Overview
In a land overrun with monsters and villains, the mighty wizard Asheron has sent out a call to the bravest warriors and spell casters to return to the land of Dereth via magic portals. You and thousands of other Internet-connected players assume the challenge given these adventurers in Asheron's Call. Asheron's Call: Dark Majesty kicks off the next chapter in the ongoing Asheron's Call story line by introducing the island of Marae Lassel, a sprawling new landmass that contains new quests, dungeons, and treasures, and will be accessible to all levels of players who purchase Dark Majesty. Dark Majesty also delivers housing and secure storage, two of the features most requested by players. Players will be able to purchase unique homes on designated plots of land, as well as use their residences for secure storage purposes. Homeowners can also customize decorations and house access.

In addition to new lands, new monsters, housing, and storage, Dark Majesty includes the complete Asheron's Call game and one free month of play. Both new players and players with existing accounts benefit from the free month, after which the normal monthly fee of $9.95 applies.

Features

• Battle Royale - Enter under Asheron's Protection to prevent other player attacks or head to the world of Darktide and test your skills against your fellow adventurers.
• Epic Scale - Mountain glaciers, swamps, deep dungeons, desert wastelands, smoldering volcanic ruins, and more comprise a vast landscape for you to explore.
• Join Forces - The allegiance system encourages experienced adventurers to gain strength by guiding new arrivals and battling by their side.
• Ever-Evolving World - The continuously growing story-line expands as you journey forward. Each month can bring new monsters, quests, and comrades to this living world.
• Vast 3D World - Enter the land of Dereth, an original world with creatures & menaces unique to Asheron's Call. Adventure across mountains, glaciers, deserts and swamps without a loading screen. With Asheron's Call Dark Majesty, visit the new island of Marae Lassel, where strange experiments have warped the land and its creatures.

Setup
Installing the game off of the CD was quite simple, and showed promise for an easy startup. However, once the software was loaded, that's where the headaches began. Unlike other internet games where you can play against the computer without an internet connection, Dark Majesty requires an internet connection for all game play. This meant I needed to setup an account through Microsoft's web site, and there's were the troubles began. Running the Dark Majesty program off the hard disk and clicking on "Play" took me to the web. There I went in circles dealing with browser errors such as "Browser is too old - requires IE 4.0", which is especially annoying considering that I was using IE 6.0. I finally found an alternate way in by manually going to Microsoft's "Zone" page and starting from there. After struggling with this for hours, I finally got to the point where I could start playing, but first it checks for updates. Upon first running the game, there is a horrendously long wait while it is performing the download. Even after that point, I still ran into one last road block before I could actually enter the game world: "You do not have a subscription". I was required to setup a subscription account on a separate web page, and although the first month is free, the subscription service still required me to enter a valid credit card number (I really did not like that). At some point, even after setting up the subscription, I continued to receive the error that I did not have a subscription. I don't recall what I had to do to circumvent this erroneous block, but after many trials and errors, I eventually did enter the game world.

Game Play
After the painful startup process, I was very excited to actually get into playing the game. The first thing I discovered was that the graphics in the game, both the landscaping and 3D modelling, were blocky and poorly detailed. I also struggled to learn how to control my character in the game, and did not find the interface very intuitive. Nevertheless, I did enjoy the aspect that I was apparently sharing a world with several thousand others. During my training exercises, designed to help me understand how to work in the Asheron world, I only met one other adventurer who gave me a few hints for what to do. Battling the few foes provided to me during the exercises, I was not terribly excited with the physics of the game. I would take a few swings with my sword at a creature, and the swings and hits were not detailed, and collisions were not obvious. Targeting and maneuvering were cumbersome. I did enjoy receiving tasks, as it gave me a goal to focus on (and helped take my focus off of the limitations of the game engine).

After the training exercises, I eventually went exploring cities, picking up new quests along the way. I continued to struggle with the interface, and became more and more disenchanted by the graphics and sounds. I met only a few other internet players, but mostly I walked around talking to the Asheron characters. I succeeded in equipping myself decently with armor and weapons, but at one point I wandered off the path and found myself ambushed by creatures that appear to have been far above my ability. This is where the interface became really frustrating, because now my life was at stake. Neither the fighting or my eventually running away proved to be fluid or easy to do, and so I met my death there. You are brought back to life back where you started, but at that point, I just didn't have much desire to persist.

Summary
Asheron's Call Dark Majesty is an interesting concept, exploring vast worlds, taking on quests, and encountering all kinds of creatures to communicate with or to fight with. I can see the addictive quality of the game based upon the quests and having so many other internet gamers out there to play with. However, given the age of the engine, the poor quality of the graphics, the lag in game play, and the awkward interface, I did not find much enjoyment in the game. I can only imagine that it's the addictive quality of the game that motivates so many gamers to actually pay the monthly subscription rate. I've played other games, such as Diablo II, where the graphics and sounds are stellar, the interface is fluid and intuitive, solo play allows for hours of enjoyment without an internet connection, and internet play is free. Granted, in the Asheron world, you theoretically can play forever since the levels are continually updated and expanded upon. On the other hand, I just didn't enjoy the game play enough to care, and would be hard pressed to recommend this game to anyone (with the possible exception of the "Everquest" crowd).

Pros:

• Continually expanding world with new story-lines and quests always being added
• Lots of other internet players

Cons:

• Painful setup process
• Outdated engine (poor graphics and sounds)
• A noticeable lag during game play
• Requires monthly subscription payments

Overall Rating:

2 1/2 out of 5 Mice