On Saturday August 7, 2004, GameDAILY had a chance to attend Turbine Nation - A conference hosted by Turbine Entertainment (developers of the Asheron's Call series and the upcoming Middle-Earth Online) at the Rhode Island Convention Center. The turnout was amazing, with over 500 fantasy MMORPG gamers coming to Providence to meet developers, fellow players, and learn what Turbine has in store for them.

Among the titles featured were Asheron's Call and Asheron's Call 2: Fallen Kings, both of which were recently purchased by Turbine from Microsoft - giving the development company more power to care for their products and improve upon them. There was also a sneak peek at the recently announced expansion for Asheron's Call, named Throne of Destiny.

Keynote speaker and Executive Producer of the Asheron's Call franchise, Jessica Mulligan, gave a fantastic presentation and shared her biting humor with a captivated audience at the luncheon. She recapped some highlights from her 18 year career in the online gaming industry. But really, as she states, it's the community of dedicated players that keeps Turbine running. It is because of them that it is possible for the developers to commit themselves to regular monthly updates for their product. A Q&A session followed, where Jessica walked through the room of enthusiastic fans to get their thoughts and concerns about the Asheron's Call series.

Additionally, presentation rooms were set up to showcase artwork created by the talented minds at Turbine - some to later show up in their games. We were given first glimpses into upcoming titles like Dungeons & Dragons Online and Middle-Earth Online along with some content players can expect to be added on to Asheron's Call 2 in the near future. From what we've seen, Middle-Earth Online is expected to play very differently from current MMOG's. More freedom will be granted to immerse players into Tolkien's world through strong storylines for quests and more interaction with the environment. The development team gave us a walkthrough of one of the games possible opening sequences, where players had to set fire to a building in order to escape a prison camp. In addition, the fighting system will work differently in that it won't rely so much on hit points and health potions. They stated that in the world of heroes, heroes usually don't get hit. When they do, it's a big event. So, the combat system will center on skills to dodge or avoid attacks, meaning that a player shouldn't get hit. If they do, then they get hurt very badly and it is a huge event.

Highlights also included private sessions with developers where fans could get into small group meetings to discuss their games. A Hobbit-flavored hip-hop group called The Lord of the Rhymes finished things off by rocking the convention center while special guest Keith Baker (creator of the new Dungeons & Dragons Eberron campaign) guided six lucky winners on a dungeon crawl through Eberron. Altogether, it was a great time for an event that was dedicated to the most important component of any online game - the fans.