DDO Interview: Another 30 Minutes on Module 3 with Turbine

By Ralsu

The friendly folks at Turbine had been trying to get together with me for the better part of 10 days since we first shared a conference call and spent 30 Minutes on Module 3 in September 2006. Our schedules finally aligned, and I got the mother load of important names from Dungeons & Dragons Online:

• Turbine Director of Communication  Adam Mersky
• DDO Lead Game Systems Designer David Eckelberry
• DDO Design Manager Derek Flippo
• DDO Game Systems Designer Heather Sinclair
• Turbine Associate Producer Kate Paiz

This wasn't designed to be an interview. We were trying to get together for something else--something big you'll want to look for on this site sometime next week. Alas, the Turbine folks and I failed our Reflex saves, and we were left on the conference line with no hope of completing our mission. Looking to make the most of the opportunity, Adam Mersky suggested we go ahead and conduct an interview. My questions were on the fly, and answers came at me in flurries. First David Eckelberry and Derek Flippo reviewed the features of Module 3:

David: "Module 3 is now known as the Demon Sands, and our semi-official launch date is October 25, 2006. Demon Sands will be our third free Module in addition to the almost monthly content updates and continuous hot fixes. It will be the biggest free content update I've ever seen by any company." Derek: "Demon Sands is big--really, really big! It will increase add 40% more content than we had at launch, and it is our sixth content update since DDO launched [in February 2006].Demon Sands is many times larger than anything we've ever built." David: "Demon Sands will raise the level cap from Level 10 to Level 12. It also introduces an Auction House system for rapid trade between players that is more efficient and persistent than the merchant vendors. Players will also be able to participate in PvP, or player-vs-player combat. This takes place in dug out areas beneath taverns, which will server as our open PvP area. Everyone is on separate teams and can fight without penalties of any kind--XP, gear, items. We will also have team PvP scenarios, such as catch the flag and others. Some will be inside and some will be outside."

Next our conversation drifted to the future development of DDO. Here, David and Derek discussed the journey to Level 20 and beyond. I asked about epic levels, prestige classes, and the challenge of implementing them:

David: "I see DDO reaching Level 20 at the end of 2007 or early 2008. It is my private goal for next year to introduce two new classes [editor's note: he confirmed they would be druid and monk], and then start planning ahead for epic levels and prestige classes in the second half of the year." [Editor's note: At this point, there was some murmuring in the room, and Eckelberry conceded that his plans were ambitious but reasonable and that everyone on the design team had personal goals they worked on together.] David: "Adding the last few levels to 20 will not be that hard from a design standpoint. A lot of the work is designing the spells for the clerics, wizards, and sorcerers. By the time we reach Level 17 and have all of the Level 9 spells in the game, the last few levels will be about dungeons." Derek: "Yeah, then the question becomes how many dungeons it takes to get players to Level 20." David: "But when we start talking prestige classes, we have to decide how that's going to work. We're already discussing it here internally. I mean, if we go by PnP [pen-and-paper]  rules, technically you'd want to be a ways under-capped so that you can select a prestige class because prestige classes effective count as levels. So we have to decide how that will work--whether it's some sort of alternate advancement of just epic status. Another thing we have to do is make sure we get enough of them ready to go at once. Prestige classes are not very general, so we can't just launch three or four. It'd be, 'Welcome to flame 9000 on our forums.' Again, my private goal--that I guess I am making public now--is to have 8-10 prestige classes ready at the same time. That way no player feels like he doesn't have one for his class or build."

Then David dropped the big news:

David: "You know, we were going to leak this to you today, so we may as well go ahead and tell you now. We're getting ready to upload to our Risia test server some special warforged changes for Module 3. All existing warforged characters and all new warforged will be born with all of the Eberron resistances as part of the racial traits. Players will not need to spend any Feats or Enhancements to acquire these resistances." Ralsu: Wow! That's huge! Are you personally concerned that warforged will be overpowered now? David: "Not in the upper levels, no. I mean, for the easiest experience in the game, try a warforged through the first three levels [after Module 3 releases]. But by the time characters reach level 10, though, it won't be overpowered. And that doesn't take too long. I'm not as worried about balance at the low levels. There were actually some on the design team who were even more reluctant to change than I was. But in the tempest that arose from your last interview with me, something came out that made us discuss it internally. I can't remember who the poster was or which exact thread it was, but I had told you that warforged use Enhancements to get their resistances--leaving their items slots free for other bonuses." Ralsu: I know one champion of the warforged on our forums and on the official DDO forums has been a person who calls himself :hu-flung-pu." [Upon hearing this name, either Heather Sinclair or Kate Paiz made a noise of recognition before David continued.] David: "Well, the players in this thread rightly pointed out that their is no item they can equip to give a +5 boost to attack for 30 seconds [like Action Boost Enhancements]. In essences these players were saying, 'See what I have to sacrifice in order to have the warforged resistances?'"

At this point, Adam noted that Turbine is always willing to listen to their subscribers. David echoed his thoughts by saying that he and his team are not perfect but that they are willing to hear advice. He said they may not act of every player suggestion but that the warforged was the perfect example of player feedback leading to change.

With the conversation flowing about concerns DDO players have and the way warforged rogues have previously had to give up the Rogue's Action Boost Enhancement to get resistances, I asked the gang to comment on whether or not traps in the Level 11 and Level 12 dungeons of Demons Sands would require an optimized rogue build. David assured me that would not be the case:

David: "Even a multi-classed rogue at Level 12 will have decent success on normal. I mean, he might still fail on a roll of 3 or 4, but he can certainly be successful most of the time. As players get into the Elite level dungeons, then they will have a harder time. Elite is closer to requiring a min/max strategy. You know I'm actually excited about a multi-class build a friend of mine used. It combines a fighter with a paladin and rogue." Heather: " Some people are calling it the Batman build. We don't know who came up with it first." David: "Yeah, it uses the paladin levels to get those awesome saves and fighter for the utility of the Feats. The levels in rogue provide Evasion nd some trap finding ability. I think I'm going to try it out next." Ralsu: We have a couple of DDO Builds like that at Ten Ton Hammer. Our most recent one is the Small but Feared Soldier, which takes advantage of some of those halfling racial Enhancements with those three classes. People like to tweak the amount of levels to take in each. David: Exactly. It sounds like a pretty indestructible build.

David next told me that future work--perhaps for Module 4--would look at ways to soften the disadvantages of multi-classing by changing existing Enhancements or possibly creating new ones that would apply to multi-classed characters.

We wrapped up our discussion by talking about the MMO industry as we did in the last interview. Adam and David talked some more about Turbines commitment to releasing frequent content updates. They stressed that they would like these updates to happen once in each month, but they were reluctant to commit to a time line because of the disappointment it brings with they miss a deadline. Even so, they took pride in the fact that Turbine has pushed out 6 content updates for DDO in just barely over 6 months since it launched.

We also discussed the collapse of Seed, as I did in my editorial earlier this week. David expressed the opinion that there is a place on the market for a purely social game like Seed. He also said that he felt that the market wouldn't hold more than one successful model of its type--the biggest one. he believes gamers will gravitate to the biggest social network that gives them the most to do. Others will struggle to draw in customers.

There you have it folk: another 30 Minutes on Module 3. Keep your browsers directed right here. Turbine has another huge surprise in store for Ten Ton Hammer readers, and it's coming soon. With warforged getting fixed in Module 3, could it get any better?

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