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

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."

Comments

Re:Instancing...

[darkwing_bmf]

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.

Re:Instancing...

[MayonakaHa]

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

Re:Instancing...

[slaker]

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.