Hot on the heels of the latest nostalgia blog, Turbine's published a letter from the Producer of Asheron's Call:

Hello and greetings from the Asheron's Call team here at Turbine. We've had quite a full year of big changes and exciting developments, and we're eager to be able to share with you some of what we've got planned. As you no doubt know, Asheron's Call has been going strong now for almost nine years, and we're soon to celebrate our 100th monthly update, a milestone that no other game or company has come close to reaching. We're very aware of the historic nature of Asheron's Call's longevity, and we will be celebrating it in style in August.

Before we discuss what the next few months and the next year will bring, I'd like to review some of the great things the team did in the last year or so.

After we resolved the story around Asheron's kidnapping and rescue from the other world of Bur, we re-introduced a favorite character from the past, the mad tinkerer and rogue Virindi Aerbax, who stepped out of the shadows to take a central role as a threat to the people of Dereth. Aerbax's ascendance allowed us to showcase a dozen of our most popular creature races as the mad scientist's "Prodigal" creations infiltrated and attempted to dominate each race. The Aerbax story arc concluded in February with an epic fight with the tentacled mastermind himself on giant platforms above the Direlands, and will go down as one of the most memorable "boss battles" in the long history of Asheron's Call.

Along the way, as we learned more of Aerbax's agenda, we developed a storytelling technique that allowed us to re-visit and even play through some of the most important moments in the history of Asheron's Call: the opening of the portals to Ispar, the defeat of the first Olthoi Queen, and the defeat of Bael'Zharon. These "memory quests" were some of the best-received content we've had in years. They show that, after more than eight years and almost a hundred monthly updates, we are still able to come up with new storytelling techniques that surprise and amaze our players.

Of course, it wasn't just a great story and epic fights in the last year of Asheron's Call development. With ambitious engineering and innovative content design, we've broadened the gameplay available to our players. The Colosseum Bosses we introduced in June deepened the challenges presented by the very popular Colosseum. We added craftable "alchemy grenades" to bring a new dimension to our combat system, both against monsters and against other players.

Not only have we broken new ground with our content and systems over the last year, we've also dedicated ourselves to retrofitting older content to come more in line with modern standards of challenge and reward. We've re-visited some beloved old quests like Lilitha's Bow, the Green Mire Grave, and the Impious Staff to tweak mechanics or reward items to make them more compelling to a newer audience, while remaining true to the original spirit of the content. In a game as steeped in history and tradition as Asheron's Call, it is important to remember the great early experiences that made us love this great game in the first place, and you can expect us to keep updating older quests as we move forward.

Perhaps the most important content development of the last year has been the unearthing of the Empyrean Graveyard, which is almost a "skunkworks" of new technology and content innovation. The Graveyard started out as a showcase for the day/night generators and roving monster technology we'd developed as a way to create more dynamic hunting areas. The response was overwhelmingly positive, and we built on that success by adding even more innovations to the new hunting ground. The Mhoire coins found within the graveyard were part of our ongoing effort to find compelling new rewards and an alternate currency system to allow our high-level players to distinguish themselves. The rise of the Mhoire Jester and his collectible card decks were another new frontier in Asheron's Call content development, one we'll be using in the future.

Now we've started another epic story line that taps into the deep lore that is one of the great strengths of Asheron's Call. We have ventured into the long memories of the Undead kingdom of Dericost and the deeper-still recollections of the dark gods of the Falatacot to find a threat to the nature of magic in Dereth. The very structure of the world is threatened by a long-buried elder god, and various factions of Dereth, as they always have, are rising to confront the danger.

The difference this time around is that players will be able to join those factions. We've introduced three secret societies: the Celestial Hand, the Eldrytch Web, and the Radiant Blood. Each society is tied into one of the well-established factions of Dereth lore, part of all the history that has gone before, in this game of unprecedented story depth. Players have already met members of each of the societies and have had an opportunity to learn about the tenets and guiding principles of each of these mysterious groups. Starting with the 100th Update in August, players will be able to swear allegiance to one faction and work to advance their faction's interests in the struggle for the fate of Dereth.

Last year, when I wrote this letter, I announced that we were starting development on an "elder game" system that would give our players the opportunity to play Asheron's Call in a different way. While our quest content is second to none and our player v. player combat is still what we consider the most dynamic in the industry, we recognized that players want to be able to compete against each other in other, meaningful ways. It's been a long time in development, but with our 100th Update in August, you'll see the fruits of our labor. Players in different factions will be able to compete with each other, both through PvP combat and through PvE questing. They will be able to directly advance their faction's power in the world by gathering resources and conquering various locations in Dereth. Each action they undertake in service of their faction will also earn them rewards and recognition within the faction. They won't just be working for their faction's interests, but their own as well. And the rewards they earn will leverage a new tier of rich treasure and a new level of spells.

We've been hard at work on content for the 100th Update for months now. You might have noticed that the last few content updates have been lighter than you're used to. We made the decision to split a couple of developers off from the monthly Live updates to work, long-term, on the deep and ambitious plans we had for the 100th Update. This kind of split brought challenges to both the Live developers and the 100th Update developers, but it's been a labor of love all throughout this process. We feel confident that when you suit up for one of the factions in August and join the struggle on their behalf, you'll see that all the work was worth it.

Of course, the 100th Update is not the end of our efforts to improve and expand Asheron's Call. We've got a number of other initiatives in the works, including an upcoming Hardware upgrade, all in the service of improving gameplay and ensuring the continued longevity of the Asheron's Call franchise. For now, we can't reveal any specific initiatives, but rest assured that the Asheron's Call team is not content to rest on its laurels. While we appreciate the achievement of our 100th Update, we know that our best work is still ahead of us, and we hope that you continue the journey along with us, into our ninth and tenth years together in Dereth, and beyond.