Okay, time for me to do some ranting (with a tad of raving) about Asheron's Call. Firstly, let me rave about something that I think is one of the game's major saving graces. I mentioned in the last review (at least, I think I did) the fact that when you die, your resurrect at the last lifestone that you've (double-clicked on) attuned with, and you lose one item and half your pyreals (money). I read a bit more on the subject. The items that you lose remain on your corpse, and will stay there until your corpse decays (this time increases with your experience in the game). What you've got to do is get to your corpse to recover your lost item(s) and half your pyreals. There's a formula that they use to determine what items, and how many items, you lose. The higher level you are, the more items you'll lose, up to a maximum of five. The formula is designed to identify the most valuable (and not necessarily in a monetary value) pieces of equipment, and will even go so far as to ignore repeated item types... By repeated item types, I mean that you can't just carry five super priceless gems on you and hope that they'll be the five items taken. The formula will only take one gem, the rest of which have their value halved for formula purposes.

If that sounds confusing, don't worry; just understand that when you die, you'll lose an item (or more if you're higher level) and half your money which you'll have to get from your corpse. The great thing is that only you can loot your corpse until it decays. Usually, that means that you've got about 15 minutes to get to your body, which is usually ample time. The result of this system is that when you buy armor, you're probably not going to lose it.

For example, in Ultima Online, I've got a full suit of Valorite Armor, the most expensive and rare material game to make armor out of. I will not leave the tower or town wearing this armor because I don't want to lose it. If I die, it's as good as looted. Shit, I'm quite likely to be attacked so someone can steal it. And this is not an issue with a PK switch, cause even if I die to an orc in the UO wearing that armor, it's likely that I won't be able to find a healer and get back to my corpse in time.

In AC, I can keep saving up money and buy a real phat piece of armor and not worry about it. You see, my Patron got me a very nice bow, and it's currently the most valuable item I have. Each time I die (and I do die a lot, I'll get to that shortly), that bow is assured to be the item taken from me.

Anyway, let me get into my bitching mode.... ready?

There is no animation for running and attacking. This is a HORRIBLY painful problem with the game. If I see a drudge in the distance and I fire an arrow at it, it'll come flying at me at about 60 mph in a standing still motion. Ugly and disorienting as hell. Then there's the problems with creatures bouncing all over the place. Perhaps I'm lagging, as that's a great possibility with the need to go through the Zone to play. Either way, enemies on the screen literally cruise across the land from one person to another, faster than it's possible to keep up with them. Now, I'm an archer, and the archery system is fairly realistic in that I can hit people that walk in the way of my bows, or I can hit objects in the terrain instead of my target... Anyway, when all these creatures are cruising about the landscape like amusement park rides my bow keeps firing at them. Of course, the arrows never hit their mark. Irritating.

However, one of my major gripes with the game is the fact that once you start an animation cycle, there's no turning back. As stated, I'm an archer. Every time I enter war mode, I have to watch my character stand up straight, point his bow forward, pull out an arrow, put it in, and then slowly pull the arrow back to full pull. This animation takes about 4 seconds. AARRRGH! It's a real pain when your watching your character slowly get ready to fight when all you want to do is RUN AWAY IMMEDIATLY FROM THE MOB OF MONSTERS THAT YOU CAN NEVER DEFEAT. One thing that this game needs is a "Turn around immediately button. Namely, after I'm in the above situation, and I finally get to a point that I can start running, I have to turn around. Now, in combat mode, turning is slow. Painfully slow. And when you want to get the fuck away from whatever is charging at you, you want to turn around now!

Speaking of animations that refuse to stop, most of the "emote" animations (nod, wave, sit down, jump for joy, etc.) are located in the center of the keyboard. You have to press "Tab" to talk, and coming from UO in which you just start typing, it's easy to sometimes forget. So you start typing. I'm a fast typer, so before I realize that no words are coming up, I've already typed about a dozen characters... That's usually at least seven animations. So I sit there and watch my character do a mini-aerobics workout (stand-up, jump, lie down, kneel, sit down, jump...) unable to do a thing.

Anyway, I've already restarted my main playing character about six times now, mostly due to the fact that documentation is damn near nonexistent. I've been to AC Stratics (enduring their obscene amounts of spelling errors) and ACVault and both places just seem to be devoid of the fountains of information that was available when I wanted to learn how to play Ultima Online. But thank goodness for the Allegiance system, as my Patron (and his Patron) have been very helpful in teaching me and instructing me.