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Questions by Cody "Micajah" Bye and Garrett Fuller
Answers by Kate Paiz, Senior Producer of Dungeons and Dragons Online

Few gamers are as dedicated to their products as table top role playing gamers. When Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach hit store shelves approximately two years ago, table top gamers rejoiced and flew to the game in droves. Now that two years have passed, the developers at Turbine are getting ready to release Module Six and are another step closer to reaching that goal of having everything in the D&D Player’s Handbook incorporated into the game.

Being incredibly interested in the new Module and die-hard D&D players in their own right, Cody “Micajah” Bye and Garrett Fuller joined the Turbine crew for a guided tour of the latest virtual space in the game. While their overall feelings from the play session will be published tomorrow, the two Ten Ton Hammer staffers also asked several questions about the upcoming content in the game and what DDO gamers should expect in the near future. Enjoy!

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Ten Ton Hammer: How has the response been to your efforts with PvP in the game, and what have you done – on the development side – to make sure everything feels correct?

There will be plenty of new environments for players to explore in Module Six.

Kate Paiz: We’re really happy with the system and we feel that its given us a chance to explore the solid D&D connections with that sort of system. We wanted to make sure that it was introduced in a way that was really true to the table top game and that players could engage with without breaking them out of the model that we’d already established for the game. We’re definitely planning on expanding it.

We’re dabbling in the system in Module Six and we’re also going to be working on it in Module Eight as well. We’re definitely hoping to fill out a PvP competition structure that’s a bit more robust and one that players can get a bit of prestige and notoriety from.

We’d do some of this in Module Seven, but our work with the Monk class has us a bit preoccupied. However, it is something that we’re really excited to continue building around, and it’s definitely something we’re looking to expand in the future.

Module Five actually included a major update to PvP, because it actually allowed players to “self-match” so players could define who’s on the red team and who’s on the blue team. We think it really led to some better matches, and it’s something that we continue to support.

Ten Ton Hammer: The Monk will – for sure – be in Module Seven?

Paiz: Yes. It’s definitely going to be in Mod Seven.

Ten Ton Hammer: According to your last interview, the development team at Turbine has been really working on getting more “open world” type areas put into the game. How has this process been thus far?

Paiz: It’s definitely an area of development that we’re really enjoying. During the play session we’ll take you through a few of these “open” areas (and they did – make sure you check back with us tomorrow for our play session experience). In Module Six, we’re introducing the largest “open world” area yet in the game.

While we definitely want to make the DDO experience a sort of “hand-crafted” encounter, we’ve tried to allow the players to feel like they’re really “owning” the zone when they enter these large open areas. There won’t be other players ganking their kills or taking their loot, and if the players can go through the entire area and kill everything in it, we hope that they feel like they’ve accomplished something.

Looking forward, in Module Seven we’re actually hoping to put together another “new player” zone since there will be a whole slew of players creating brand new Monks and entering the game [from a low level]. Many of these players will be looking for something new – something fresh to keep them interested. We’re looking at a lot of the lower level content and hoping to bring in some [new] NPCs to really keep players interested.

Ten Ton Hammer: When you were first creating the game, how’d you determine the way you were going to do loot? I mean, other games tend to have a single drop available to fifty people. Why did you decide to do things differently?

Paiz: Many of our original decisions were motivated by the fact that we wanted DDO to be a party-based game; we wanted players to feel that grouping with our players was the best way to fulfill all of their goals. We didn’t want people fighting for loot; we wanted to keep people happy with one another and encourage a sense of comradery between groupmates.

The Monk is definitely going to be in Module Seven.

This went into everything: making sure the XP was even across the board, that the loot was evenly distributed, giving the option to allow other players to pick up your loot, making sure that the right people get the right loot, all of that was important in creating our game.

We’re continuing to explore the idea that players shouldn’t be forced to raid for six hours to get that single piece of loot that they’re looking for. And in the new raid in Module Six, we’ve really taken that idea to the next level.

The raid mechanics are very familiar to most raiders, and we introduce all of the monsters you fight in the Mod Six raid very early on in the Module. You should have a lot of competency in defeat these monsters by the time you enter the raid, and we really try to focus on the idea that players will need to really cooperate and work together to beat the boss.

We also wanted to avoid the idea that the players with the best armor and/or weapons were going to have the easiest time defeating the whole raid scenario. We wanted to make sure this was a raid that everyone could play as long as they’re in the appropriate level range. It shouldn’t matter if you’re the best fighter out there or just decent at what you do, every player should be able to come in and have a quality experience.

Ten Ton Hammer: Are there any plans to put the “old school” demons and devils into the game at some point? Characters like Asmodeous and that sort?

Paiz: We’ve made references to them, but thus far we’ve stayed away from major bad guys from the other source material.

Some of the characters Wizards of the Coast have simply thrown out completely from this setting, but we’re using some of the NPCs to create our own villains and bringing in the elements from the other games to really flesh out the entire player experience. Players should have those experiences where they go, “Hey, I remember that guy!”, and it should be from some of their older experiences with D&D products.

The old school references really do resonate well with the players, so we do spend a lot of time with the Monster Manual and really combing through and finding the most evocative and iconic monsters to bring to life. We try this, because we really want to have the mind flayer and others from these classic experiences.

Ten Ton Hammer: How are the Half-Orcs and the Half-Elves progressing?

Paiz: They’re coming along. *laughs* They’re not ready for release and we have a lot on our plate right now anyway. One of our big focuses is to complete the Player’s Handbook, so we’re doing the Monk first, then hitting level twenty, and then finishing up the Druids and the Half-Orcs.

The crafting prototype being introduced in Module Six will eventully add a whole new level of gameplay to DDO

It’s one of those things that we really just have to be disciplined with, or we’re never going to finish any of them. That said, we’re really hoping to get the Monk polished up for release in the spring, and from there we’ll keep you guys up to date with what’s going on next.

The races are obviously a ton of work, because they require balancing, animation, and general look tweaks. We always want to put these sort of features into the game fully loaded, and we never want to do a half-ass job of it.

Ten Ton Hammer: What other sort of new nuances are you putting into Module Six?

Paiz: We also have the crafting prototype that we’re putting into the game. We’re calling it a prototype because it’s very preliminary, and it’s really just a raid system right now more than a full-fledged crafting system that’s an integral part of the game.

It’s really important to our raiding system because now instead of rolling through the dungeon 10-20 times looking for that piece of loot that’s perfect for your super-specialized DDO class, you can now drop in the item that best fits your class and make an item that really works for your particular character. Customization is such a key element of DDO that this system should really work well and allow players to build something that really fits their character.

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For those of you that are interested, here’s a basic list of all the new components that are going into Module Six:

• Level Cap Increase – Levels 15 & 16

• 14 New Spells

• Polar Ray, Sunburst , Charm Monster (Mass), Cure Critical Wounds (Mass), Firestorm, Horrid Wilting, Inflict Critical Wounds (Mass), Otto's Irresistible Dance, Shout (Greater), Summon Monster VIII, Trap the Soul, Seek Eternal Rest, Power Word: Blind, Power Word: Stun
• Bards also gain access to the following existing spells: Cat's Grace, Mass; Cure Moderate Wounds, Mass; Eagle's Splendor, Mass; Fox's Cunning, Mass; Heroes' Feast; and Summon Monster VI

• 2 New Feats

• Force of Personality and Insightful Reflexes

• 2 New Rogue Special Abilities

• Skill Mastery and Defensive Roll

• Rogues now can choose which special ability (Improved Evasion, Crippling Strike, Defensive Roll, or Skill Mastery) they desire when they reach levels 10, 13, or 16 rather than having one automatically assigned to them. In addition, Rogues can now swap these special abilities for others as if they were feats.

• The Twelve – Unlocked City Ward

• The Vale of Twilight Wilderness Area (CR 15 - 16)

• The Vale of Twilight is a peaceful place, home to a manifest zone of the plane of Lamannia, the Twilight Forest. Every three thousand years, a perfect eclipse of Eberron's thirteen moons realigns Lamannia and the Vale of Twilight. When the Black Abbot lich was defeated, his power flowed into Dolurrh, the Realm of the Dead, and altered the very order of the planes. Now, on the eve of the thirteenth eclipse, the powerful devil Arraetrikos has brought his army to the Vale of Twilight, intent on bringing Shavarath, the Battleground, into alignment for the next three millennia. The grandmasters of The Twelve, Stormreach's most powerful house of magic, send a desperate plea for help to the adventurers of Xen'drik. The infernal forces of Shavarath must be stopped, for the Vale of Twilight will only be a stepping stone on their path to conquering all of Eberron.

• Meridia – City Area - Set in the center of the new landscape area, the Vale of Twilight, this small city hub has the collectors that support the new devil collectibles and flavor / quest NPCs for player guidance.

• 6 New Dungeons (Includes 1 Raid)

• The Coalescence Chamber
• Let Sleeping Dust Lie
• Rainbow in the Dark
• Ritual Sacrifice
• Running with the Devils
• The Shroud

• New Monsters – Bearded Devil (Barbazu), Orthon, Pit Fiend, Tiefling, Bralani Eladrin, Ghaele Eladrin, Stone Golem, Stone Scorpion, Fiendish Bat, Rats, Paragon Kobold, and Gelatinous Cube

• Eldritch Device / Crafting Prototype - The Eldritch Device is a wondrous machine that players find in the world that can turn unused items into something exciting. Players choose items from their inventory, load them into the device, pull a level, and see what comes out.

• Rest Shrines on the landscape and in all adventures on Solo and Normal difficulty mode are re-usable with a cooldown timer.

• Solo XP and Loot has been increased to be 80% of the XP and Loot received on Normal.

• The Death Penalty has been changed to not be XP based. The penalty will be item wear and resurrection sickness based, and the penalties incurred will be very small at low levels, and will increase as the player increases in level. Likewise, players will experience less penalty when playing on Normal than on Hard or Elite.

• The Mail UI now differentiates between Confirmed mail (from trusted sources) and Unconfirmed mail (from random players) and allows the player to delete all unconfirmed mail with one click.

• Player characters that have been rendered unconscious but have stabilized will very slowly regenerate health until they wake up at 1 hit point. Warforged auto-stabilize and repair at a rate of 1 hit point every 2 minutes while inert, the other races regenerate at a rate of 1 hit point every minute while unconscious but stable.

Thanks again to Kate Paiz and company for taking us through Module Six!

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Are you excited to see all the new feats, skills, spells, and monsters coming in Module Six? Do you think the raid will be an awesome experience? Let us know on the forums! 

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