Producer letter/April 2011

2011 State of the Game Producer Letter
April 21, 2011

A letter from our Executive Producer, Fernando Paiz to all DDO players!

Hi Everyone-

And also a warm “Bonjour” and “Hallo” to all of our French and German players who are now part of our DDO community. Whether you are new to DDO or a long time player, thanks for supporting Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited and helping to make DDO one of the most successful F2P MMOs in the world!

Spring is always an exciting time for all of us here at Turbine as it is the time when we really get to see all of our plans for the year coming together. At this point in time, Update 9 is being prepped for launch; we have the next three updates all lined up with detailed plans in place, and some amount of development underway for each of them. It is looking like a really fantastic year for DDO and I am excited to share some details with you today.

The first big thing going on in DDO this year is our new French and German versions of DDO Unlimited which we just recently released. All of Turbine’s DDO clients and servers from now on will support multiple languages through a button in the top right section of the launcher (for English speakers like me who studied some French and German in school, you may be curious to give it a try). We plan to keep working to improve the quality of the localized versions of the game throughout the year and we are committed to delivering an outstanding service for our German and French speaking players. To all of you, a hearty welcome to our game and our community – we hope you love it as much as we do!

The first big release of the year is almost here! That’s right, Update 9 is loaded with many great improvements both large and small. One big change that I’m excited for is a major balance pass that was done for almost all spells in the game! We are giving casters more viable spell choices to use in combat situations and a better balance between the spell point cost and the impact of each spell. And best of all, spell point costs have generally gone down which means you should have more mana to burn in your adventuring. There are other improvements I’m personally excited for, including the changes to make non-boss Epic monsters feel… well… like non-bosses! It’s one step of many as we continue to revamp our Epic content. I also can’t wait for the improved animations to many of our combat actions, like trip and sunder, so it’s easier to see when you’ve triggered those abilities. I have a feeling my level 20 fighter is about to get a lot more play time - at least when my sorcerer isn’t having too much fun roasting baddies. Either way, it’s going to be fun!

Of course as always, we also have some great new adventure packs coming up. If there was one word to describe the state of mind of our content team for the last several months it would have to be “Madness”. Yes, fellow people of Eberron, the forces of Xoriat are on the rise and the “Harbinger of Madness” is upon us! Our next two adventure packs are both Xoriat themed and will introduce cool new monsters and major villains from the Plane of Madness. The “Harbinger of Madness” is a level 15 content pack with our take on a horror-story with a dash of insanity thrown into the mix. Those that prefer the insanity dialed up to 11 can look forward to the next update which will kick off with an appropriately zany sequel to our popular “Delirium” quest.

There is a lot more coming out with Update 9 including: prestige enhancements for Sorcerers and Favored Souls; and new store items, like Wilderness Slayer boosts and new Armor Appearance Kits! The last really big change is the introduction of DDO’s all new crafting system. In fact, crafting is so big, that we are taking a different approach with it. Of course we want crafting to be rewarding and fun, but we also recognize that by introducing it we are going to be fundamentally altering the balance of DDO’s in-game economy. So we are going to be rolling crafting out over time as a Live Beta that kicks off with Update 9. We will be incrementally releasing more crafting levels and recipes through Update 9 and Update 10 and asking for your feedback to make the system better. If you want to give it a try look for the new Crafting Hall in House Kundarak after patch day. You will get to keep your crafting experience and items during this beta – but keep in mind that the system will be changing as we go. Look for more information and guides coming to our websites (including French and German versions too)! You can also visit the forums to chat with other players and developers about all the crafting excitement by clicking here!

Looking a little further out we also have some exciting developments in the city of Stormreach. For the first time we will be able to access the enclave of one of Eberron’s most magically advanced Dragonmarked Houses: House Cannith! For those that don’t know, the Artificers of house Cannith are responsible for harnessing mysterious and ancient technology and using it to build and power much of Eberron’s modern society. You can bet the House Cannith enclave will be like no other and showcase their technological prowess. House Cannith is also responsible for the creation of the Warforged and we are working on a great new adventure pack which will show you some of this history. By popular request it will also include a new wilderness and raid for characters at the level cap!

Many of you have heard me talking about a new kind of content coming to DDO. DDO’s new Challenge quests will make their formal debut later this year providing players with some unique new ways to play DDO. The Crystal Cove challenge from our 5th Birthday event is one example of a “challenge quest,” but we are working on some other types of challenges with very different types of game play as well. Challenge quests will all have some things in common: they can be completed in a fixed time window, they offer support to a broad range of player levels, they are meant to be repeatable, and they will let you track your high score and reward your progress. One way to think about the Challenges would be as the perfect thing to do to kill a few minutes while waiting for your buddies to log on for the night. But also sometimes you may want to make a whole night out of maximizing your Challenge scores for either rewards or bragging rights. We will endeavor to make challenges rewarding to play and they will offer unique treasure rewards, XP, favor and guild renown to players of all levels. I look forward to sharing more details as we get closer to release!

I would like to thank everyone that submitted questions for this letter. I hope I have covered most of those topics above. The two specific questions that we received most often that I have not yet addressed related to when we will see the Druids or when we may see a level cap increase beyond level 20 and into Epic levels. I can confirm that we have made great headway in our work on these highly requested features, although at this point it looks unlikely we’ll get these out in 2011. I know! I want them too. Despite that, I still wanted to let you know that there will be a new class in 2011 that we’ll talk about later on, so stay tuned!

As I said earlier, we are working on some really exciting plans for DDO for 2011 and beyond. Look for some new announcements coming this summer where we hope to release even more details. In the meantime, I hope you found some fun stuff to look forward to and that you have a great time playing Update 9!

I’ll see you all in Eberron!

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