Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Turbine Shows Off Latest D&D, Asheron's Call Announcements

Posted by simoniker on from the spinning-up dept.

Thanks to Warcry for its coverage of MMO creator Turbine's 'Turbine Nation' fanfest, an event which has included new details on the 2005-due Dungeons & Dragons Online, confirming "dungeon randomization as well as instancing in... the game (when you enter a dungeon, a completely separate version of that dungeon is created for you and your party)." GameSpy also has multiple new articles on D&D Online, including a new preview mentioning "D&D Online will be extremely combat-heavy. A whole lot of thought was put into its real-time combat system." Finally, Warcry has details on the Asheron's Call expansion, being developed following Turbine's buyback of the franchise, which apparently includes a "level cap... raise from 126 to 275."

20 comments

  1. ironical.. by gl4ss · · Score: 4, Interesting

    that d&d online will be combat heavy..
    when playing real d&d in it's best form has very little to do with just bashing it off.

    (though.. I have known some games which have gone so ridiculous that I don't know how anyone bothered to play in them after 20th "2000 orcs attack! they can't hurt you! you win!". really shitty dm)

    --
    world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
  2. Re:sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Just when I thought they had let in the last 12 year old...

  3. Instancing... by Taulin · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't understand why MMORPGs make such a big deal of 'instancing a new dungeon' when entering one. Anarchy Online has been doing this since release, and it is over two years old. To my knowledge, it was the first, but I am probably wrong.

    1. Re:Instancing... by MayonakaHa · · Score: 4, Interesting
      It was one of the first, and I liked that about it. I found AO a very interesting game and it kindof appealed to me, but it was just too buggy on release. I'm not sure what they've done since then but their reputation was damaged too early on to get back easily.

      I'm hooked on City of Heroes now, too, and they have instanced dungeons. In fact, I thought I remember hearing that they were supposed to be doing instanced *outdoor* missions. Now that would be something new.

    2. Re:Instancing... by darkwing_bmf · · Score: 2, Informative

      Well there is some instancing to the outdoor missions. Sometimes when you take a hunt down # badguys and the game will spawn a few to attack you ... especially noticable when you exit a building or somesuch ... you know its just for you because the enemy levels will be different than the normal zone enemy levels plus they will come straight for you instead of waiting for you to attack them. However, the numbers usually aren't enough to finish the mission and you still have to find more.

    3. Re:Instancing... by MayonakaHa · · Score: 1

      Well that and like in the Clockwork King task force mission set, after one of the last few missions the giant clockwork Babbage spawns right when you get out of the door who you have to defeat before you can continue. The one thing annoying about that, however, is when a high level team has to do a patrol and decides to just leave the "ambush" spawns alone and go do the rest of the missions. They tend to run rampant and kill the lower levels in the area.

    4. Re:Instancing... by MayonakaHa · · Score: 2, Informative
      I just found the section I was looking for in the updates that refers to instanced outdoor missions. It seems to have been part of the last update, "Through the Looking Glass", but I haven't encountered any of these yet.

      Outdoor Mission Maps:

      * The villains of Paragon City have taken the fight to the streets. Battle your foes in instanced outdoor missions within the city itself, or journey to bizarre alternate worlds and spread justice throughout the multiverse.

      http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/updates.html

    5. Re:Instancing... by slaker · · Score: 3, Informative

      You need to be level 40+ to do an instanced outdoor mission. They're pretty much the missions you get from Portal Corp on Peregrine Island (and if you don't know where Peregrine Island is, don't worry, you wouldn't live long enough to find out). I know one of the missions gets you to a level 40 Psychic Clockwork King and another set brings you Praetorians, the evil versions of CoH icons like Statesman, Synapse and Bastion.

      --
      -- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
  4. Maybe to be used as a tool for Table Top Play? by NashCarey · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Many times DM's have a hard time getting the players on the same page with long descriptive monologues of areas the players are in. With this concept maybe the players only need to look so far as a laptop computer to have a complete idea as to the layout. And if the movement and other things follows the basic rules set forth they may be able to use this as a replacement of purchasing expensive minatures, paints, and markers to help the players visualize. I personally like when different formats come together to create a new style of play.

    For instance I have recently put on an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) at http://ruaware.org/. Many people feel the game is more an RPG than an ARG, but whatever it is, it is new, and when games come together, everyone wins.

    1. Re:Maybe to be used as a tool for Table Top Play? by MayonakaHa · · Score: 1

      Your ARG looks really interesting. I kindof want to join it but I'll have to see what my girlfriend thinks of it before I do. She's into roleplaying, however, so I don't think it'll be a hard sell.

  5. small server size vs. lag vs. finding a group by bbingham · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Turbine's plans to have very small servers - did I actually read 200-300 per server? may mesh with the need to dramatically reduce lag.

    Since they are proposing an almost-twitch game they'll get hammered by people complaining about the lag.

    Small servers -> less server-based lag and also could imply less network latency depending on server locations and connectivity.

    However, the downside is finding someone compatible to play with when you're on. I wonder if they are intending something like City of Heroes instanced locations (Steel Canyon, Steel Canyon 2, etc) that keep the number of heroes down to a reasonable number in an area but give you lots of opportunities to find pickup teammates. COH has instanced missions also - they work fine and clearly all new MMPORGS will have something similar.

    All in all, Turbine seems to be on the right track. They should be heartened by the awesome launch of COH - the MMPORG market is far from saturated.

    1. Re:small server size vs. lag vs. finding a group by will_die · · Score: 4, Insightful

      From what I can understand, from other sources, thier will be will central city. This central city is where everyone will start and will be the main meeting point. The city will have some adventure points, like sewers, dark alleys, etc but most of the adventuring will be outside of the city.
      With thier just being one central meeting place it will make for easier in the locating of team members. Once you have your team formed you move on out and the all dungeons and location outside of the city are instanced to your own team.

    2. Re:small server size vs. lag vs. finding a group by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      sorry about the anonymous post, the proxy at work won't let me log in ... but lets me post ... who knows?

      Anyways i play SWG pretty heavily, looking forward to this game since i am a long time D&D fan, anyways the new Jump To Lightspeed expansion is supposed to similar to the X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and be arcady and twitchy, so we can see if Lucas and SOE can pull it off. Hopefully it will go over well, and then D&D can improve on their methods, but it won't ... as always something will get screwed

  6. New Forum by jjlaw · · Score: 0

    This site is pretty cool. Cool D&D info. It's anything gose on this site.

    http://gussnews.com/forum/index.php?

    --
    - If I close my mind in fear, please pry it open.
  7. Instancing sucks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    It's contrary to the appeal of an MMOG (IMO obviously). Making your individual mark on the persistent world is the attraction.

    If the so-called persistent world is really just mostly an area where avatars meet to go do instanced content together, and not interact at all with the rest of the world (who are themselves in a million instanced areas), isn't the "MMOG" really just a meta-game, or chat room?

    If games whose main content is party-instanced areas can count as MMOGs, then any game with an online component can also. And I guess Gamespy Arcade is also an MMOG.

    1. Re:Instancing sucks. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think you're very confused. There is no possibility of a virtual reality persistent world. A MMOG is a, get this, a GAME.

      The fact of the matter is when you have an artificially small land mass and no limits to population growth you're going to get some serious crowding. Crowding sucks. It's like when you're at the grocery and there's 20 people trying to check out and there's only two registers open.

      Instancing is just one wonderful way to stave off crowding and as someone who recognizes this legitimate problem I welcome it.

      There's one other technological way around crowding which is grid computing. I believe the only two MMOGs that use this are Wish and SecondLife. Basically when more people play they add another computer to the grid with another few acres of land. This is very complicated and very expensive to develop a scalable landmass grid. It also takes some finesse to load balance that sucker once it gets going. Doesn't do you much good to create a grid only to have everyone sitting on one node. That said Wish is still in a rocky beta and Secondlife is a glorified collaborative whiteboard. There has yet to be a convincing MMOG that demonstrates the feasibility of this technology for video games.

      That said, instancing is easy, and at the end of the day it just works for the kind of experience most people are looking for. They don't have a conversation with 100 people at a time. They have one with the four or five people in the group. They don't want a crowded-checkout-line experience that non-instancing games inevitably give.

  8. +5 Pedantic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe it was ironic before the term CRPG was coined.

    These days, it just comes off as old-man bitterness at the change that's occured in the world since the "good old days".

    D&D has always been what you make of it. Other people engaging in combat-heavy sessions shouldn't affect your gaming experience if your intention is to RP.

  9. Re:sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    £

  10. Re:sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    £