In this installment, Jonathan Steinhauer looks at the last MMO class archetypes, the Healer, and why this role at least is solidly developed.

In this installment, Jonathan Steinhauer takes a look at the weapons of fantasy MMOs and how they have all become identical.

Turbine announced the downtime for Asheron's Call June event, as well as published the release notes. You can find the release notes here. It'll give you something to read during the downtime:

On Tuesday June 30th all worlds will be down from 7am - 12pm Eastern for the June Event, Old Ghosts.

Turbine sent over a teaser image for the June event for Asheron's Call. The event is scheduled to kick off Tuesday, June 30th, and is titled "Old Ghosts". They haven't published the release notes just yet, but from various forum posts, there look to be several interesting changes this month!

How much of an MMO is button smashing and how much involves actual skill? This installment is an investigation of how armor choices and shield employment can yield more combat decisions.

Turbine made an interesting offer recently, regarding Asheron's Call:

So as most everyone here knows by now, Asheron's Call has had a private test server for quite some time now that we use to help us get a gauge on upcoming content that we will be releasing each month. For the entirety of its existence, the players who were/are part of this server were picked by the various teams that ran Asheron's Call. With the upcoming 10th Anniversary of our beloved game fast approaching, we want to make sure we release the best possible product to our customers.

You can read the entire announcement after the click!

I like stats as much as the next person (probably more), but when warfare is boiled down to raw probabilities, battlefield skill disappears. The building of the best stat base becomes much more important than any sort of tactical competency. Instead of seeking a skill based work-around, games come up with new statistical probabilities.

Turbine let us know that their games will be down for part of Monday:

On Monday 5/18/09 all worlds, Authentication and myaccount.turbine.com will be down from 7am -12pm EST for maintenance. We thank you for your patience.

Better scheduled maintenance, than unscheduled, eh?

Turbine's scheduled the next free content update for Asheron's Call subscribers for May 19th. The event is titled "Secrets of the Apostates", and as part, they've shared an exclusive teaser image for it. You can see it and read the release notes after the jump!

Turbine announced today the results of their investigation into players who were exploiting a game bug.

As a result of this new logging, we have a record of everyone who abused this exploit.

You can read the entire announcement, including who's getting banned and when, after the jump. If you dare, you can follow the feedback on the official site, here.

Turbine posted a short video peek at some interesting things coming as part of the 10th Anniversary event.

So everyone has been wondering what is coming for the 10th Anniversary of Asheron's Call. After talking with the team I convinced them to let me give everyone a sneak peek at just one of the things we have in store for our special event.

Check out this video!

Turbine let us know that their games, forums, and support systems will be down for a time on Monday:

On Monday, May 4th all Turbine services will be down from 7AM - 12PM EST. During this time players will not be able to login or play our games, and forums/websites will have intermittent service.

Probably a good time to get some yard work done!

Turbine's published the release notes for the April event for Asheron's Call, which kicks off this coming Tuesday. You can read the entire list after the click.

Turbine's sent over a teaser screenshot for this month's even in Asheron's Call. The event, titled "What Once Was Lost" is scheduled to go live on April 28th. Click the icon to the left for a full screen image of the teaser!

The archetypal concept of the tank assumes that PvE opponents have the mental capacity of cattle. Instead of a monster intelligently attacking what would make his enemy most vulnerable (the Healer) or what is the greatest actual threat (the DPS), it attacks the one opponent that isthe smallest real threat and the hardest to kill: the Rodeo Clown... er Tank.

In this week's RoleCraft, Jim Moreno looks at the issue of player housing in MMOGs and how it can shape one's roleplay experience.

Turbine let us know that they're back to regularly scheduled maintenance with their games:

On Monday April 06, all Turbine services will be offline for maintenance from 7am EST - 12pm EST. During this time all game servers, myaccount.turbine.com, game websites and forums will be offline for maintenance.

Hopefully, this will be simple maintenance, and not cause more outages!

Dungeons & Dragons Online and Asheron's Call players will be compensated in big ways due to downtime incurred with the recent datacenter move. Subscriptions will be extended by a day as well as some nifty in-game bonuses. Find out what to expect by clicking below.

Starting a new series on the archetypal MMO classes, Jonathan Steinhauer begins by looking at DPS and the issue of hitting versus damaging.

Turbine announced today that they're moving datacenters on Monday March 30th. Asheron's Call and Dungeons and Dragons Online will be down most of the day (till 5pm EST) and the Lord of the Rings Online websites (forums, lorebook, etc) will also be down, but the game itself will remain up.

You can read more details about the move after the click!

This week on RoleCraft, Jim Moreno looks into how roleplayers can prepare for an adventure - Research, Plan, Go!

In this edition of RoleCraft, Jim Moreno wonders about a crucial element in tabletop gaming missing from the MMO - the Dungeon-Master.

Turbine's sent over a teaser image for the upcoming event in Asheron's Call, which is titled "Who Watches the Virindi?" The event is scheduled for March 10th.

You can view the image after the jump!

On this week's RoleCraft, Jim Moreno wonders how exactly one can define roleplaying in an MMO due to the absence of a key player in tabletop RPing - the Dungeon Master.

Turbine announced that they've scheduled some maintenance for this Monday.

The game servers and http://myaccount.turbine.com will be offline for maintenance on Monday, February 23rd from 6:00 AM to 12:00 PM Eastern (-5 GMT).

The official forums should remain up, however.

Jonathan Steinhauer takes a look at roleplaying and why he has such a hard time fitting it into the MMO genre.

Turbine's published the release notes for the February Asheron's Call Event: Unfinished Business. You can read the entire list after the jump!

Turbine's shipped over an exclusive teaser image, related to this month's event in Asheron's Call. The event kicks off tomorrow, and is entitled "Unfinished Business". Click the link below to see the screenshot, ominously entitled "Bodies"...

In this week's RoleCraft, Jim Moreno tries his hand at role-writing, telling the story of one particular Blood Elf in the World of Warcraft.

Turbine let us know of some downtime they've scheduled for Asheron's Call:

On Monday February 2nd from 7am - 12pm Eastern, the Billing and Authentication server will be offline for maintenance. In addition the Asheron's Call world servers will be down from 10am - 12pm Eastern for some additional maintenance.

In this week's RoleCraft, Jim Moreno tackles Blizzard's recent debacle with the RP-PvE realm, Wyrmrest Accord.

Game designers face many challenges, and one of the largest of these is balance. Yet curiously, one facet that seems to garner a much smaller degree is the economy. That isn't to say MMO economics don't get a great deal of attention but as they stand the balance is more reminiscent of a band-aid than any real resolution.

Turbine let us know that all of their games will be down tomorrow morning:

The Servers will be down on Thursday 1/22/09 From 5am - 9am Eastern for maintenance. During this time all worlds will be offline in order for us to run diagnostics to determine the cause of recent downtimes.

Forums and other official things may be offline as well. Hopefully they can find the cause of these downtimes - it's been affecting all three games!

Turbine's looking for some feedback for Asheron's Call, specifically about quest timers, and when they reset:

What if I changed the quest timers that were greater than 20 hours so they all refreshed at the same time? Would people find that it would be easier to track and coordinate quests?

Head on over to the official forums and share your thoughts on this subject!

This week in RoleCraft, Jim Moreno looks back at the RP scene in one of the very first MMOs: Ultima Online