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Who created the Warforged?
d.3.l.t.r.3.3 writes "James Jones (Turbine), declared on an interview at MMORPG.COM that D&D Online and Turbine basically built the world of Eberron introducing and inventing many elements that, in reality, were already present in the Campaign Settings since early design, like the Warforged race. Since MMORPG dodged the bullet when a well informed Eberron fan pointed out the glaring errors, I asked Keith Baker (Eberron Game Designer) to clarify the matter. He promptly gave his own opinion, confirming that Warforged were his own original creation and that the words of James Jones were a poor choice. He also doctored the Turbine staff about what a Campaign Setting really is.
The inevitable conclusion of the article is: how much can online gaming sites be trusted, when they are protecting their
own sponsor's image?"
Do your job and clean up that summary. It's atrocious.
I have to say I can't understand this post at all. I play Eberon/DnD and i still cant work it out!
Besides the awkward and nearly unreadable sentence structures in the article, 'dodged the bullet', 'doctored' and 'inevitable conclusion' do not mean what the submitter seems to think they mean.
If the editors won't actually edit articles (to keep Slashdot "more real", apparently), how about just not posting articles that are incomprehensible gibberish?
The Warforged appears as a playable race in the Eberron sourcebook, published by Wizards of the Coast in 2004. I remember reading about the Warforged in promotional materials and on WotC's website before that. There's no need to even bother Keith Baker about this.
OK, I admit it, I stopped playing AD&D back when we still used the 2.0 editions with Unearthed Arcana. Our little group had no time to learn 3, and our DM moved to the middle of nowhere. So who or what are the Warforged? Do the pretty pictures in the article showing some iron golem like being and some mysterious red-eyed creature represent this race? Would an old AD&D fan like myself with only a few hours a week to spare actually like DDO?
Jonah HEX
Horror & SciFi Erotic Nudes
I readily admit that my computer expertise when it comes to games extends about as far as free cell, but in the following sentence, "He also doctored the Turbine staff about what a Campaign Setting really is.", should 'doctored' have been 'tutored', or is this another case of me being hopelessly out of touch with current slang?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
..with World of Warcraft. Apparently the Blood Elves are space pirates who hijacked the Dranei's "dimensional ship." There was so much double-talk going on when they first released the lore. This is just a standard problem that will always pop up when people try to build on other people's stories.
Blerg.
I'm sure there are plenty of would be professional editors out there who would love to get some intern time with /. as an editor. Think about it, you can pay them crap, but they get work experience, and /.ers don't have to spam every post with complaints about the lack of editing.
-Rick
PS: Hiring an editor, even an intern editor, WOULD be news.
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Wow.
... wow.
It's only 0818h EDT here, and there's already a completely incomprehensible write-up on Slashdot.
I mean, I played AD&D (2nd Ed w/ liberal additions from whatever 1st Ed source materials we had on hand) for a good solid 10 years plus some play-by-email campaigns afterwards, and I try to keep up with goings-on at WotC and the D&D universe in general, but
Puts a whole new meaning into "WTF".
"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area." - Major Mike Shearer, UK
I agree, I can't read this crap.
FF7 Fans Fight Back, Vote against FF7 sucks and Pass it on.
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I apologize for the horrible summary (since I'm not native english, I sort of expected that). I guess that, or the editor has superpowers, or the summary is comprehensible (aside for the idiomatic fiascos). The point of the summary (and of the article) is: Turbine, one of the major sponsors of MMORPG.COM, tried more or less willingly to gain design credits on a campaign setting they are licensed to use. While many Eberron fans pointed the Warforged discrepancy to the editing staff of MMORPG, they basically ignored them with an official reply, not even bothering to sort things out. So I asked Baker for clarifications, that was kindly enough to work out my apparently poor english and write back an answer that straighten thing out: Turbine has no control over Baker's world. This not what DDO staff said at PAX and it's irritating that to make users believe they did some serious work for their pretty shallow and superficial (at least at start) D&D licensed game they have to steal another designer's work that should have to be the base for their own game setting (like Baker pointed out). End of story. Sorry again.
Matteo Anelli
.brain - http://www.dot-brain.com
I thought you had to be literate to play D&D.
It's one of the few that don't kiss the ass of the game publishers, such as SOE. They even have stickied "We are angry at SOE threads" in the SWG forum, for example. The MMORPG SWG forum has become the main refuge for us, as we are free from the harsh censorship and favorites playing on the SOE boards.
(Indeed, the suckups called "Galactic Senators" on the SOE boards get so pissed that we can talk freely there that they come over and troll us).
Corporatism != Free Market
Everyone always takes credit for developing the game. It's a cold-water shower the first time you see your publisher take credit for making the game you're slaving away at, but it's what happens every time. Likewise the developer will take full credit whenever possible for the success of a game, even though it may be deeply related to creative advertising and strokes of distribution genious by the publisher... not to mention them seeing the potential in the design and actually funding the thing. The developers will claim glory for the brilliant art, even though it was all outsourced. The publishers claim glory for online buzz, even though it was thanks to a funny fan video on YouTube. Listening to the presidents of both companies, you'd think they built the thing by hand themselves.
And when a game fails, it's because the other team didn't carry their weight.
It's not related to advertising. It's just S.O.P..
The ______ Agenda
MMORPG.com sucks. they take money from game developers and skew their ratings. it is a commonly known fact. large producers like SOE does not need MMORPG.com to promo their products. they pay expensive liscense fees for well established brands. that is why you can remain posting on its SWG forum until SOE decides to pay em off.
This is a common problem with text that has been hand translated from another language (in this case, I would suspect either Java or Telugu). I have found that running it through BabbleFish (say, into German and back again) cleans up most the problems. What the article summary was trying to say was:
Hope that clarifies things. Feel free to use this trick on your own whenever you run accross text like this in the future.
--MarkusQ
DDO sucks, their I said it. If someome else hasn't beaten me to it, it's been said now.
I played DDO in the beta, I was part of the head start, and played through til almost module 2. My subscription was paid up til August, I quit playing the first week of June. The game is just bad, and the more Turbine does the more they shy away from Keith Baker's vision of what Eberron is to be like(read the intro to the campaign setting and you'll get the idea) and the more it isn't DnD. About the only good thing this game did was to get me to read the Eberron novels, of which Keith Baker's own Dreaming Dark trilogy flat out makes the Stormreach of DDO look like a horribly knock off. We should all do Eberron and WotC a favor and not play this game, let it fail. That way a decent DnD MMO can be made by a company that isn't trying to grab the WoW crowd!
Seriously, if I was the world designer, I'd be distancing myself from that smoking bombshell as far and as fast as possible. Turbine somehow managed to take what should have been the #1 slam dunk MMORPG franchise, the potential World of Warcraft killer, and turn it into a laughingstock that will quietly fall back into the shadows and be even smaller and less relevant than Puzzle Pirates.
One thing DDO has done is maximized the use of the Y axis in all their maps, creating a true 3-D world. Who doesn't love Feather Fall?
First of all, I would argue that this is the use of the Z axis, not the Y.
Secondly, I would point out that City of Heroes has had this, including in-flight combat, for 2.5 years.
But kudos to Turbine for implementing this functionality, which was sorely lacking in Neverwinter Nights.
The simple problem? Health. As you no doubt know not all classes are equal in D&D especially at the first few levels. D&D makes up for the weakness of some classes in combat by being by nature a multiplayer game. The warrior, the mage and the healer, one player to take the hits, one player to do the damage and one player to rule^H^H^H^Hheal them all.
CRPG's typically are one-player affairs, so they have to adjust themselves to allow this single player to survive even if they have choosen a class that isn't survivable. One way is too be liberal with health potions. Just keep chucking them back and hope that eventually your pathetic rogue will actually kill the enemy.
So what does DDO do? Put all the health potion vendors BEYOND the beginner area. This lead to a lot of players choosing the lesser combat/healing classes getting stuck. If you used the 2/3 potions you got at the start to early you just couldn't survive later dungeons.
No you couldn't group with a healer or tank either, a D&D MMORPG game with NO early grouping. Says it all really.
I was in the late beta and for this design decision to be implemented still tells me everytbing about the game I need to know. Neither am I alone. DDO commercial success is severely lacking. There is a reason WoW sells so well. Not because it is so good or so original, in many ways it is just a cheap Everquest 2 clone but with a shit load of style and class added. WoW is if you like an iPod, not a better music player, not a more capable one but one that looks good and just fucking works.
DDO is not. Play it, but be sure you know you are playing a D&D game designed by people who forbid low levels to group. A MMORPG, with no grouping.
A MMORPG where I had more cash at level 3 then at level 30 in WoW but nothing to spend it on.
Oh and the warforged are a created race that is very very ugly so I didn't play one since I only play pretty girls. Basically they are a strong warrior race that is healed by mages instead of priests.
But no, an old D&D fan probably won't like DDO. It just ain't anything like it. Neverwinter Nights might be more up your ally. D&D Pen&Paper is to me all about the dungeon master who is a human and who can improvise on the spot. No good dungeon master is going to allow the party to be wiped out in the first dungeon or force all the players to play the first few levels all alone.
A human dungeon master is like a writer, he puts the actors of his play in constant peril but also makes sure the cavalery arrives just in the nick of time. A great dungeon master makes you feel like you escaped by the skin of your nose but not actually get killed. That is the difference between computer and human controlled RPG's. Humans care.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
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From my readings of Secrets of Xen'drik, the quori originally created the warforged, forty thousand years ago in their war with the giants.
What?
No Longer a Menace to Society.
Alexandria Morrigan born 2/22/01 l. 20.5in wt. 7 lbs. 5 oz.
I guess Turbine is going to claim they invented the Nazgul for LOTRO next.
~ lilibat gamer geek goth girl