Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Dungeons & Dragons Online: Q&A #5
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
Turbine's Victor Watcher returns with five more answers to the questions posed by Staff Writer Jon Wood as we continue to examine the setting and underlying mechanics of the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons Online.
;) MMORPG.com: A few of our readers were wondering if you were planning on including any planar baddies in the game. Anything, for example, from the Abyss? Victor Watcher: Eberron has its own cosmology that is different from the planes of other campaign settings. And we have monsters that come from several of them. The ice flenser, the fire reaver and the flesh render are Turbine creations that come from the planes. The Ice Flenser comes from Risia, the Plane of Ice. The Fire Reaver comes from Fernia, the Sea of Fire. The Flesh Render comes from Shavarath, the Battleground. From Risia and Fernia come the ice and fire mephits, respectively, elemental imps. The Marut inevitable is a planar guardian from Dolurrh, the Realm of the Dead. |
You can read the full Q&A here.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
Michael K. Donovan
Does anybody else grimace with some disgust at the mention of Wizards of the Coast? I lost a lot of interest in D&D when they took over and tried to make everything a little more mainstream and bottom-line-oriented. The use of Eberron, whatever that is, is kind of indicative. Personally, I would have chosen Planescape, with newbies starting in Sigil and then getting pushed towards one of the planes based on their actions over time. Or at least Greyhawk for us old guys!
WOTC will never promote Greyhawk because it is so closely linked to EGG.
Forgotten Realms is a Licensing snakepit.
Planescape, Darksun, Ravenloft, & Birthright were all niche universes without real mass appeal.
Besides all those were 2nd edition (or earlier) and WOTC wants to promote Ed. 3.5.
So that leaves Eberron with all its nonsense and steampunk art that old schoolers despise.
IMO Turbine would have been better off creating their own world. But since they are setting the game on an unknown continent and practically the only thing they are adapting from Eberron is the Warforged race, I guess they practically are creating their own world.
It sounds interesting, and like they are putting a lot of thought and work into this. The four rank per level things answered some of my questions of longevity. I didn't see how 20 levels were gonna hold people for long, they'll tear through that with no real end game.
The no pvp thing kinda threw me off, but I can understand it, However, what I find hard to get past is no crafting etc, no random mob slaying for exp. I wonder how long the game will remain fun. Will this be a pay monthly, or something like guildwars where you can just log on with your friends to run a quest or two once in awhile.
With something like this, if it doesn't want to dry up and dissapear like AC2, then they will need something along the lines of old MUDS like Gemstone or Dragon Realms, where there were live gm events, festivals, server wide quests involving anyone who cares to participate, really push the RP. Otherwise why would anyone play this game?
Hell, some of the best times I remember in any RP related game I've ever played had to do with things like a gm stopping in game and screwing with people just for kicks. Or helping in a major history shaping quest, and having your name permanently etched onto some in game monument, things like that. If you insist on making a pve rpg, then actually make it an rpg, and I think this game will go far.
Unlike most people (it seems), I'm all for Eberron. I've actually played it and read the campaign book for a while now. It's a great setting, and has tons of room for expansion. While the other realms are pretty much all done, there really isn't that much the players can influence. forgotten Realms, while a great books series, and a decent campaign realm, just is way too complete for any kind of expandability. Becides then I'd have to put up with 500000 dritizz, drittiztz, ddrriittzz and so forth, it's bad enough as it in most MMORPG's can you imangine an actual D&D forgotten realms setting and what names we'd be hit with.
I'm not too keen of the 4 levels within a level thing. I would have perfered just bog standard DnD exp rules.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren
I am playing GW for some time now.
It is fully instanced , no crafting system. Only thing DDO is promising on top of this is twitch based combat -
which I as any other real D&D player , am not to happy about.
Unfortunatley GW system just doesnt cut it. And if it was not free monthly , nobody would play it.
Still I am hoping that first D&D based MMORPG would turn out fine
And Ebberon is actually interesting setting
"Before this battle is over all the world will know that few...stood against many." - King Leonidas
Eberron is interesting.
Forgotten Realms is Striking!!!!!!
I disagree wityyh the say that everything in FR has been done
I am only going to play this since it has the D&D name on it
Not becuase it's like D&D
I trust D&D enough to at least give the game a try, but I think they are really turning off Hardcore D&D. I know when I DM a game the 1st thing people ask after they kill something is "How much EXP was that?" If I told them none, in fact you lost some EXP, I would be beat into a bloody lump of flesh
After gaming for 25 years (Yep i'm that old) I must say I really like D&D3.5 and all their settings. (As to be honest during D&D 2 we all went off and played other systems like rolemaster or vampire etc as they had much better ideas!).
But what I don't understand is Turbine doing DDO and anyone thinking it's going to be a success!!??
We already have DDO!! It's called Neverwinter nights and in Feb 06 we get NWN2. New graphics engine and more PW support than NWN. Coming with Prestiege classes out of the box without expansions and the same script engine so all our old cool scripts for crafting, AI and sweet functions can be used with little alteration.
There already is a DDO with huge community support and this sure isn't it!!!!???!!!
Not to forget...most D&D long term fans doesnt like NWN (dont make it a bad game). DDO seems to think NWN is a start on every topic and trying to go deeper in the way most fans didnt like. D&D fans are not EQ fans, they are...D&D fans, with a long history of computers products, which were successfull, which where praise (Baldur's Gates is a consensus(on PC), nearly nobody in the fan base say they didnt like it).
Give them a try? As long as they answer YES to raiding, no way I give them a try...or to any major company. A small company, maybe they have to cope with raiding since it is a simplification system to try to have everything in 1...but a big company like WotC, they can do MUCH better then raiding as high end for everyone.
- "If I understand you well, you are telling me until next time. " - Ren