Dungeons & Dragons Online Forum News (Mar. 29, 05)

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Here are today's Dungeons & Dragons Online forum highlights, collected from Dungeons & Dragons Online forums. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Xundau, Community Relations

The flow of info about the game.

Oh, that part is exceedingly easy (and not even necessary, since we have a much nicer Ctrl-P function). How hard is it to get a screenshot approved for posting by the various powers-that-be at Turbine, Atari, and WotC? A lot harder than it should be, IMO. But Calandryll and Sporkfire are here now, and they're doing a lot of hard work behind the scenes to make things happen.

I know we've been saying "soon," for a long time now, but the fact of the matter is that "now" is closer than ever. In the coming weeks and months leading up to release, and especially once E3 hits, you'll start seeing a lot more of the game.

Spell Components = Annoying ??

Good question.

There are two types of spell components in DDO -- generic components and specific spell components. Generic components are all that are needed for most spells. These aren't individualized per specific spell, only per spell level. So instead of needing sulphur for fireball and fur for lightning bolt, you'll just need "generic level three components" for both (don't worry, we'll come up with a better name than that). These generic components can be bought from magic vendors in town.

Why don't we just assume that a character has any generic components that they need, like in PnP D&D? Simply put, generic components in DDO are necessary in order to balance the game economy and prevent rampant inflation. (Characters that fight with melee or ranged weapons will have money sinks of their own, BTW.) Generic components won't break the bank, but they will be a way to remove money from the game over time, which is an essential part of maintaining a balanced economy.

Specific spell components are reserved for spells that we don't want people casting every step of the way, like raise dead or stoneskin. These components will cost significantly more than generic components, and may not even be available from regular magic vendors.

We don't want our spell component system to be heavy on micromanagement, which is why we're going with generic components for most spells. I'm not sure exactly what we have planned on the inventory management side, but getting your components (at least the generic ones) should be pretty straightforward -- just buy stacks of the appropriate components before your adventure. If we see people doing too much micromanaging in beta, we'll adjust accordingly.

For those with dial-up...

We haven't announced official specs yet, but the game *should* be playable on a 56k modem.

Just to clarify, we're using the latest version of the Turbine Engine -- AC2 runs on an earlier version of the engine, and AC1 an even earlier version. With every iteration, we clean up and even rewrite signficiant portions of the engine.

Closed beta boards that everyone can read

Our beta (or alpha -- we've actually renamed "beta 0" to "alpha 0") will initially have closed boards, and be under heavy NDA.

As a fan, I also liked that WoW eventually made their beta boards viewable by the general public; whether/when that happens with the DDO beta forums remains to be seen.

Newb questions!

Welcome to the forums!

Most certainly.

Sort of. There won't be truly public hunting areas in the sense of WoW or EQ, but there will be opportunities to adventure with characters that you aren't necessarily grouped with. We've been working recently on things to do when you're not in a large group tackling the more formal dungeon quests, and some of these will have a more open-ended, "public space" kind of feel to them.

You are number 500 in the queue.....

I see two separate questions here -- I'll try and answer them both.

As far as game-related downtime goes, we don't like it, and we're trying to minimize it in our game. This is why we won't have any wide-open, seemingly endless landscapes (we don't like running 15 minutes to get to where we're going), and why hitpoints and spellpoints don't regenerate over time (because if they do, you'll want to sit and rest after every couple of battles; if you want to rest in DDO, find a rest point). We're also adding some more "get in and go" types of gameplay for players that don't have the time to find a full group and go off on one of the more formal dungeon quests. We'll give more details on this in the future.

As for server queues, I can't say much about DDO since we haven't launched yet, but we have lots of experience with massively-multiplayer games, we have a ton of talented and dedicated people in our operations group, and there's no reason for us not to expect a very smooth launch for later this year. Speaking as a WoW player, I think Blizzard was caught off guard by the overwhelming success of their game (and from a developer's perspective, that's a pretty good problem to have), and they picked what they saw as the least painful solution, which was server queues.

Game Price?

We haven't made any final decisions yet, but the price for the game (both the box and the monthly fee) should be in line with other MMOs.

Characters have houses?

No housing at release. There will be bank storage.

Release Date Pushed Back

Actually, the dev team's been crunching pretty hard the last few weeks on both beta *and* E3 stuff. This is one of the big reasons for the dearth of recent content. Fortunately, the cloud is lifting, and as Sporkfire mentioned on another thread, you should start seeing some new stuff this week (or, as I like to say, "very, very soon.")

Sporkfire, Community Relations Manager

The flow of info about the game.

To add to Xundau's comment, it is our current mission to see to it that this question is never asked again. We're doing the work to get the process for info-rollout going. But that leaves you in the frustrating holding pattern between knowing that it is coming and us delivering on that. There's a lot of cool stuff to talk about, but I need a week or two to take it all in.

We're going to start with the easy stuff first (as the corporate types say - low hanging fruit): forum presence, screenshots, etc. As I level up as a CRM, we'll start getting the really cool info releases and Q&A chats and all that good stuff.

Geez still nothing new?

With any luck, little things coming this week. Bigger things to follow. Call it the calm before the storm. I spent most of last week in meetings about what we were gonna do with the site, so it was calm on this side.

New DDO Forums!

Hello all,

As our community begins to grow, we want to support the interests of our future players and allow them to make their homes here on the DDO forums. To that end, we will be adding three new forums for our members to meet and interact on. These will be up and running shortly.

Guild Matchup: Get your DDO guild going before launch. If you have a group that will be playing together or you are looking for a group to get involved with, this forum is the place to forge these alliances.

Campaigns and Roleplaying: This forum is for exercising your creativity by sharing your campaign and roleplaying stories.

Off-Topic: There’s more to life than gaming, or so I am told. Use this forum to discuss anything that would be off-topic in the main DDO forums, such as sports, music, news, etc. We do ask that you stay away from volatile topics, such as politics and religion.

The usual rules of conduct apply to these forums, and they will be posted to each. We hope you enjoy these additions and use them to make the most of your time with the DDO community.