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Dungeons & Dragons Online

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Dungeons & Dragons Online
Developer(s)Turbine, Inc.
Publisher(s)Atari
Platform(s)PC
ReleaseFebruary 28th 2006
Genre(s)MMORPG
Mode(s)Multiplayer

Officially named Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach, it is an MMORPG developed by Turbine, Inc. Turbine has developed DDO as an online adaptation of D&D. DDO is based on the D&D 3.5 Ruleset and set in the Eberron campaign setting. Wizards of the Coast has worked closely with Turbine during the games 2+ years of development, to ensure that the game's design is true to D&D. DDO was released on February 28, 2006. It is published by Atari.

The Game

Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) is set on the fictional continent of Xen’drik, in the world of Eberron. Eberron is a new campaign world, developed by Keith Baker for Wizards of the Coast. Players can play in both indoor and outdoor environments, including (of course) a large variety of dungeons.

Players can create their characters in traditional D&D fashion. DDO has the following races: human, elf, dwarf, halflings, and warforged. For classes, the player can choose from: barbarian, bard, cleric, fighter, paladin, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, and wizard. Turbine has plans for more races and classes in the future. One interesting feature of DDO that differs from the standard is its adventure point system wherein there are fewer levels, with 4 steps in between actual levels to extend gameplay and offer smaller frequent bonuses. Currently, the maximum achievable level for a character in DDO is level 10. This is expected to increase with future updates.

Monsters include bugbears, earth elementals, fire giants, hill giants, hellhounds, hobgoblins, iron defenders, iron golems, kobolds, maruts, minotaurs, ogres, rust monsters, scorpions, skeletons, spiders, troglodytes, trolls, worgs, wraiths, and zombies.

Public Testing

On August 1 2005, Turbine sent out invitations to individuals interested in participating in the Public Alpha Test. On November 1, 2005, Turbine announced that the public Beta test was open [1]. On November 22, 2005 Turbine announced that each copy of the January 2006 issue of PC Gamer magazine would contain a "key" to gain access to the beta. Turbine, in association with Fileplanet and IGN, also completed 3 public stress tests of the game, with the most recent ending on February 12, 2006.

Testing for DDO ended on February 19th, 2006. The game opened February 28, 2006, after a special head start event that started February 24, 2006 for those who pre-ordered.

Recent Updates

On April 5th 2006 Turbine released its first "Module" which included a new dungeon; this new area included additional content and quests as well as the chance for players to battle a red dragon. Also included were a number of fixes to the combat system and minor tweaks to the user interface.

After the update was completed and servers were brought back online major problems arose including inability to cast spells, use ranged weapons, form groups, or enter dungeons. The game was shut down while the problems were resolved, and the game was back up and running in approximately five (5) hours. Character rollbacks also occurred due to exploits/coding errors which enabled players to make massive amounts of in-game money in the time servers were available. Primary among those was a "split-stack" issue which allowed players to sell a bugged item, now appearing as a stack of items in their inventory, for extremely inflated prices to in-game merchants while still keeping one copy from the stack do with as they pleased.

Differences with other MMORPG's

  • DDO differs from most MMORPG's in its heavy usage of instances. Although large quantities of players can meet up in towns, all adventuring is done in instanced dungeons. In this way, DDO is more like Guild Wars than traditional MMORPGs. All players in a group will enter the same the dungeon but it is impossible to enter an instance if you are not partied with the group to which the instance belongs. The purpose of this is to keep party members immersed in the storyline, working through an entire dungeon scenario without interference from other players.
  • Another divergence from many MMORPGs is that DDO is designed directly around an adventure party of 4 to 6 players, much like the table top version of Dungeons & Dragons. This differs from many MMORPGs where group adventuring is largely optional, though encouraged, and only absolutely necessary in limited encounters. Group play is aided by an in-game voice communication system. This can be useful even to those players without microphones, as they are able to hear information, directions, and warnings given verbally by other players.
  • However, due to poor sales and customer retention issues, Turbine recently announced they would be adding viable solo and PvP play to the game at unspecified points in the future. These two factors appear to be contrary to the original thrust of the game, which included advertisments scolding players, "Friends don't let friends play solo." Discussion of Player versus Player was also roundly discouraged and a common refrain during Beta and earlier periods was that Dungeons and Dragons Online would never offer this feature -- rather the focus was to remain focused around co-operative group based game play. It remains to be seen to what extent Turbine will implement these features or what impact it will have on the future of the game and its community.

Future Updates

Aside from the recent announcement of the Drow race (Dark Elves), no other classes or races have been marked for release in the game to date, despite the missing core classes (Druid and Monk) and core races (Gnome, Half-Orc, Half-Elf, as well as six Eberron specific races).

Additionally, level cap increases (raising character levels beyond 10th) have not received any further news or announcements regarding their implementation into the game. It does not appear that a level cap increase is slated for "Module 3" (suggested Fall 2006 release date), which suggests that neither the cap increase nor one or more of the core races and/or classes will be offered until early 2007, perhaps in a paid-for expansion pack.

"Module 3" will reportedly contain the addition of approximately six all-new monsters, including the oft-requested Lich and Ogre Magi.

New Terms Created by Game

These terms are unique to the DDO world and are often said in voice chat to the group so they don't miss out.

  • "Shiny" is the term given to any collectable loots dropped by monsters. The term most likely derived from the shine that is visiable when they are dropped however another source could be Joss Whedon's Firefly where the term "shiny" means good.
  • "Sparkley" is the term given to static locations were collectable loots are found, most likely originated as an offshoot of "Shiny" and due to the fact that these static locations sparkle in an upward snowfall pattern.

See also

References

"[2] Dungeons & Dragons Online : FAQ". URL accessed on September 20, 2005.

Media Coverage

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