Darktide

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Darktide is the one world of Turbine Entertainment's Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game Asheron's Call which allows unrestricted player killing. Two aspects of the gameplay of Asheron's Call, namely the ability to dodge projectiles and powerfull healing abilities, allows the outcome of combat between players to be determined by the power of the characters and the skill of the players. The cost of death in player versus player combat can be high, and the threat of attack by another player infuses the world with a constant tension.

The history of Darktide has been shaped by strong individual players and player guilds. Prolific player killers quickly gain notoriety, and staunch defender's reputations grow as well. Monarchies which control important locations thrive. The storyline dictated by Turbine's monthly updates is optional, but fighting for survival versus other players unavoidably shapes the experience.

Contents 1 Gameplay 2 Anti's and PK's 3 Prominent Guilds 4 Class Balance 5 Political/Social Timeline 6 Patch Timeline 7 General Trends 8 References

[edit] Gameplay

The player vs player combat in Asheron's Call is fast paced and rewards player skill. The physics of Asheron's Call, unique among the current crop of MMORPG's, includes collision detection. When arrows are fired and spells are cast in games such as World of Warcraft and Everquest, the players fate is out of his hands: whether the attack succeeds or fails depends only upon luck and the innate defensive capabilities of the character. In Asheron's Call, the player can intervene and make the character step or slide to the side to evade an incoming object. Elements of the environment can be used to gain an advantage: characters can jump on top of buildings or step behind a wall, tree, rock etc to temporarily escape attack. By taking advantage of the many options available to him, a player with superior skill can consistently defeat a character of equal power, frequently beat characters of much higher level and equipment, and can prevail in fights against multiple opponents. The player must be completely focused on the action to do well.

Death at the hands of another player entails a trip to the lifestone, a temporary 5% loss of skills and attributes, the need to recast enchantments and loss of some of the more valuable items from the player's inventory. By maintaining a supply of high value, junk items, players can avoid losing the items they value most. Players can teleport quickly back to most locations. However it is always possible to lose an item that took years to acquire, and some places take considerable effort to return to. The penalty of death to another player can be harsh.

Several techniques for casting spells were discovered by players that were not originally intended by the developers. These discoveries gave mages the ability, unlike in other MMORPG's, to move about while casting spells. First was slide-casting, which allowed a mage to move side to side while attacking, avoiding arrows or spells hurled at him. This is still in the game. Next came God-mode. This technique allowed a spell-caster to move forward while casting, closing the distance to the target. Dodging a mage's lightning bolt is much harder at close distance, thus the likelihood of hitting the opponent was greatly increased. As a result of the rapid hopping done when God-moding, melees could not stick and land multiple blows, and arrows and war spells would rarely land on the mage, making him at times unable to be killed. In November 2001, about two years after the launch of the game, a patch was implemented which required the spell caster to complete his spell within a few feet of the point at which he began casting the spell. This change made God-moding obsolete.

Healing also plays a crucial role in determining the outcome of fights. All players have the ability to heal during battle by various means: drinking healing potions, using healing kits, or casting a healing spell (on yourself or on others). A player with 300 hit points can take thousands of points of damage in one fight, by regenerating his health using the available options. Deciding to heal at the right moment can change the outcome of a battle, potentially extending it a great time. Over the years, as character healing skill increased and new healing items became available, healing has become even more potent.

The organization of players into monarchies was accelerated by the realization that the patron-vassal relationship could be extended. As Turbine originally intended, a portion of the experience points earned by the vassal is passed to the patron to whom an oath of loyalty has been made. Some time after the beginning of the game, it became widely known that most of this same experience could be passed up to the patron's patron. And again to the next patron. Thus great chains of players could be constructed generating massive amounts of experience. Rate of advancement was greatly increased, as was the pressure to join large guilds.

Another discovery by the players affected game play enormously. High levels of spells called banes were present in the game, which greatly increased the ability of armor to reduce damage. These powerful spells were supposed to be rare, due to the hours and hours of research , and large amounts of money needed to discover them. The code behind these spells was cracked by the players, and a program was written and distributed which eliminated the need to do research. Soon nearly every player had the high level banes, which reduced melee and archer attacks to small damage. Mage's war spells were not affected by the banes, so they continued to do large damage and quickly became the dominant class.

[edit] Anti's and PK's

The alignment of most characters on Darktide falls into a few categories: those who kill other players without reason (random pk, pk or r-pk), those who actively oppose the random killers (anti or anti-pk) and those who do not randomly kill but leave the r-pk's to themselves (neutral). Also deserving a mention was HOS, who actually had a code of "Honor PK". Pretty much they killed who they wanted, but didn't kill random newbs without some reason, no matter how weak. Considered themselves separate from the antis in a sense.

[edit] Prominent Guilds

The balance of power swung from guild to guild over the years.

• The Mercs - Early game dominance. Left the game 2 months into retail.
• Blood - Dominated the server like no other monarchy for several years long. Vast number of members, huge propaganda machine. Life-long adversary against everyone on the server who wasn't Blood, except for maybe Patryn's group.
• Black Rose - A neutral guild (neither PK nor Anti) based in Kara, a secluded mountain town which exact location was unknown to many players in the first months of the game. It fought constantly against the Mercs while they were in game, then with Blood. Blood took over Kara, Black Rose reconquered it, then Blood took it over again months later.
• Circle of Arms - Anti guild that based out of Sawato, a swamp city that was a well known "safe" town.
• CED - One of the earliest Anti guilds
• The Ancient Order - Anti guild that formed as a merger of the remnants of COA, CED, Amn, PRX. Defended Dryreach and Sawato for a time and also ran daily raids on Blood in Kara.
• House of Sagacious - More of a support guild, main strength came from The Feared.
• The Feared - "Lead Clan" of the antis. Made up most of the muscle holding AB down against Blood.
• The Borg - A neutral guild who ran an army of bots that communicated with each other to engage in combat and generate wealth. Well known for their technology, including a massive online Kill On Sight (KOS) list that the bots used to select their targets collectively. Led by Cranius.
• NWA - Considered Anti.
• Vengeance, Inc.
• Sinister
• PRX, The Professionals (KV The Anti, later Ronan) - A prominent Anti Guild in early/mid retail
• OG - Ran by Og himself, a UA roleplaying character who killed for fish
• Gen - First group made up of Anti's and PKs. Made a play for AB that failed because of Blood intervention. Tried doing something different on the server to change the political and social landscape (their intentions), wound up becoming a "Third" classification for a while, until the server settled back down into 2 major "Alpha" Clans.
• The Last Stand (more widely known as Khao) - Made up of many different groups of people. Khao vs Blood dominated the server for quite a while.
• Clan of the Hand
• Peace Love and Lamps- Run by I Love Lamp and William Wallace' this clan was based in starter towns.

[edit] Class Balance

Class balance has shifted over the years.

• beginning: archers with elemental arrows dominate, until the high level bane spells become widespread.
• early years: Mages very strong, archers weak, melees very weak
• recent years: Mages ok, archers ok, melees strong

[edit] Political/Social Timeline

• At the culmination of the Shadow invasion, a portal to a new dungeon opened: The Nexus. To unlock the entrance, many players, otherwise enemies, cooperated to assemble a key from fragments obtained from several Shadow Captains and Generals. This unlikely alliance fought their way through many obstacles, to finally reach the Nexus Crystal. Lop destroyed the Nexus Crystal, a victory which was announced to every player in the world. The prize given for this accomplishment, the Nexus Core Gem, would eventually yield a suit of armor unparalleled in all of Dereth. Lop, however, did not get to enjoy the fruits of his victory. His own vassal, Mistress of Desires, took the Nexus Core Gem before he could pick it up. The resulting Nexus armor was valued at thousands of US Dollars, and the sequence of events surrounding it was long controversial.

• Blood takes Kara from Black Rose.

• AB War - Gen battles for a week straight against the anti's to take the lifestone. After the antis are weakened, along with fatigue setting in on the Gen group, Blood takes AB almost uncontested. Gen moves to Kara.

• NWA, the largest anti guild of the day, changes their home lifestone from the safety of Kryst to death-trap of Hebian-To Sewers. In Kryst, the guild had a quiet, remote location. Hebian-To, on the other hand, was easily accessible as part of the Zhaikhal-Qalabar-Hebian-To-Cragstone portal loop. Its three lifestones are accessed by jumping down several stories. Due to the required jump, there is no way to run back to the top of the dungeon. There are exit portals; however, due to the pvp-combat portal use restriction, any hostile player entering the lifestone rooms would most likely have to fight to death. The lifestones are the scene of frequent, bloody 20+ vs 20+ battles, and the move serves to unify the guild.

• Aerlinthe quest battles.

• Anti assault on Blood's Stronhold Mountain Retreat.

• Formation of The Last Stand

• Olthoi Queen's Quest battles.

• Tusker Island portal room battles.

[edit] Patch Timeline

• 1999
• October 31: Asheron's Call, including the Darktide server, opens.
• December: Robes added. Range of drain and harm decreased significantly.

• 2000
• January: Letters to Celcynd exploit removed.
• February: Impious Staff and Atlan Weapons added.
• March: Sticky melee and Shadow Armor added.
• April: Nexus quest and armor added.
• May: Ayan Baqar added.
• June: Composite bow quest and Black Spawn Dens added.
• July: Aerlinthe Island and hollow weapons added. Shadow Armor nerfed.
• August: Shadow Armor combinable with Atlan Stones.
• October: Peas introduced.
• December: Rivers run red.

• 2001
• January: Level 7 (war) spells added.
• March: Gems of Stillness and treated healing kits added.
• May: Pyreals made weightless.
• July: Singularity Caul landmass added.
• August: Housing added.
• September: Craftable Health Elixirs
• October: Dark Majesty Expansion. Marae Lassel landmass and Olthoi Queen quest added.
• November: Casting radius (fizz patch, God-mode nerf) imposed. Fellowship xp buffed.

• 2002
• January: Cantrips (Majors/Minors) added.
• February: Shadow Armor un-nerfed. Portal Space/Invoker quest added. Nexus armor on Darktide deleted by Turbine, in response to duping.
• April: Multipe portal and lifestone ties now possible. Deadly hollows added.
• May Aerlinthe quest gives 12 scrolls.
• June: Spell research eliminated (spells now bought or found as scrolls only), spell duration increased up to an hour.
• July: Level 1 drain spells nerfed. Armor Tinkering added.
• August: Arcs introduced. Hollow and Deadly hollow weapon damage buffed, phantom weapons added.
• October: Hollow and Phantom bow added.
• November: Tusker Island added.
• December: Bobo quest (Tusker Island recall spell) added.

• 2003
• January: Singularity Caul recall quest, attribute redistribution quest, and Valley of Death added. Stamina penalty for jumping during a pk fight increased.
• February: Sanguinary Aegis shield added.
• March: Experience points from creatures buffed.
• June: Mansion recall and weeping weapons added.
• July: Candeth Keep added.
• Sept: Loather's and Lures can now be cast by selecting player instead of weapon or shield.
• October: Elemental weeping weapons and Faltatacot ruin added.

• 2005
• March: Throne of Destiny expansion.

[edit] General Trends

Gradually Darktide has changed from its initial harsh experience.

• Monthly addition of dungeons and other leveling areas made hunting spots plentiful- no need to fight for your place
• Addition of housing and increased number of bind points made defending hometowns unnecessary
• General game knowledge, acquired by experience or from websites made game play less challenging.
• Level and power inflation have made progressing in game take less skill and effort.

[edit] References

• Archived summary of patches, including Build Notes. thejackcat.com. Retrieved on December 23, 2006.