Exploring Eberron: Community and beyond
This week in Dungeons and Dragons Online, OneDAwesome worked through some of the game's extensive free-to-play content. We picked up five quests from the Ever-Full Flagon in House Kundarak -- if you're a lower-level F2P player, these are quests you do not want to miss -- grouped up, and got our quests underway in record time. One of these quests was Taming the Flames, and I took more than a little good-natured ribbing for inflicting that fiery torture on the group. Cheer up, guys -- Update 5 is going to bump it up a level, so it could be worse! Overall, a very good time was had by all.
Next week we're going to stay on the free-to-play path, wrapping up a few last level 5 quests before the group as a whole is too high level. We'll be doing The Depths of Doom and The Depths of Discord from the Hammersmith Inn in House Deneith, Archer Point Defense from Jasper Cruikshanks in the Marketplace, and one level 6 quest: Gladewatch Outpost Defense from Loghan d'Deneith -- also in the Marketplace. We'll meet in the Hammersmith Inn and go from there -- Wednesday at 9PM Eastern time, as always.
If you're interested in joining OneDAwesome in DDO, follow along after the jump to see how to get on board as well as what's planned for the future of the guild.
Join us!
If you're interested in joining the Massively guild, it's never too late. The majority of the OneDAwesome members are in the 5-7 level range, but new members and altaholics keep plenty of lower level characters around as well. No matter what level you're at -- even if you want to roll a new character and catch up -- we'd love to have you on board. If you'd like an invite, send a /tell to my character on the Cannith server, Rubialina, and I'll bring you in right away. If you are around when I am not online, please send me an in-game mail with your character name and I'll get you taken care of that way.
I do try to log in for a few hours each day solely to be available for questions and invitation requests. I log in, then go about my day, checking in periodically for tells and questions in guild. If you send a tell and I don't answer right away -- give it a couple minutes and I'll get right back to you, I promise!
Where do we go from here?
With Update 5 looming on the horizon, there are some exciting new goals coming for the guild. We all want to get a firsthand look at the new shinies available, and the idea of our guild name being part of a global announcement is pretty tempting.
The pursuit of guild renown and levels will be a focus once the update hits, but it won't be our sole focus. OneDAwesome was created for Massively readers to hang out, have fun, get to know one another, and most of all indulge our passion for MMOs with other readers. Turning that into some sort of faction-farming guild with a required weekly grind is not an option. The heart of this update is to encourage DDO players to be active, play with their guild members, and go adventuring as a group and we'll approach it in that spirit. We've got a head start, since that's pretty much how we work anyway. As new levels are unlocked and rewards earned, we'll decide as a guild how to spend or use them during our regular Wednesday night playtime.
DDO community
The DDO community at large has gotten its fair share of attention in other quarters this week.
It's been one week since the announcement that LotRO is going free-to-play. The reaction to the news was huge, of course, with a large part of the LotRO community wailing and gnashing their teeth -- the influx of cootie-ridden free-to-play masses clearly heralds the end of everything good and pure in Middle-earth. In reading through all this doomsaying, I noticed a trend. Time and time again, people pointed out that DDO went through a similar transition. Just about one year ago, this sub-based game made the transition to free-to-play, and the community grew exponentially.
In spite of this population explosion, the DDO community has been praised over and over in the past week as an example of what a great transition this can be for a game's player base. New players still join the game daily, and the advice channel is hopping. It's one of the best example of what a game advice channel should be, as well. A recent conversation started with a brand new player who did not understand why some of his quest icons were red, what an adventure pack was, or how to access the DDO Store. In too many game communities, this would be grounds for ridicule and the player would have received nothing especially helpful. In this case, two other players talked him through it.
LotRO is adopting DDO's business model. If the community can follow that example, LotRO players have absolutely nothing to worry about.
This weekend and beyond
There are some special visitors to the Stormreach Marketplace this weekend, so you may want to set aside some time to visit. Up near the entrance to House Deneith you'll find three men and a moneybox. Kalnar DeGenev is hawking a show and some buffs. If you approach the money box and give it 1,000 gold you'll get a pretty spectacular light and illusion show, complete with a pack of Succubi. No, seriously. Several of these charming young ladies will spawn, and if you (or whoever is around) catch them all, everyone in the Marketplace receives a temporary buff or two. It's worth the cash to check it out at least once.
Keep your eye on Massively next week for an up-close look at update 5, and I'll see you in Stormreach!
