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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.
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.
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 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
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
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
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.
I thought it was actually a lot of fun. If they'd added more content and maybe made the engine a little bit smoother, I'd probably still be on board now.
D&D definitely isn't slam-dunk though. It and its licensed game are much less relevant to newer generations of gamers. The people who'd be likely to get into it are instead using fantasy MMOs or MUDs as an outlet, whether they're poor substitutes or not. When guilds I've in have had discussions about who plays D&D, usually it's only maybe 10% of the membership, max, and it's vastly skewed towards the 30+ demographic.
I run in very dorky circles, and I've only actually seen D&D played once when I stumbled into a group of acquaintances hiding in the community kitchen. Those are the only four people I know that have ever played a game of D&D. I'd say, bottom line, D&D is the granddaddy, and new gamers know that and have a bit of respect for it in that regard, but they're just not motivated to play it. Lord of the Rings has the potential to be the WoW killer, DDO just had the potential to be a solid niche game.
The warforged are golems who are A) Intelligent and B) available as a player character race. With some good campaign world backstory. They were built as war machines and ended up with free will. As you would expect, some "built in" AC, don't heal naturally. Must be repaired, etc.
I also quit playing back in the AD&D days, and have just recently started in a 3.5 campaign. The ruleset and gameplay are much improved, in all aspects, IMO. Much more flexable. And a lot of the "rules just to have rules" have been removed (racial limits to class levels, etc). The world of Eberron is particularly well done, especially in setting/backstory. I haven't played DDO, so can't comment on that.
---
To the question that might be buried somewhere in TFA, *I* invented the warforged. When I was playing origional (blue book, boxed set) D&D. In '78. I remember encountering a golem and thinking "It would be cool if I could play one of THOSE!!!".
So, there you have it. Please send my royalty checks to.....
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Seriously, there is gonna be a lot of arguing, especially of the "prior art" type, about this. However, it is really a question of "obviousness". I would be surprised if there were more than 20% of D&D campaigns where at least one person didn't think of the exact same thing.
I'm not taking anything away from WOTC (the D20 system in general, and the new D&D rules rock), or the creators of Eberron (one of the best campaign settings I have seen, period.).
"If, therefore, any be unhappy, let him remember that he is unhappy by reason of himself alone."
~Epictetus
First, if you're an old AD&D guy, the new 3.5 rules may be somewhat rough to get past your craw: No more THAC0, no more race-specific classes, all new classes of spellcasters, bizzare new combat rules. 3rd Edition was built with miniature play in mind, and it really shows in the combat rules.
If you can get past the rules changes, DDO is a game with at decent graphics, and usually good audio. Not great, the color palette runs heavy into the brown range and the textures are uninspired, but they serve their purpose. Dungeons will, from time to time, have voice overs by a "DM" that add a nice touch, and while the music that plays whilst you're on a crawl is usually good, the music that fills Inns is often grating.
And you're going to spend a lot of time in Inns. The other poster pointed out how rare healing potions are, but didn't bring up the fact that you can't heal--without spells or potions--while you're in a dungeon unless you find a--single-use--rest shrine. You can't set up a camp and sleep to regain a few hit points, or to relearn a spell. Inns are the only way to recharge.
Combat in the game is real-time, and while it's disgustingly difficult sometimes (when's the last time you needed to roll a 17 to hit a kobold?), it's handled well. That is to say it's the most 'realistic' combat in an MMO, in that strategy is valuable and rewarded. Unfortunately, it doesn't prevent the combat from becoming a click-fest.
Be prepared to find a group to play with. The game is not designed for single-players, period. Many people will argue that tabletop D&D requires at least two players anyway, but the difference is that in tabletop games, the dungeons can be scaled to groups from 1 to 10 or more. In DDO, most of the dungeons I ran needed 3 people if you wanted a chance to get through without dying, 4 to be safe.
All quests are dungeons, also, so if you like variety, well, you've got sewers and cellars, sometimes a warehouse. When you're not in a dungeon, and wandering the streets, the streets are empty, except for 'vendors'. You can't pick pockets on the streets, or break into shops, or arrest ruffians who are doing the same. You can just walk to either the Inn, the store or the dungeon.
This all sounds pretty damning, and combined with an ugly, often unintuitive interface and the difficulty of getting together a pickup group, it really is. The only redeeming factor are the dungeons themselves. Every class is useful when you're down in the hole. Rogues have a purpose, from picking locks to disarming traps. DDO is the only MMO I've played that makes those skills useful.
If you've only got a few hours per week, and have a dedicated group of friends who will play with you, it can be fun, but Neverwinter Nights is a better choice: less expensive, no fee to play, the ability to save your game when you need to log off for the night (and pick up where you left off) and unlimited ability to innovate, thanks to the toolkit and the modules that have already been written. NWN2 is slated for mid-October release right now, as well, with even more promise than the first. I and my group of gaming buddies, eagerly await its release.
Likewise, NCSoft is supposed to release Dungeon Runners before the end of the year. Free to download, free to play, the game looks like WoW, DDO and Diablo II had some kind of crazy lovechild. The designers have said that you'll have to pay for 'premium' content, but that the game is prefectly playable without any of the pay-for stuff.