DDO Mailbag: Promises,
Promises...
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By Ralsu
Ah, holiday time! For me, the last two months of the year mean I
finally get some concentrated blocks of time for hardcore gaming! Let's
not deceive ourselves: Getting one holiday per month is a necessary
break that keeps us from going into a homicidal rage on the job, but
the end-of-year holidays are a time that gives us two, three, and
sometimes a whole week of days off in a row. Remember that great single
player game you've started a half dozen times and can never finish? You
know, the one you have to keep starting over because you forget the
plot and how to play? Now is your chance to complete that game! I love
the holidays. Here's hoping you complete a game that's collecting dust
on your shelf this holiday season!
Now to your letters:
Bloodycap wrote:
Before Module 3 came out [for Dungeons & Dragons
Online], you had
two pretty cool
interviews with Turbine. You promised us something else to come
before launch but I never saw anything outside of your normal stories.
Those href="http://ddo.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=322">[exclusive]
screen shots weren't it, were they?
Welcome back to my DDO mailbag, Bloodycap! No, those screen shots were
style="font-style: italic;">not supposed to live up to the
expectations you readers had. Recall that my second interview was not
designed to be an interview. The truth is that Turbine Director of
Communications Adam Mersky has
very generously invited me to tour the new content of Module 3 with DDO
Lead Game Systems Designer David
Eckelberry and some of the design crew. Turbine gave me access
to a developer test character on the test server (a level 12
barbarian), and we were to meet up and test out the player-vs-player
(PvP) combat and explore the new instances Module 3 has to offer.
When we all got together and logged in, the client had just undergone a
major update in the last hour--you know, one of those downloads that
takes an hour to complete even with high-speed Internet access. The
Turbine folks and I chatted for a while on the phone while we were
patching the client. After 15 minutes or so, Mersky realized we weren't
going to have time to tour the content as planned before the busy
developers had to get back to work. At that point the gaming session
with the devs turned into an
href="http://ddo.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=319">impromptu
interview in which Eckelberry revealed that exciting news about the
warforged being fixed in Module 3.
href="http://ddo.tentonhammer.com/modules.php?set_albumName=album03&id=192_G&op=modload&name=Gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php">
alt="iron_defenders"
src="http://ddo.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album03/192_G.sized.jpg"
style="border: 2px solid ; width: 200px; height: 150px;" align="left">After
that day, Bloodycap, the Turbine folks and I were never really able to
get together again. They were swamped with finalizing the content, and
people on the test server were already leaking info on the official DDO
forums about all the details Turbine was graciously trying to give to
me as exclusive content. The information would have less impact and
Turbine didn't want to put me in a position where people accused me of
trying to get page views by posting content that was already being
discussed in the official forums.
If there is a lesson to be learned in the situation, it's that maybe I
shouldn't advertise things that are scheduled. I always like to be
honest with my readers, and I don't want anyone getting a wrong
impression of me or Turbine. Nobody screwed up with that exclusive
tour: it just didn't work out. Because I hyped the fact that I had some
more exclusive content coming, you were setup for disappointment. I
broke a promise I never should have made. Please accept my apologies,
Bloodycap. And for the sake of House Jorasco, please stop lurking and
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/forumdisplay.php?f=17">do some
posting in our forums! Everyone is welcome.
Next up, Kendralyn wrote:
Thanks for starting the quest guides to Threnal. Finally, a
quest guide
I can use.
Short, sweet, and to the point. Thanks for taking the time to write,
Kendralyn. It's hard to know everything you were thinking when you
dropped that little missive, but let me address how our
href="http://ddo.tentonhammer.com/index.php?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=153">DDO
Quest Guide Database works. All of our quests are 100% handcrafted
originals. I have looseleaf paper showered all over my desk here, and
each piece contains at least one DDO Quest Guide--or the start of one
anyway. Whenever I run a quest, I jot down as much info as I could
without getting yelled at by my party members for lagging behind. Later
I review the notes, and write a complete DDO Quest Walk-through. Giving
readers the ones they need is tricky. Just who are the readers of DDO @
Ten Ton Hammer? Are they the players who have blasted to level 12 and
run almost all quests on elite difficulty? Some of them are, yes. Are
they the new players who are just finding out about DDO? A few are
according to the posts I see in our forums. My best guess is that the
majority of readers are Level 6 or 7. They read our content and surf
our forums, but they seldom or never post.
My goal is to provide DDO Quest Walk-throughs for all levels, but I
certainly have to consider what the majority of our community members
will need. When I publish low-level quest guides, I tend to do so in
clumps. Lower level quests are often short and easy, so having two or
three handy is as good as having one higher-level quest guide. And then
I try to cover a range of quests that fall in the middle. A Level 6
character might be willing to solo a Level 4 dungeon, so I consider all
guides for levels 4-7 to really cater to the average DDO subscriber.
Look for more quest guides in that range soon. At the same time, I will
continue to plug away at the starter content and the high end quests so
that we have something for everyone. Our DDO Quest Database now has two
dozen entries, and I'm adding more every week. Stay tuned.
Finally, SynergyStar wrote:
href="http://ddo.tentonhammer.com/modules.php?set_albumName=album03&id=191_G&op=modload&name=Gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php">
alt="gargoyles"
src="http://ddo.tentonhammer.com/files/gallery/albums/album03/191_G.sized.jpg"
style="border: 2px solid ; width: 200px; height: 150px;" align="right">
You've got yourself a pretty neat little fansite here,
Ralsu. Keep up
the good work!
I chose to publish this email not because it praises me--though I do
enjoy praise--but because it brings up a point of contention for us on
the Ten Ton Hammer network: we are not a fansite. Clearly, SynergyStar,
you were just trying to pay us a compliment, and I thank you heartily.
But I want to make this clear to readers. A fansite is an independent
site run by a fan of a game. Ten Ton Hammer is a network of sites that
cover massively-multiplayer online games. Yes, we try to match up our
Community Managers with MMOs they enjoy playing, but our primary focus
is bringing you the content you want (guides, builds, interviews, and
editorials) and giving you a nice community away from the whining that
permeates most official forums.
I've had more than one person mistake Ten Ton Hammer as a fansite, so I
am not picking on SynergyStar. It's important to us that readers
understand that we are not here just to sing the praises of our games.
We're not at all afraid to blast the developers when we think they're
wrong. Those of you who have been reading DDO @ Ten Ton Hammer for a
while, know what I mean. We feel we are able to bring you honest,
quality coverage of our games. If a game isn't up to snuff or doesn't
have a strong following, you won't see it with its own site on our
network. That is what
fansites are for. I hope that clears things up a little.
Keep sending your letters, visiting our forums, and playing DDO! I hope
to see you in Stormreach.
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited Game Page.
