Asheron’s Call Interview

Warcry has conducted an interview with Turbine’s Alex (Ibn) Beckers and Jonathan “Calandryll” Hanna, in which the developers answer questions about Asheron’s Call and the upcoming Throne of Destiny expansion. Check it out:

Q: Are there any plans to deal with game mechanics that are still out of balance? Examples that come to mind are shields and magic.

A: Just a quick anecdote regarding game balance and how it is perceived. at last year’s Turbine Nation during Q&A we asked the question, (Do you think war magic is overpowered?) Half the people raised their hands. Then we asked how many felt it was underpowered. Half the people raised their hands. There are people that say that if half the people feel it is overpowered and half the people feel it is underpowered then it must be in balance. If everyone agrees that it is overpowered then we have a problem.

Shields with enough AL and shield level, you can make it so you don’t take any melee damage, I can see where the perceived balance issues could be there. But we just added a new ability to monsters that we may slowly roll out in Throne of Destiny that might mitigate that somewhat. It will make it a little more dangerous for those that aren’t taking any melee damage currently. I don’t necessarily agree that magic is out of balance right now. I think we have really done a good job of balancing monsters to take into account the spells that people would generally have at that level.