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Dungeons and Dragons Online Alpha Registration
Evil Avatar (and everyone else) picked up on the registration announcement for the Dungeons and Dragons Online Alpha phase of testing. From the article: "The world of Eberron awaits your arrival, as you embark on the great adventures that Dungeons & Dragons is known for. Register through the members only area today -- and prepare to master this unique new online campaign world!" If any Turbine folks are reading Slash today, I'd just like to mention how much I like your logo. :)
Well, after years and years of text and graphics online games that copied or were inspired by D&D, D&D finally felt it was time to do their own....
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I don't think their logo is anything special. It looks more like an orange cut in half than...oh, you're trying to suck up to them in order to get into the alpha. Never mind. Good luck with that.
"Please Note: At this time, Alpha signup is reserved for registered DDO forum members only. Non-forum members who attempt to sign up during this exclusive signup period will be disqualified from participating in the Alpha."
Can I attack the darkness?
Aye, forgotten realms or dragonlance would've been nice.
You think the "Million Gnome March" in World of Warcraft was something?
Just imagine a "Million Kender March", with everyone having an automatic pick-pocket ability. . .
They have two of the most coveted titles for upcoming MMORPGs and yet the level of excitement on various message boards is next to nothing.
They currently manage two of the least popular MMORPGs out there, AC1 and AC2. Both of which are going to offer expansions in the coming months.
The problem Turbine faces is that a good number of the current MMORPG crowd associate them with cheating and exploiting all because of their idiot choice of condoning AUTOMATED (but attended) combat macros (bots) in AC1. Combined with the fact that once they let the cat out of the bag people were no longer in the lore of their game and only in gaining experience. It has to be pretty sad when your GMs have to randomly check obvious bots to make sure someone is actually at the screen when they should have been actively preventing the occurence of automation in the first place.
Turbine had a great many good ideas but they squandered it pandering to their worst fans. They allowed one abuse after another and then to top it off hired some of the same people who wrote some of the automating applications.
The big question for Turbine is, can they get enough new to the genre players into D&D to start to change their reputation? How much will their current reputation hinder acceptance of these two new games. Last, is there any real anticipation for this game anymore?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Eberron is one of their new settings. They're obviously trying to generate interest in it. There's no need to try get people hooked on Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms, they already are
Playing poker with a joker and some Uno cards
I imagine it will indeed be turned based, but in an action-y display style that minimizes the fact that you swing, then the monster swings, etc - ala NWN style. Then again, what do I know - I'm just a humble kobold...
"As the intrepid kobold companion continues his journey, he begins to wonder... if priests raises dead, why anybody die?
I searched the ddo.com web site, and I just can't find any info on this.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
For a long time, battle.net was known for it's bugs and hacks. With Diablo I there was a bug where you could dupe anything by dropping it in a certain manner, god mode, invisibility mode. It kept me from buying Diablo II or playing D I online. It hasn't stopped me from trying WoW though.
As far as Turbine is concerned, they've had to live with Microsoft's legacy and AC2 was simply a pitiful flop. Sequels really don't make sense in MMORPGs. While you might draw in some new players, if the new game is perceived to be better than the old one, you'll just rape the user base from your existing game. Nothing like spending millions of dollars developing a new game only to have the same players. (and more support costs)
And the exploiting in AC is blown out of proportion. The difference in combat macros between AC and WoW: Blizzard supplied an approved method of hacking their UI.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman
You are for the most part correct, with one minor discrepancy.
Turbine was the developer and Microsoft was the publisher. Microsoft provided the servers, Microsoft provided the bandwidth, Microsoft provided the in-game and out-of-game technical support. Microsoft handled the billing. Microsoft provided the login servers (via Passport - Ick!).
The people at Turbine have on numerous occassions stated that they wanted to put an end to most of the 'cheating' and 'hacking', even going so far as to writing the code to do so, only to be told "No" by Microsoft. Microsoft did not want to piss off it's customers (as hard as that is to believe) and Microsoft basically ran Asheron's Call into the ground until they didn't see any future profits.
At that point the gang at Turbine bought back the rights to the AC franchise, bought the servers and moved them to their own location, transitioned the billing away from Microsoft and put all new rules and code in place to put a stop to the 'cheating' and 'hacking'.
Bottom line: Turbine does not approve of any cheating or hacking and it's really unfair to them that their first big game got such a bad reputation for them.
I have started and stopped playing Asheron's Call (not AC2!) at least 3 times to play other MMORPGs and will probably start again on time #4 when the new expansion pack is released in May. I get lured away by flashy, newer games, but I keep coming back to it. It has the best, most detailed and most player-involved background and history of any on-line game world I've ever played (and believe me, I've played *all* the popular MMORPGs).
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing -- Emo Phillips
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
...unique new online campaign world
how is it unique? every other mmorpg has expanded the basics of D&D to fit an online persistant world, what can they possibly do now to make themselves "unique" when everyone's already copied their style? force everyone to role-play somehow?
hmm, maybe have a filter that would translate OOG chatter, like the word "car" would become "horse-cart" and "yo whuddup bitch!" would turn into "forsooth yon shrewish maiden!"
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.
With Blizzard I could do everything I ever did with Decal. Including running bots. The difference is that Decal has a huge learning curve, you have to understand COM and shared memory space. (or be a VB weanie) With WoW, if you can do a little XML and just the basic OOP, you can write a plugin. BTW, I have written plugins for both for my own personal use.
And FWIW, the bug you mentioned in another post was the spike bug, making spikes and selling them back for a profit. After all the yelling, whining, and hand wringing, it really had no effect on the game. Particularly when they opened Verdantine long after it was fixed. Unless you were an eBayer trying to make money. Then it probably cut into your profits. On the worlds that were 'exploited', for many players (even ones that didn't 'exploit') the game got better. Players became more generous. But it's not like pyreal was scarce anyway, the loot profiles were very generous. I know I blew millions of pyreal gambling on VT trying to get gromnies for the mansion.
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. -- Harry Truman
See http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=products/eber ron/864100000, http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=products/eber ron/864300000, and http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=products/eber ron/177300000.
But I don't think that's the reason why. Disclaimer before I continue: I've nowhere near as much experience with Dragonlance as I do with the Realms-so some of these factors might not be applicable to Dragonlance.
First off, geography. Doing a FR MMORPG is a huge task, because you have to cover all of Faerun. Which you probably can't. So you have to set borders. WHERE? The Realms does not lend itself to setting borders on the areas you're playing in, and that's fine. The only place you could use without setting arbitrary borders would be the Dalelands, and that has its own problems(hugely detailed, too few cities, no metropolises, too undiverse a monster/enemy population). If you try and take on all of Faerun, you actually run into the same problem-you'd need to set arbitrary boundaries(sure, the Spine of the World's to the north, but how about the Endless Wastes to the east? Those are past the Sunset Mountains, yes, but you could easily get around them by going to the north of Lake Ashane and heading along the Golden Way).
Additionally, any MMORPG has to set itself from its competitors. Ignoring the system/rules options the developers implement, you face the fact that D&D is so old. It's especially apparent in the Realms, which is so old and so influential that a lot of Realms content(which has uniquely Realmsian twists and aspects near-always) has been ripped off and put in other games over the years(minus the uniquely Realmsian aspects and twists, of course). An MMORPG wouldn't preserve those aspects-and as such, it would seem tired and worn out to your average MMORPG player,even with the D&D Online name.
What's Eberron's responses to these?
1. Set it on Xen'Drik. Yeah, it's a continent, but not too large of one-and you can set boundaries wherever you like, it's that undetailed.
2. Be Eberron-infused with new concepts and a slightly different theme from what's out there-seem different from the rest of the pack.
3. (No, you didn't miss a paragraph above) Eberron is new. Eberron is undetailed. As such, Eberron can give the developers the freedom they need to develop their setting as they want to-they don't have to be constrained(see how well SWG did with that)
And of course they gain interest in their new setting-but I don't think that's it.
The role of the writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say. -Anais Nin