Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

[0h 17m 53s] Ten Ton Hammer (Cody): The next question I have is from Clevon, he asks if Turbine has taken over the marketing of DDO, and if so, what direction are you going to take it in to gather up new players and maybe some players who stopped playing the game?

[0h 18m 12s] Kate Paiz: Again, with Mod 9 and the level cap increase, we feel like that’s going to be a great opportunity to bring a lot of people back. We’ve more than doubled the amount of content in the game since launch. There were a lot of people that were going to be hearing from us and seeing the presence of DDO. We’ve redone DDO.com and that’ll be coming out live in the next couple of weeks. We’ve redone the free trial format and additional improvements are going to be coming out. We remain very committed to DDO and marketing this game is very important to us. We’re going to continue to really make sure that everyone understands how awesome Mod 9 is, how awesome the game is, and how far it’s come, and how it’s a great enjoyable experience not only for the people that really know the DnD ruleset but also for folks that enjoy amazing, intense action in an MMO experience so that you can party with your friends and totally get down and have fun.

[0h 19m 12s] Ten Ton Hammer (Ethec): Towern was asking about capstone enhancements and I see a few people asking will the cap limit go above 20, and I don’t believe you’ve committed that level 20 will be the ultimate cap for classes, will it?

[0h 19m 25s] Kate Paiz: MMOs grow and they change and things that are true today aren’t necessarily true in the future. Right now we’re very happy to have reached 20, and I encourage everyone to go to DDO.com and get the full list on the release notes because I don’t want to go into a whole bunch of detail on those today. We are definitely very interested in making sure that the game is interesting and exciting and there’s always new stuff for folks to chew on. If that means that level 22 and 24 and 26 are the next logical steps then - absolutely, we’ll take that. If it means more classes, more races, more stuff to do so that you can experience the game with more content, I think that those are all viable options and we certainly are looking at some of that now. But we’re really focused on getting this level cap sorted, polished, really good, and out to our userbase.

[0h 20m 24s] Ten Ton Hammer (Ethec): And with the capstone enhancements, is that solely for having twenty levels in one class, that’s your reward?

[0h 20m 38s] Kate Paiz: Yea, the capstone enhancements are for pure classes, pure characters, but there are a bunch of prestige enhancements and other benefits that you can get. Those are the kinds of things that, again, I really encourage people to take specific questions to the forums. Our design team is really eager to respond to that. Especially on the Lamannia forums, they’re going on there and checking them out, but also on the main forums. I know players have built their characters over many years with trying to experience a vast amount of the game and we’re certainly not looking to have them miss out on any of the great fun with the capstones and prestige enhancements. This is just one of those things that we’re going to figure out and work with our community to make sure that everyone’s enjoying the game and the richness and fullness of what’s there.

[0h 21m 30s] Ten Ton Hammer (Ethec): DaveyfmCrockett asks: A lot of users are dying to hear a definite answer on the arrival of character respeccing in the future for DDO. Can you say one way or the other?

[0h 21m 40s] Kate Paiz: Oh, it’s super high on my list. I made some mistakes on one of my alts that’s still killing me. The dev team hears about it from me every day. Respeccing something as complicated as the DnD ruleset is really a challenge, I won’t pretend that it’s not. There’s a lot of factors that come into play, we’ve made progress - there’s a lot of complexity. We really want to do it, it’s not in Mod 9, and I don’t have a target for it. So definitive answers are always a challenge when it’s not right on the horizon, but it’s important to me, I know it’s important to others. I think people can count on it coming, I just don’t know when.

[0h 22m 24s] Ten Ton Hammer (Cody): The next question deals with the Eberron-only classes and races. Are there any more plans to introduce some of these Eberron-only type things into the game? Artificer was the example that was given, and I believe that the Shifter is an Eberron-only race and they still haven’t made it into the game. Any word on these?

[0h 22m 53s] Kate Paiz: The Eberron-only stuff is definitely of interest to us and of interest to the design team. We’ve certainly talked in the past about the druid and the half-orc and the half-elf as well. I’ll be perfectly honest: given the 4.0 rules release and given that the druid and the half-orc moved to the supplemental players handbook, we’re reevaluating a lot of these choices right now. We’re also looking the favored soul, the warlock, the warlord, things like that to make sure that we’re making the best choice. These choices are very popular; I can understand why people would be very excited about that. There’s also a lot of challenge in making sure that that sense of change of a character is brought to life in a sort of way that’s very compelling. So if people are very excited about that I really encourage them to gab about it on the forums to say exactly what it is that they’re looking forward to about this stuff. We definitely take that feedback very much to heart.

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