It's been over two years since Asheron's Call 2: Fallen Kings was released and it still has a strong community of players. Now, starting May 4th, those players are getting a reward. Asheron's Call 2: Legions is an expansion pack that does almost everything you could ask for.

The two new playable races are the Empyreans and the Drudges. Empyreans are tall, floating beings that have innate magical power and some mean casting animations. The Drudges, on the other hand, every player should be familiar with, as they have up to this point been enemy NPCs. Drudges are only initially available to players who preorder the expansion, but will be added sometime in the future to those who complete a high-level quest. The Empyreans are there from the start and are a great addition to the team. Both races require you to start a new character at level one and both have their own skill tree.

The skill system of Asheron's Call 2 has seen some tweaks and balances over the years, but an overhaul of this magnitude is a first. Turbine is initiating the Hero 2.0 system, which re-organizes, re-balances, and re-invigorates characters' abilities after level 50. New skills and abilities will be present, as well as tweaked and balanced versions of all previously available Hero skills. These Hero abilities also have a new overall feature: attack abilities can be chained together to do extra damage or yield special results. The other new skills make for a better game from level one, totaling over 300 new skills and abilities for players to become adept with.

Asheron's Call 2 had a fairly large game world already, but Turbine decided adding another continent would be the best way to make sure players at level 30 and over will have even more fresh content. The new continent, titled Knorr, adds nearly 1/3rd more land mass to the world of Dereth. It has many magical and mythical environments including deserts, jungles, and the floating Skyport. The new lands include over one-hundred new quests, providing new storylines and great plot elements that Turbine considers "practically a full game in itself."

There are also new monsters and dungeons to compliment them, meaning many players won't recognize pieces of the land they formerly knew "like the back of their hand." The dungeons number near the twenties and the monsters ring in at ten. These new dungeons run the range of levels, so if you start up as a new Empyrean or continue your existing character, there is plenty of new land that includes vast, sprawling exteriors and creepy, dank interiors. Also around this new land are more than 40 new weapons, some of which can be used by every class and race.

The last, and quite possibly most important, update is one that affects all players in a greater way than new weapons, quests, dungeons or even skills could. Turbine has updated and improved the engine the game runs on. All players should experience a better game with these improvements in place, especially in new areas. The engine's processing is improved a large amount, but the improvement is more drastic in new areas because the textures in Legions' realms were made with these updated rules in mind.

Asheron's Call 2: Legions is nearly everything one could ask for in an expansion. It has new land, new items, new races and classes, and it also improves several systems already in place. Legions shows little for new players to harp about, and there is absolutely nothing here to draw in fresh meat, but those who have been playing for a substantial amount of time will be greatly rewarded and pleasantly surprised by this title. There is absolutely no excuse for existing players not to preorder this one.