iliketechnoandstuff

Throne of Destiny by Crash and crew

After roughly one month of in-depth game play and review of
Asheron's Call Throne of Destiny, this group of persons is extremely
disappointed. The much touted face-lift and user interface to date has
been naught but a waste of time. The most important function of the
interface, i.e. the chat line is virtually unreadable and causes even
the most proficient typist to send garbage into the community chat
window. After multiple requests, and after the first patch, there is no
usable fix. A tremendous amount of Turbine PR has been expended bragging
of the video / graphics update. Umm HELLoooo there Turbine ... Who
really gives a damn about the trees! Give us a platform with MINIMAL
LAG!!! And USABLE CHAT line.

Less than acceptable issues -

The treasure system is simply horrible. No matter what level character
you fight, the normal reward is usually JUNK. Many of the "Rares" that
have been introduced into the game are pretty well worthless. One use
items, good for 15 minutes at best.

The prime function of this game has turned into trash collection. No
matter what level mobs you fight, we found roughly 90 percent of the
"Loot" is trash. The main thrust of the game, for the last few years has
been to turn characters into tinkers. Basically, collect trash, then
hope like hell you beat the odds of making imbued weapons and tinkered
armor. The game GUARANTIES a 67 percent failure rate for most people.
Even after purchasing the tinker's "upgrade" for 2 billion xp, the game
still guaranties a 62 percent failure rate. Adding insult to injury, the
game developers have decided to make trash collecting a frustrating
experience by limiting trash required to attempt weapon tinkering. Some
examples are red garnet, black garnet and Jet. In other words, Turbine
has created upgraded mobs, but has decided, frustration is the key
ingredient of the game. Don't allow the player base an equal chance of
killing the bigger mobs with more powerful weapons. Gee Turbine you
know, the consumer might have fun if this aspect of the game turned the
figures around. How about a 65 - 75 percent change of success guaranteed.

With a few exceptions, most of the monsters are rehashed from the
original game launched 5 years ago. Higher levels, some armor changes
but they fall in the SOS category (Same Ole Schtick).

Lag still kills many toons in battle. Even with the lower server
populations, this is and has been a major issue for over 5 years.

The population counters have been removed. This missing feature now
requires you log into every world to look for a populated game world.
So, you blow about 30 minutes running around checking out various towns
on worlds with the result being, hmm think I'll go play something else.
The decision to remove population counters is most likely due to the
hemorrhage of players to other games. Save Turbine the embarrassment of
a failing Flagship product as well as incompetent management.

The combat system pulls a vacuum to the extent few have seen before. In
the eyes of Turbine, this is called a "combat balanced". Once more
Turbine.. HELLoooo This is a World of Magic, yet in the infinite wisdom
of the developers, Magic Casting characters have been nerf'd to the
point of being useless. Short-term UCM is built into the game for melee
and missile characters, yet the Mages must cast each spell every time
they attack. Melee and Missile can auto-lock and auto-attack a target,
then start chatting or leave the pc for a few minutes while they wear
down a critter. This combat system has killed the life-caster as well as
fostered the growth of inferior magic casters. High level mobs cannot be
debuffed by a magic caster with max'd War, Life, Creature, Focus and
Self. A level 200+ mage is easily outdone by a level 160+ melee or
missile character. An archer can take 100 wrapped bundles of arrowheads
and shaft and hunt all day long, while melee characters only need their
swords. Depending on lag (accelerates comp burn), rate of comp burn,
the magic caster must return to a town store every few hours to replenish
burned components. Schlepping these tapers around creates burden for the
mage ultimately affecting his survivability. No such restrictions for
the melee while the missile user only makes a bundle of arrows at a time
and can drop these bundles if the burden starts affecting performance.
High level casting items are rare as hens teeth while there are plenty of
high level melee/missile weapons to be found throughout the game.
Turbine continues to push for more melee/missile characters. It has
become obvious, even to the most casual observers that Turbine created
this land of magic, yet felt it necessary to remove or curtail the
casters abilities in this game.

Apparently Turbine lacks the talent of a good few good code jocks. There
were many really good 3rd party applications available to be used with
this game before the expansion pack. During the build of the expansion
pack, Turbine stated they would not be changing the code to the extent
that the 3rd party apps would become inoperable. On launch, umm well
HELLOooooo, no 3rd party apps worked. Ya really gotta love the Turbine
talent pool. Instead of building the many great apps INTO the game or
dealing with the decal dev's. Turbine chose to trash the code to the
point it was not usable by 3rd party dev's.

The persons involved in this review had a hard time finding Good things
to say about this Asheron's Call - ToD expansion pack. It boiled down
to ... why did it take Turbine 18 months to come up with this crap?

So what's good about the game?

Yes there are new areas to explore and Yes there is a new ethnic group.
This expansion pack is a continuation of the AC-DM expansion. Overall,
the only real differences have been cosmetic User Interface changes, and
those are marginal at best.

In conclusion, Turbine will not allow this world of magic to be driven by
magic nor is Turbine interested in the consumer and protecting its
consumer base. It seems that Turbine's key driving element is to appease
a few whiners who have no serious gaming habits or abilities.

Message to Turbine; If this game is to continue, go hire some decent
code jocks and a PM with imagination.

Review created with input from crash-test dummies, each with over 4
years experience playing this game;

2 Melee - 2 Archers - 2 - Mages