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Dungeons and Dragons Online 2 - Forgotten Realms
burdock2
Member UncommonPosts: 420
I think the next Turbine project should indeed be Dungeons and Dragons Online 2 - set in the Forgotten Realms and using an enhanced LOTRO engine. The LOTRO engine lends itself perfectly to the D&D worlds, with beautiful DX10 graphics and wide open areas (Not instanced) and I think, since Forgotten Realms is one of the most popular worlds for D&D and with the new 4th Edition ruleset coming out (Tiefling starting race, anyone?) it would be an awesome Cash Cow for Turbine (who already have the D&D licence). Heres hoping....
Comments
Also, I think that they couldn't get the license for Forgotten Realms.
Bleh!!!!!! FR is decent and all, but I would like something a bit more hardcore out of a D&D second world. maybe Ravenloft or DarkSun.......
Actually, Ravenloft is a good idea, it could be the first true "Horror" MMORPG - and plane could be a different "Zone". Aye, I stand corrected, bring on Ravenloft! I loved those old games, Strahds Possession and Sands of the Prophets, werent they called??
I love Turbine, but I really don't think they could do the setting justice. Not because it is 'too good' for them or anything of that nature, I just don't consider Toril compatible with Turbine's style.
I think Forgotten Realms has been done to death personally. I would say more of a Planescape, but we're getting extraplanar travel next mod anyways...and I like the more blurred lines of alignment and lore of Eberron more than most settings.
No way!!!!!
Dragon Lance !!!!!!!!
Fact: LOTRO is using an enhanced DDO engine, which is actually an enhanced version of the AC2 engine.Also, I think that they couldn't get the license for Forgotten Realms.
Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure the gfx engine upgrade DDO got in module 5 was pulled over from LOTRO, not the other way around, i.e.
It's pretty obvious that DDO has been the beneficiary of code from LOTRO: the item view showing base damage/restrictions/etc., "bags", AH improvements (although AH originally went from DDO to LOTRO). I'm also pretty sure the large landscape areas were made possible by the engine upgrades pulled from LOTRO.
That does not specify anything about using one engine for another.
I am sure if you look at previous module updates, you would see other updates that would say something similar to that. Does that mean its originally from LoTR's engine? No
Actual sources would help to prove your thought.
My understanding is Turbine uses their own game engine called "Turbine Engine". I believe DDO is TE 2.0 and LotRO is TE2.5
True, except that the graphics engine update happend in LOTRO long before it happened in DDO.
Your point is valid though without actual sources we really don't know what is really happening behind the scenes.
Similarly the AI engine was upgraded in DDO much later than in LOTRO, which launched with it. They both use the Kynapse AI engine now.
I do remember them hiring an AI development team to work on the AIs of the mobs. It was a huge improvement.
I do remember them hiring an AI development team to work on the AIs of the mobs. It was a huge improvement.
Yeah, Kynapse is a great system, and even the devs have said they've only unlocked a small portion of what it can do, so AI will continue to get better all the time.
I think Vincenz more or less covered my answer, I would be happy with Planescape as a setting, FR has been flogged to death and become very pastiche. Ebberon seems a well thought through setting with a sensible interpretation of alignment, although I accept it may be out of peoples comfort zone.
I don't think it would be a cash cow, I think D&D luddites would find fault whatever was produced. Actually with the current state of the MMO industry, I am not sure it is possible to create a cash cow, at best a reasonable profit. I am not even sure the GW model works, yes you get most of your money up front, but how long does that money have to last, NCSofts profits from it seem to dip sharply if they don't throw out another expansion very quickly.
As for wide open areas, I don't remember doing a lot of aimless wandering around wide areas back when I played D&D. That would have been a little on the dull side.
Can you imagine our standard MMO as a D&D quest:
"You come over the hill and there is a lake, by the lake is a wolf, sort of just standing there. Beyond it are two wild boars sort of just standing there. You can also make out several clumps of other animals, hanging about."
The realism is just breathtaking, it is like virtual hiking with wildlife abuse.
I think Vincenz more or less covered my answer, I would be happy with Planescape as a setting, FR has been flogged to death and become very pastiche. Ebberon seems a well thought through setting with a sensible interpretation of alignment, although I accept it may be out of peoples comfort zone.
I don't think it would be a cash cow, I think D&D luddites would find fault whatever was produced. Actually with the current state of the MMO industry, I am not sure it is possible to create a cash cow, at best a reasonable profit. I am not even sure the GW model works, yes you get most of your money up front, but how long does that money have to last, NCSofts profits from it seem to dip sharply if they don't throw out another expansion very quickly.
As for wide open areas, I don't remember doing a lot of aimless wandering around wide areas back when I played D&D. That would have been a little on the dull side.
Can you imagine our standard MMO as a D&D quest:
"You come over the hill and there is a lake, by the lake is a wolf, sort of just standing there. Beyond it are two wild boars sort of just standing there. You can also make out several clumps of other animals, hanging about."
The realism is just breathtaking, it is like virtual hiking with wildlife abuse.
I get the same feeling regarding open worlds. I can't imagine this "open world from P&P" that people keep talking about actualy being utilized in a P&P session, you are talking two or three weeks of weekly gaming sessions just to get to a adventure. Normally in my P&P sessions the travel time was glossed over unless we hit an encounter, so we could spend more time doing what we actually got together to do, you know the adventure.
As to the OP, honestly I am sick of Forgotten Realms, hell I'd even rather see Greyhawk over Forgotten Realms, but I am quite happy with Eberron. It's a new and wide open setting without any danger of running into Drizzt or Wulfgar (except for the few unimaginative players).
I have a Core2Duo at 3.0 gighz , 4 gig ram and a radeon HD 2900 Pro and LOTRO lags and stutters like a pile of junk even at Medium settings..
Thats just sad.
I can run it smoothly on medium/high (depending on the settings) and I have no lag or jerkyness. It seems you have no knowledge on how to set up you graphics settings within a game or on your graphics card manager.
Pentium Dual -Core 1.6GHz
2GB memory
NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT 512MB memory
Vista Home Premium 32 bit
Also, as someone has said before. LoTR uses the Turbine Engine 2.5 (verified) . So in truth it does not use the exact same engine as AC2. There is no AC2 engine.
I wouldn't mind seeing a FR setting but would definately play a Ravenloft setting. I only play 1 mmo at a time (real life is so annoying) and I would seriously consider the Ravenloft game.
Forgotten Realms expansion or sequel = Yes Please!
People whined back when emphasis was put on Forgotten Realms, phasing out Greyhawk too. Now they whine about Eberron, even though FR isn't going anywhere. People can't deal with change, anything new is bad, blah blah... then they wonder why all MMO's are nothing but EQ with different graphics and sounds...
I would be perfectly fine with Forgotten Realms Online, or even Eberron Online, or whatever D&D setting, as long as D&D gets thrown out with the bath water. It's been covered many times in these forums alone that pen-and-paper cannot and will not translate 100% to an MMO. The problem we'd run into is other than the graphics, the lore, and the names over certain NPC heads... is we'd have yet another EQ with different graphics and sounds.
Yeah, I think DDO has actually stayed as close as possible, by respecting the majority of the rule set, while making certain changes that make the game much more fun and appealing.
Turn-based combat, for example, would suck...a lot...IMO!
Also, expecting every single core class and race from any of the settings would mean about a 10 year development cycle. Don't get me wrong, I hope we continue to add, but if you've looked at the books lately...there's an INSANE number of classes for most settings now.
Anyway, Eberron is in my opinion one of the best worlds for d20 along with Ravenloft. It is something diffferent from the generic fantasy world like Forgotten Realms. DDo Eberron is the only steam & magic (Steampunk) MMORPG and probably one of the two RPG's ever made in a steampunk world together with Arcanum.
REALITY CHECK
I would like to see more done with Eberron, but not so confining like they did with DDO. Eberron can still make an excellent MMO setting, because it was designed to have many areas left open for DM's to create their own little custom places. A true Eberron MMO would have to also include psionics, craftings, and the unique races that come from the setting.
I do completely agree about the "just standing there". Maybe Turbine could hire the person(s) from Nevrax who designed the predator-prey algorythm for Ryzom. The herbavores migrated and the carnevores followed them. That world was so much more "alive" than any other MMO that I've seen.
DDO2 would be great [and DDO could be better] if it had:
Dynamic spawns - randomly placed [somewhat like some of the rare encounters do now, except have their spawn points vary as well as when/if they spawn]
More Open areas with those Dynamic Spawns - Outdoor adventures FTW! {more Outdoors probably coming with Druids - can't recall when }
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FR would be ok, but seems rather stagnent now. Perhaps, as someone mentioned, that Wizards/Hasbro doesn't want to pay for TSRs license.
I'd love to see Darksun Online but it may have the same TSR problem or whoever made the original MMO may still have the sole rights to it.
*I know that Wizards - the POG people! - bought TSR, but TSR may have already licensed some titles so they could not be included in the sale. I absolutely hated "the POG people" for buying TSR at the time, but they seem to have done some good things for RPGing [and some bad - v3.5 six months after v3.0!] I bet 4.0 is actually going to be based on DDO! Action points, spell points, ...
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Actually it wouln't be the first Horror MMORPG... There is already one out, forget the name. Also CCP White Wolf is currently in development of a WOD MMORPG.
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