Asheron's Call in 2023? Greatest game ever made that hardly anyone new has ever tried, a true MMORPG

The story and lore of Asheron's Call exceeds that of any contemporary, if you are actually privy to all of it. Most often people only got to see bits and pieces of the game's development and history. Especially because having multiple playable servers subdivided the playerbases in meaningful ways, beyond just what time of the day people were typically "logged in" by.

I have a long history now of reinstalling the game and swearing that I'm going to "back back into it" and actually enjoy playing. I find that once I'm logged on to my characters I end up feeling unfilled pretty shortly as the façade of the MMORPG can't be hidden for long. All it takes is one quick playercount check to see there are literally 2-4 other players online on the server I played that disallowed any combat botting. At that point I'm basically playing the game by myself.

Any big quests or major things you need large groups for are out of the question. Instantly killing the spirit and fundamental aspect of an MMORPG game. It's effectively a "single-player" experience running on a public server, treated as 'retail' but in reality no different than you just emulating a server for yourself alone, since there are no other people logged in anyway.

So I fight with myself in this cycle to keep playing, however no matter how hard I try to just relax and enjoy, most of the basic things I just don't enjoy anymore. I used to get great joy and pleasure out of just wandering the 'Direlands' and picking up random loot. I can do this for about 1 or 2 hours tops now before I become bored. I'm just being honest and objective with myself.

Eventually when there's no one there on any of these servers to share these memories with, the spirit of what an actual MMORPG is, and what it means and represents as a genre is officially dead and lost. There is no MMORPG, it's not even multiplayer, hardly at all. That's the real core of the issue. The game itself is near perfect, it just needs players, honestly.

This is by far the best MMORPG I have ever played, I have tons of time on contemporaries of this game, scratching even more of that itch, sometimes at the same time. I "mained" multiple other similar titles including EverQuest, Anarchy Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Lineage, Star Wars Galaxies, etc. This is the best, most complete game, we just need some more players.

Highlights of some of highs from my pov/time with Dereth are:
Interacting and playing with dev/GM character models ie.) Asheron, Baal
15 years of solid monthly content updates (subscription model working).
Strong community of developers and talented coders that are willing to
keep the game running in the form of emulators.
There are so many great emulator servers to explore and play on.
Back when Arwic Mines was 'Subway' it was cool to have the playercount spread across multiple servers. The trading chat inside the top of 'Subway' was some of the most fun haggling/bargaining I've ever done in any MMO.

Lowlights and other lows from my pov/time in Dereth are:
Watching people leave for AC2 / fracturing the playerbase.
Watching people leave for the popularity of World of Warcraft.
I personally "selfishly" wish that there were less emulator servers and
there were more just a few well-populated ones with retail rulesets.
Watching everyone split up between even more emulator servers when I already was over being separate from everyone so regularly at the end of retail servers. Sure I found a 'permanent' home on Morningthaw but also would just prefer if everyone played on 1 or just a few servers overall.

The worst thing to ever happened in the history of this game;
Watching WB/SoE/DayBreak games purchase the company and the rights to the game and closing the retail servers to Asheron's Call in 2017. The game is kept alive by those dedicated to putting in hard work on the emulators, it doesn't change the fact that this action was petty and extremely unprofessional. As well as illegal because AC is the only other MMORPG released that year that would be deemed legitimate competition. They literally bought out for a monopoly, then immediately closed the competitor, instead of fostering both products. It's literally illegal, look it up, I'll wait..

Looking to do more content in this game if this video "does well" at all, by that I mean anyone at all watches or comments or anything. Most of the time when I put out something I worked hard on hardly anyone ever notices, so I'm not expecting much. I have this one voice telling me to "let go of the past" and just move on from this game forever. Then this other voice telling me "this history is way too damn important for people to just forget". I care too much about the history of MMORPGs and this game in particular to let it go quietly...

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