Slashdot Mirror

Yes, it is

This is the perfect excuse to read up, get your fix, then hop into D&D Online and get some tabletop action come to life. The client and a decent amount of content is free, and the DM voiceovers rock.

NOTE: This is Dungeons & Dragons Online, not WoW. There be TRAPS in dem dar dungeons, and they can and will kill you very dead!

I think that management had a rosy picture in their minds, that was dispelled by the cruel, harsh light of reality. The original post appears to only live in Google's cache. Unclassy.

Here's the full link from the DDO forums front page (obtained from google cache):

Get More FREE Turbine Points with New Offer Wall!
April 12, 2010
Want to get your hands on more Turbine Points? Visit my.ddo.com/getpoints, log in, and check out the latest offers from our friends at SuperRewards. Simply complete a qualifying offer and SuperRewards will credit your account with Turbine Points* to use in the DDO Store! This new feature is just another way for players to get points in addition to earning them in-game or buying them directly. Unlike earning or buying points, however, players may complete offers right on the website and do not need to be logged into the game.

This new feature is an addition to our current DDO Store system and does not replace the existing ways you already get points. We will continue to add new offer providers and payment methods in the coming months - if you have a preferred payment method, we’ll probably support it. For now, the fastest and easiest way to get guaranteed points is still to buy them in the DDO Store directly from Turbine.

Enjoy!

Frequently Asked Questions:

Q. What is the offer wall?
A. The offer wall at my.ddo.com is a feature that allows players to earn Turbine Points for completing offers from various Offer Vendors.

Q. What’s an offer?
A. An offer is an advertisement for a product or service that typically requires you to perform an action. That may include registering for a newsletter, signing up for a subscription service, or buying a product. Offers may also include market research such as surveys, online focus groups, and more.

Q. Do I have to do this?
A. Of course not! This system is provided as a service to those who would like more Turbine points and who prefer not to pay for them in the traditional fashion.

Q. What about my personal information? Is it safe?
A. We do not share any personal information with the offer vendor other than an anonymous unique ID and an e-mail address for your receipt to be sent to. This information is not transmitted unless you participate in the offer wall system. You may be (and probably will be) asked to provide additional information to complete an offer. Turbine has no way to control what happens with that information or how it is handled. We recommend that you use your discretion when signing up for offers. As always, protecting your privacy requires vigilance.

Q. Where is SuperRewards’ Privacy Policy located?
A. Online at http://www.superrewards-offers.com/super/privacy

Q. I have a problem with X Offer or Y Offer Advertiser. What do I do?
A. Turbine provides no direct support for issues with our offer providers. If you have an issue with something related to the offer system please direct your inquiries to the Offer Vendor.

Q. Who is the Offer Vendor?
A. Our first partner in this program is SuperRewards. Their support information may be found at http://www.srpoints.com/help

Q. I have more questions. Who do I talk to?
A. The detailed service FAQ for the offer wall is in our public KB at http://na6.salesforce.com/_ui/selfservice/pkb/PublicKnowledgeSolution/d?orgId=00D8000000

Learn to read then. From the DDO site, emphasis added:

There were also technical issues that raised valid questions about security. Overall it was a poor user experience that was not up to our standards, and for this we apologize.

Sure, I would have phrased it differently, but you can bet that the corporate drone who approved this debacle in the first place died a little inside even thinking about those words.

While not a perfect apology, it is good enough for me.

Turbine has announced that they are dropping the wall, and they also apologized to their players.

That only took a day or so from when the Offer Wall was introduced, which is reasonably fast by corporate standards.

Thanks Turbine, for listening to the players, and for the apology. You make a great game, and I hope to continue playing it well into the future.

Full text of the announcement:

Turbine’s slogan is “Powered by Our Fans." That means more than just words to us. It’s a promise. We pride ourselves on listening closely to you, our players, and working with you to do what’s right.

Turbine is continually looking for ways to stretch the boundaries of pricing and commerce models in our games. That’s the kind of thinking that lead to Founder’s pricing in LOTRO and the launch of Free-to-Play in DDO. We’re always focused on providing the best possible value to the widest group of players, but not if it compromises our relationship with our fans.

Recently, we opened an Offer Wall with a selection of ads that got a strong negative response. There were also technical issues that raised valid questions about security. Overall it was a poor user experience that was not up to our standards, and for this we apologize.

Based on your feedback, we’re stepping away from the ‘Offer’ category for now. We’ll keep exploring alternate ways for players who want points to get them. We’ll also continue to innovate in pricing and accessibility because that’s who we are. As of today, the Offer Wall is coming down. We’ll collect all the feedback we’ve received over the last few days and will use it to guide future decisions.

Finally, there was a lot of speculation about how information such as your username or e-mail address was being used by our commerce partners. Ultimately we chose to pass the e-mail address to our commerce partners in the URL to facilitate e-mailing receipts to players. It went no further than that. Neither PlaySpan nor Super Rewards passed the information on. It was stored in the user database only and not transmitted to any of the companies who advertised via Super Rewards. Players who visited the page did not expose any new information to PlaySpan (our in-game store provider) that they did not already have.

Even though this implementation did not constitute a technical breach of our privacy policy, we certainly understand the concerns that have been communicated to us and how seriously players take their privacy. As a result, the Super Rewards team has already removed the e-mail addresses from their user database. If we decide to return to the Offer category in the future we will certainly work with our partners to implement a better system than the one we tried this week.

Your calculations need to look forward as well. I have over $50 in Turbine Points (non-tradeable currency that can only be used in the Turbine store to buy adventure packs and account features) just sitting there waiting to be spent. I can now play all of the best content in the game until the servers are shut down without spending another penny. I've been playing for six months so far, and in another six months, the cost of my own account ($130) will be less than $11 per month, and dropping. Unless they release enough compelling content that I end up burning through my stockpile, I might be able to get my average spending into the $5-8 a month range in 2011. Since I've been buying content on sale as I go, and have not even entered most of the mid-high level content I bought (Gianthold, Vale of Twilight, etc), I fully anticipate that I might finish 2010 with what I've already bought.

The cost of F2P can really add up for people who want some of the optional stuff from the store, like trinkets that improve the loot from chests, character rebuilds, or potions that increase XP earned by 20% for a few hours. Apart from a shared bank and an additional character slot, I only spend money on adventure packs. Here is a guide to playing for "free", written by a gamer. It is theoretically possible to play without spending a penny, but I have more money than time. So far I have found it well worthwhile, and I really like Turbine's model with the exception of this latest act of stupidity.

Turbine's in dire financial straits. I have no insider information, but it's pretty obvious.

Obvious to who? There have been regular updates to DDO on schedule since going free to play, and their revenue went up by 500% since going free to play. The number of subscribers has doubled, and I don't think that even includes the pay-to-play people such as me, who spend as much or more each month on buying content packs as a subscriber would. As long as they keep releasing content, they'll keep the revenue stream alive from people like me.

LOTRO is the second most popular US MMO, and it has some great expansions, including the new Moria one that just came out... It's like World of Warcraft only done *right*. But that's not going to last, for the same reason AC and DDO died.

{princess bride}Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.{/princess bride}

DDO went free after it slowly decayed. It's probably on the downswing from that huge influx right now.

Don't think so. But then, why look for real numbers when you can just spout FUD and pull stuff out of your ass.

What Turbine needs to do is make a new "boxed collection" every 6 months and sell it in stores for $20. That would keep the new players flowing in and might -- MIGHT -- save them.

You might not have heard, but brick and mortar games stores already have a few nails in the coffin, and could soon go the way of the arcade, the video store, and the buggy whip manufacturer. Ever heard of Steam?

And I have no doubt this spyware thing is a misunderstanding or exaggeration of the facts.

Just by viewing a page on a Turbine site, DDO players have confirmed (by inspecting packets) that the account name and email address were transmitted from the "Offer Wall" page. Add the pre-fetching comment here, and you might be able to see the problem. Sure, my password and credit card were not transmitted, and I only browse with NoScript, but I am probably not representative of the most vulnerable portions of the player base.

Turbine's in dire financial straits. I have no insider information, but it's pretty obvious.

Obvious to who? There have been regular updates to DDO on schedule since going free to play, and their revenue went up by 500% since going free to play. The number of subscribers has doubled, and I don't think that even includes the pay-to-play people such as me, who spend as much or more each month on buying content packs as a subscriber would. As long as they keep releasing content, they'll keep the revenue stream alive from people like me.

LOTRO is the second most popular US MMO, and it has some great expansions, including the new Moria one that just came out... It's like World of Warcraft only done *right*. But that's not going to last, for the same reason AC and DDO died.

{princess bride}Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.{/princess bride}

DDO went free after it slowly decayed. It's probably on the downswing from that huge influx right now.

Don't think so. But then, why look for real numbers when you can just spout FUD and pull stuff out of your ass.

What Turbine needs to do is make a new "boxed collection" every 6 months and sell it in stores for $20. That would keep the new players flowing in and might -- MIGHT -- save them.

You might not have heard, but brick and mortar games stores already have a few nails in the coffin, and could soon go the way of the arcade, the video store, and the buggy whip manufacturer. Ever heard of Steam?

And I have no doubt this spyware thing is a misunderstanding or exaggeration of the facts.

Just by viewing a page on a Turbine site, DDO players have confirmed (by inspecting packets) that the account name and email address were transmitted from the "Offer Wall" page. Add the pre-fetching comment here, and you might be able to see the problem. Sure, my password and credit card were not transmitted, and I only browse with NoScript, but I am probably not representative of the most vulnerable portions of the player base.

Due to the outcry from their customers, Turbine has taken the Offer Wall down while they sort out the issues that arose due to the half-assed broken way they implemented this lame idea.

I am probably part of the target audience they hoped to attract when they went free to play - someone who hadn't played an MMO before, who had played a bit of pen and paper way back when, and who has disposable income that they are willing to spend if the game is fun enough. So far, it has worked well - I have spent $200 on the game in the past five months on my account and my son's account.

I don't want to deal with a company that I cannot trust, or leave my credit card information in their hands. I absolutely do NOT trust lowlife criminal scum like SuperRewards, and by extension, I do not trust any company that has any dealings with them whatsoever. That means you, Turbine.

I know better than to take any of those offers, but Turbine royally screwed up in their implementation. Even viewing the list of offers on the Turbine site meant that my email address and account name for login was likely transmitted to those parasitic bottom-feeders.

I'll still be playing the game as I bought a ton of content that I have yet to explore, but I will be getting Turbine to remove my credit card info from their billing system if this isn't fixed, and a formal apology issued to their customers by next week. I seriously love this game - it is a ton of fun, many of the players are older, and I don't have to worry about most forms of griefing or PvP emphasis that has kept me away from the entire MMO genre so far. I get to explore instanced dungeons in a small group, and have only explored less than a quarter of the content.

Time to turn the heat up to eleven - DDO players haven't killed it for good yet, or received a formal apology for this privacy breach. Group seppuku by the PHBs who thought up this scheme would be an entirely acceptable response at this time, and would go a long ways towards restoring confidence in the company.

On the other hand, it would let my D&D group get together create a rich and vivid shared history without all that awkward talking that we currently have to endure. Now if they could just find a way to remove the requirement to be physically present as well we could be on to a winner.

Well, from reading their webpage that limitation apparently goes away if you were ever at any point a subscriber or have bought anything from their store.

So, you can buy a 60-day time card, see which "VIP" features are worth grinding for and which aren't, then when it expires become a Premium customer with unlimited storage, without them ever having your CC number for the paranoid among us. I like it.

I've just started playing. So far, I've been using bootcamp. I posted a link to a Linux/OS X launcher in a previous reply. That (https://launchpad.net/pylotro) plus Crossover appears to be working for some. Instructions at http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=200985.

Dungeons and Dragons Online Is going free to play September the 9th. If you participated in the beta or are a subscriber you get to start the new Eberron expansion on the 1st of September. They plan to make money using the in game store, selling expansions, potions and other game enhancements. You can still pay and be a VIP member which allows you more privileges.

In short, other people are the reason why playing online sucks.

This is why I'm eagerly looking into playing Dungeons & Dragons Online again. Besides moving to a free-to-play-but-pay-for-more subscription model, you can also hire NPC henchmen to accompany you through the dungeons.

With a henchman, you can probably solo most dungeons on Normal mode. With two other friends, you can hire 3 henchmen (6 total characters), which lets you take on the entire dungeon by yourself (possibly on Hard mode, too). I think you'd still need people for Elite mode, but once you get Elite, you are no longer wowed by the "new-ness" factor anyway, so you're probably doing it for the challenge and rewards.

this topic seems appropriate as it was just recently announced that my favorite MMO, Dungeons and Dragons Online, was moving towards a Free 2 Play Hybrid model. The way it'll work is that existing subs at the standard MMO rate of 15/month or so will be converted into VIPs who will have access to all content as well as 500 points / month. Once the game is relaunched this summer, people will be able to play entirely for free, play for free but pay to unlock certain pieces of content or customization options or pay to be a VIP and have the 500 points/month to spend on convenience and customization options. This system is a generally well planned but highly complex system aimed at providing the most options and attracting the most players in a financially responsible way. More information about the specifics of the announcement can be found at the website for the game at http://www.ddo.com/

You may want to try Never Winter Nights by BioWare for single-purchase game (no recurring fees) or Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach by Turbine for a monthly-fee for the MMO services.

Hmm I messed up the link ... should have hit preview.. There's supposed to be a link here: http://urealms.wittywizard.com/ (re wizard spiders)

Here also is a better link to the ddo wizard spiders: http://forums.ddo.com/archive/index.php/t-97649.html

I think that they COULD find out what they do by following them around. But the years of training of these pirates has turned them into a ninja/pirate combination, taking the best from both worlds, ending the age-old argument, and allowing them to stay concealed.

Well let's just hope that they don't put on spectacles and become wizards!

And watch out for those wizard spiders too.. they have four pairs of spectacles for extra power!

Actually I was quite frightened to hear that in DDO they have indeed added wizard spiders to the mix.

They did. By most accounts, it sucked.

*cough* http://www.ddo.com/

No one talked about this subject yet.But I wonder whether Dungeons & Dragons Online would be converted to 4th and how hard programmers and other stuff should work.Please enlighten me.

...and yet Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach, which is also heavily instanced, has a monthly fee.

Believe me, Baker has gotten plenty of the credit for the creation of Eberron. In fact, he's credited on the front page of Turbine's DDO Website.

I'm not sure what you have against DDO, but you're making a far bigger deal out of this than it deserves. Sorry, but that's my opinion.

/K

AC is ancient and should be used as an example of how succesful Turbine could be at creating an MMO. They just released another expansion for the game, and it is still going strong. AC2 on the other hand was a flop and they just shut the AC2 game worlds off completely. While AC2 had the pretty graphics, and better engine they really broke gameplay.

Combine the experience gained from thier success, and thier failure, and you have a good shot at making a game (or two) that will be the better for it. The Turbine devs have stated over and over again they are trying very hard to stick to DnD rules and convert them to the MMO scope in the best way possible while still makeing the game real time, interactive, and most importantly fun.

Turbine must be doing something right, they've landed the rights to build not only the DnD MMO, but the Middle Earth MMO as well.

While I agree AC became painful to play without Decal (I stopped playing before WoW came out anyway), the game has had enough appeal to last this long, and that is a damn good sign for Turbines future.

http://lotro.turbine.com/
http://www.ddo.com/

Go to this page linked in the story: http://www.ddo.com/.

This specifically says you do not have to be a paying member.

Fill out the forms and them a popup appears that says, very clearly, "The Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach Beta Stress Test is Open to Subscribers Only."

What's the issue here?

Note, the is actually the second fileplanet DDO Stress test. The first ran from November 11th to November 18th (for limited definitions of "ran" as the servers were down most of the time.) Here's the original DDO news article.

Greeks of the world unite!

Turbine is already producing it: http://www.ddo.com/

You're forgetting MMOs. They work much better on a PC, where people have already worked out their own internet access rather than paying Sony or Microsoft for more access (XBox Live!, for instance).

Also, you are forgetting the controllers. Consoles have wonderfully ergonomic controllers (or at least the Cube does), and PCs have 101 buttons. Some games require 101 buttons.

Also, joysticks. No one buys a joystick for a console. So MechWarrior and flight games will always have a place on the PC.

Also, who gives a crap about High Def? That's right, people with a lot of money. I bet they have plenty of money for keeping up with PC graphics card costs, too. So your points about High Definition TV fall flat.

You're also getting confused about how long it takes to develop games. It takes that much work no matter whether you're developing for a console or a PC. Check Halo 2's production cost sometime.

Oh, and A-List titles are still on the PC just as much on the consoles. The only thing is, you've never heard of them. Why? Because they aren't advertised the same way. I understand that that is somewhat of a contradiction in terms. Let me put it this way: PC games don't need as much advertising up front because they are easier to try for free. Partly, this is because it is easier to crack and illegally distribute the full versions of PC games, and partially it is because it is easier to get your hands on demo versions of PC games. Thus, PC games can ride on their merits more often than console games can. That means that you haven't heard about great PC games because they are already selling well without having to buy huge ads.

The market for PC games is big enough for that. For proof of all this, go to http://www.ddo.com/ and check out the 'Alpha' status. There are thousands of hardcore fans rabidly waiting for a game you've never heard of. They will advertise a bit to catch the mainstream, but since they're already assured by release time that they'll make back their production cost, they don't care the same way Microsoft did about Halo 2. Microsoft was so worried about Halo 2 that they paid for an different entire game (http://www.ilovebees.com/ in order to advertise it. PC game makers don't have to do that.

The thing is, Turbine's future is not tied into Asheron's Call. Turbine is developing Dungeons and Dragons Online, and the D&D brand name has the potential to catapult them to the top of the heap if they can make a good game. By no means is the brand a guarantee of success - but it is a guarantee of attention. If the game's beta picks up good buzz, I wouldn't at all be surprised to see DDO enter the market with 250k subscribers.

This has no bearing on your criticism of AC at all, but as far as Turbine, DDO is their future, not AC.

How does combat work in Dungeons & Dragons Online?

We're making a clean break from the "press auto-attack and wait" style of combat that has become so prevalent in today's MMORPGs. Our real-time combat system is designed to be fast and responsive, while still requiring tactical, coordinated decisions from adventuring parties.

Also see this: http://www.ddo.com/forums/showpost.php?p=18648&pos tcount=18

It will be interesting to see if Dungeons and Dragons Online will ever see the light of day. They say combat will be real-time rather than turn-based. Of course, dungeons will be instanced...

D&D Online FAQ