Today is the scheduled release of Asheron's Call: Legions. I understand Best Buy has not yet gotten my copy in, as of 15:00 on Wednesday, and well, I have a little time to do work on this blog. In advance, this is a rant, but I hope to have a different, more positive blog, out tomorrow or Friday.

When I first started AC2, I was familiar with AC1, and I knew that allegiances can be helpful but there are some drawbacks. I had been a bit disappointed with the way allegiances had panned out in AC1, and I hoped that Turbine would do something to correct what I saw as the issues. In fact Turbine did, they made experience chains far more difficult to do, as not everything would pass up.

Let's revisit AC1 for a moment, and I'll explain what I didn't like. Chains, which was an exploit of the allegiance system. That pretty much sums it up. In Asheron's Call, the allegiance system, like the magic system, had a very good beginning. A new player would swear allegiance to an experienced player and the experienced player, now his patron, would teach the new player, now a vassal, the ins and outs of the game. The patron, a person of higher level, would sometimes have access to equipment that the vassal didn't and would often provide the vassal with useful items or resources. In return the experienced player would get free experience passed up to him or her.

A higher level character could not swear to a lower level character, but the lower level character could become a higher level character than his patron. This is a good system, except that people figured out how to use it other than intended. A person would take on a vassal at first level and then log off. If possible the person would take on as many vassals as possible, twelve being the limit, which would in turn increase the pass-up from the vassals. Then the player would log off, log on a different character, and play, or even swear allegiance to his vassal, and play. After time, the original character would be logged back on, and would have a lot of experience, that he did not have to earn, which would level him. This exploit was used to make characters that started off very weak easy to play, so you could plan for a higher level without the risk of misadventure and death.

In addition, there were two skills, that affected experience pass up, loyalty and leadership. Loyalty was a skill everyone had, and affected how much of your earned experience you passed up. Leadership, could be trained, and it added a modifier to the amount of experience you received. I don't know the exact numbers, but it sort of worked like this. Player B swears to Player A. Player B earns 100 experience, passing 10 (to keep it simple) experience points to Player A. Player B increases his loyalty skill, enough to pass up an additional 10% to his patron, and that same 100 experience points results in 11 (10 + 10% = 11) experience points to Player A. Player A trains leadership enough to increase passed up experience by 10%. The 100 points earned by Player B now results in 12.1 experience points for Player A.

Add to this, the fact that experience was passed up through the patron, to his patron, to his patron, and so on. This led to the Experience chain, and Chain allegiances, which would let you in, as long as you produced X experience for your patron, and in turn you were given vassals that were to produce X experience for you, and so on. In my opinion, chain allegiances were bad for Asheron's Call.

Fast Forward to AC2. Experience is no longer passed up to everyone in the line up to the monarch, instead it is passed up from vassal to patron, and I believe, a small amount to the monarch from everyone. This works well, but we, being the players have started to exploit this as well. I frequently see offers or requests in general chat for experience pass-up. In other words "Swear to me and I'll give you ______, or I will swear to someone, offering ______ xps for ______. Very mercantile.

Why, you may wonder, does this bother me? If people want to do that, and that's how they like to play AC2, let them. Which brings me to the rant, unfortunately.

As I have stated before, I am a role-player. I also am big on loyalty. When I started playing AC2, I had a few characters, and one of them, Damacles, swore into the allegiance, "The Order of the Silver Hand (TOSH)." My experience with TOSH, was generally good, I had a good Patron, Draver, and people that were willing to help me. This is how I feel an allegiance should work. I even swore Darkfyre into TOSH, under Zavu Tenerio, because of my positive experience.

I then stopped playing for a while, becoming involved in other hobbies, though I kept my accounts active, as I always intended to return. When I did, in February/March this year, I found that I was no longer in TOSH. TOSH had been "swallowed up" by Chaotic Serenity. In other words, the monarch of TOSH had either sworn to a person in Chaotic Serenity, or had retired completely from the game, allowing his vassals to swear allegiance elsewhere.

I tested Chaotic Serenity, and was welcomed as a player. I even spoke to Chaotic Serenity's monarch, Adipocere, who willingly helped me, a mere 14th level Tumerok (Darkfyre). Overall I found the allegiance welcoming and willing to help. At some point, I was asked to accept a vassal, and I did, and then swore Peregryne to my vassal.

This past Saturday, I signed on as Darkfyre, and found myself in a different allegiance, The Hobo Liberation Front. I asked a few questions on the allegiance channel. When few replies were forthcoming, and I was not welcomed, I felt that The Hobo Liberation Front was not for me, or really, in my opinion, anyone particularly new to the game.

Darkfyre has four vassals; Vezmerize, Cragmire, Marl Fox, and Max Pain Ii. Max Pain was sworn to Darkfyre as a mule, Max wanted to get his mule to the allegiance hall. Cragmire and Marl Fox were new to the game, and I helped them to learn a little bit about the game, in return they swore to Darkfyre, and I know that they have benefitted from being in Chaotic Serenity. I knew I wanted to get back to Chaotic Serenity, and felt that many of the characters sworn to me, would feel the same way.

I logged off as Darkfyre, and logged back in as Damacles. I had thought that Damacles would be in Chaotic Serenity, being sworn to Draver. I found that Damacles was also in The Hobo Liberation Front, and I became concerned. Fortunately, Damacles had logged off in the allegiance hall, and I took him around to scout. I ran into a character that still was aligned with Chaotic Serenity, but it was a bot, in other words, being run by a program rather than a player.

As I had already decided that I wanted back in Chaotic Serenity, I tracked the patronage line up to a person that I suspected had changed, primarily, because below him was a character of a higher level, so it could not have changed there, and that character could not have alleged to the lower level character recently. Additionally the higher of the characters had been very active in the allegiance recently, so I thought it unlikely he would have broken from the allegiance. Armed with this information, I went to the general chat channel and asked if there were any members of Chaotic Serenity on.

Eventually I found one and asked him if there was an issue with Chaotic Serenity. He wasn't aware of one, and said he would check. Damacles had no vassals, and I had not heard from Draver since my return to AC2, so I regrettably broke allegiance, and swore him to the person that I had found. This may be the only real advantage to having all low-level characters.

Anew from Allegiance chat, I was able to confirm my suspicions. The lower level character that I had suspected of breaking, had returned, and offered to provide X experience points for something, in this case I believe in-game money, for a member of THLF. Without regard for those that fell under his patronage, he broke from CS and swore in to THLF. I was assured by the monarch of Chaotic Serenity that the situation would be corrected. Confident in this I logged off and played some characters not in either allegiance.

Later I logged on with Darkfyre, and witnessed a problem in The Hobo Liberation Front, with the character that had broken from Chaotic Serenity. The eventual result was him being dropped from THLF because he would not control his language, nor show respect to others in the allegiance. I had to agree with either the monarch of THLF or one of its officers, when she dropped him. I also respected the action of policing the allegiance.

The allegiance system in Asheron's Call 2, offers both good things and bad. In this case, it bothered me that someone I didn't know could control which allegiance, I was in. Overall though, I feel that if you have a good allegiance, you have access to the skills, knowledge, and resources that are greater than if you do not. In this case it did work out. On Sunday, Darkfyre, and his vassals were once more in Chaotic Serenity.

I'll write again soon.

Gueron

Oh, yeah, just so you know. The opinions stated in this blog are my own, and in no way should they be construed as representing Gamersinfo.net or Turbine or anyone else. They are also just that, opinions. Thank you for reading.