature encounter-some beautiful and haunting tracks are present in the game. One of the favorite social activities for players in the game is to do an impromptu musical jam with their instruments.

AC2 also has a lot more character and skill variety than its predecessor. You can be one of three distinct races in AC2, and choose among nine base templates and 18 specialty skill-branches, choose among hundreds of interesting skills, far more than what was available in AC1. Combat is also more dynamic, with the player having to be more actively involved in upper-level combat than they ever were in AC1, by either chaining together combinations of skills or watching for occasional vulnerabilities to take advantage of in their opponents.

NVIDIA: Storywise, how does AC2 compare in relation to its predecessor? What is it about?

KT: One of the main issues the AC2 development team faced was how to continue the legacy of AC1's epic and involving story, without infodumping large quantities of backstory upon a new audience and potentially scaring them off. We had worked hard on the AC1 story and all of its monthly episodic arcs, and we wanted to build off of that history without being trapped by it.

Our solution was to continue the AC1 storyline to its natural conclusion…hundreds of years hence. Very powerful and malevolent forces have been at work throughout the AC1 storyline to destroy all of Dereth, the land featured in Asheron's Call. AC2 rests on the premise that these forces of evil finally succeeded, and we were going to leave it in the hands of players to take their world back.

This gives us the benefit of being able to use the backstory of AC1 as the foundation of the AC2 world, but not having the AC1 story be so important in the current world that players feel they have to spend massive amounts of time researching lore to understand what's going on in their world.

Every player in AC2, regardless of whether they followed the AC1 story or not, are in the same boat: Their world has been destroyed, and they will be given an opportunity to reclaim it over the course of the monthly episodes. Whether they will be successful or not is up to them.

NVIDIA: Asheron's Call was popular, among other reasons, because of regular events that spiced things up and introduced new elements and different directions for the storyline. Will that continue in AC2?

KT: Absolutely. We're taking the successful elements of AC1-such as the huge story arcs, the developer-controlled "live" events, quests in which the choices of players affected the course of the game-and are emphasizing those for AC2.

One of the most pronounced changes we made in AC2 was bringing our story to the front and center of the game, as opposed to hiding it like we did in AC1. As soon as you log in, you see a number of still shots describing what momentous events are occurring that month, and how the episode relates to the larger story. Some months, you will even have a quest directly assigned to you as soon as you log in. So you don't have to wander around the world aimlessly or peruse websites looking for answers-boom, you get in the game and play, having a direct impact on the storyline.

Finally, we're committed to introducing quests that promote server divergence. So, if the world you're on ultimately solves a quest in a different way (or doesn't solve the quest at all), that world will have a different set of challenges than another world in which players chose a different path. In this way there will be true server divergence, and it's an exciting next step in MMO gaming.

NVIDIA: The look in AC2 has vastly improved, and a large part of that has to do with how computer hardware has become more powerful in the three years since Asheron's Call was first released back in 1999. What's been done in AC2 graphically to take advantage of that power?

KT: In the words of Mike Fricker, our lead graphics engineer: "We created an entirely new graphics engine for Asheron's Call 2 to take advantage of the very latest features available on the most powerful hardware. Our artists made extensive use of hardware shading technology to bring characters and environments to life with detailed gloss and bump textures. The landscape engine pushes graphics hardware to its limits by drawing huge stretches of terrain with hundreds of thousands of triangles. Character polygon counts are up to 20 times higher than the original game and now cast detailed shadows. Volumetric weather and liquid effects use the latest graphics hardware features to allow for realistic reflections and translucency."

NVIDIA: Microsoft and NVIDIA have had a strong relationship over the last few years, with partnerships that have helped launch the Xbox and keep the DirectX API moving forward. Was there any direct collaboration between the two that helped achieve AC2's look?

KT: Absolutely! The close relationship between NVIDIA, Microsoft and Turbine ensured that Asheron's Call 2 takes advantage of the great graphics technology that both the GeForce chipset and DirectX provide.

NVIDIA: What can users of GeForce cards expect to see when they boot up Asheron's Call 2?

KT: Again, from Mike: "Unprecedented texture detail, beautiful reflective water with ripples and beaches, expansive vistas with distant horizons, advanced bump-mapped lighting with realistic shadows, beautiful three-dimensional grass and immersive atmospheric effects. In short, the most graphically advanced MMORPG ever created."