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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."

3 of 20 comments (clear)

  1. 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. 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.