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Vous parlez français? French and German editions of DDO now available
For many players, it's comforting to know that Dungeons and Dragons Online's European operations are now safe in the hands of Turbine. As part of the new global service of the game, Turbine's just announced that EU players now can enjoy German and French editions of the game in addition to English. "We've successfully migrated players from the former European service and we are very excited to begin welcoming thousands more to DDO Unlimited," said Executive Producer Fernando Paiz. "This is going to be another outstanding year for the game as we continue to roll out new content and features for our growing legions of players. We're very excited to begin engaging directly with German and French speaking players and look forward to introducing them to a truly premium free-to-play MMORPG." Last year, Turbine took over European operations from Codemasters, which had handled the game since launch. In addition to the German and French localizations, Europe can enjoy DDO Unlimited's popular free-to-play format, which is now fully in sync with the North American version.
Turbine bringing DDO: Unlimited to Europe in 2011
The fifth anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons Online is at the end of this month, and Turbine's got big plans for both the birthday celebration and the rest of 2011. We at Massively took a tour of the upcoming content today, and along with information on pirates, treasure maps, and an old familiar area reopened, we heard an exciting piece of news. Turbine will be bringing DDO: Unlimited to the European audience in 2011, supporting French and German languages as well as English. Beta testing will begin in March. Want more details on what's to come for DDO this month? Keep your eyes peeled for this Friday's Exploring Eberron, where you'll find a full rundown of the newest content addition!
DDOcast host leaving to work for Turbine
The feel-good news story of the day comes courtesy of the long-running Dungeons and Dragons Online podcast called, crazily enough, DDOcast. Normally a show's cancellation (or in this case, hiatus) isn't cause for celebration, but this particular story has a happy ending since podcast creator and host Jerry Snook is closing up shop to go and work for Turbine in an as-yet unidentified capacity. Snook posts a lengthy farewell on the podcast's website, and he also hints that the show may go on with a new host. This Friday's show, episode 191, will be the last for the foreseeable future. Snook will also make the show's archives available to interested parties. "I will do my best to have the content available for as long as there is an interest in checking out the show and web site. It is also very possible that DDOcast will return/continue under new leadership," he writes.
Dungeons and Dragons Online previews new Update 7 screenshots
Update 7 is coming for Dungeons and Dragons Online, and while the title of the update is Half-bloods, the patch promises to be anything but half-baked. Introducing two new races, a new raid, free quests, UI improvements, and more besides, the update promises to be one of the largest for the game since its switch to free-to-play last year. Turbine has shared a few new screenshots from the Droaam adventure pack, highlighting both the adventure and some of the coming UI improvements. The UI improvements previewed offer several streamlined and clarified interfaces, while the Droaam screenshots show off a wide-ranging adventure that spans a number of different adversaries and settings. If the gallery sparks your interest, you can take a look at our recent tour through some of the content coming in Update 7 and get a bit more context. Dungeons and Dragons Online players can look forward to the patch later this month, which seems like a fine reason to assume that the cup is half-full. %Gallery-105016%
Waging WAR: Finding the sandbox
In this installment of Waging WAR, Greg takes a look at Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning from a few different angles and goes in search of the proverbial "sandbox" in a game that contains neither sand nor boxes. Somewhere along the line during my childhood, I developed a habit for playing games with nearly every game I've ever played. I can even remember a time in my early teens when I sat down with a few friends and collaborated on making our own version of battlechess. Pages of chicken-scratched rules and several dice results-tables later, and we were off and running for a solid week of the most entertaining chess matches I've ever played. Or there was that time with The Sims when I started creating experimental families and then leaving my computer on overnight and not interacting with them, just to see how successful they could be without my help. I could bore you for hours on end with examples of how I twisted the rules and made my own games from the games I've played. I suppose I can blame my penchant for metagaming on my early introduction to pen-and-paper roleplaying (i.e., D&D 1st Ed., to be specific). All I had was a sheet of paper, a handful of dice, a description of the world around me, and my imagination. By its very nature, PnP gaming is sandbox gaming. The reason I'm bringing this up now is that, until WAR, I had pretty much been able to "find the sandbox" in any MMO I was able to get my hands on. Whether it was building hardcore Dungeons & Dragons Online characters, roleplaying in City of Heroes, or achievement-chasing in World of Warcraft, I've never really been troubled with finding something to do when the grind started to wear me down. But now, with WAR, I'm finding most of my old tricks for MMO metagaming just aren't working. To read about what I've tried, and why it didn't work in WAR, follow along after the break.
Waging WAR: RvR packs, the "wait and see" edition
This week Waging WAR rides the double rainbow of gameplay customization via downloadable content and takes a cursory glance at the RvR packs being teased by the folks behind the development of Warhammer Online: Age of Reckoning. Let's follow along and see what Greg can unleash this time. It is difficult to talk about the future of WAR right now. Not because it doesn't have a future, but because the availability of information regarding it is not exactly easy to find. Actually, information on the future of WAR is all but non-existent, surrounded by controversy on all sides, and steeped in rumor, speculation, assumption and misinformation. The best I can put together is that we, as players, can look forward to some sort of set of three different "RvR Packs" allowing us to "customize" our gameplay experience moving forward. The packs have been called "Power," "Progression," and "Personality." What exactly each contains is a mystery, although the few talking points I was able to find regarding these RvR packs are speculatively disappointing at best. Although Carrie, Andy, and anyone else involved with the Mythic development team have said time and time again that they are not discussing moving toward the free-to-play business model, what they're proposing with these customization packs looks suspiciously like the item shop established by Turbine, implemented in Dungeons & Dragons Online and soon in Lord of the Rings Online as well. V.I.P. membership, anyone? Although concrete information is scarce and difficult to find, let's take a look at the most commonly referenced points of interest after the break.
DDO Europe to go free-to-play on August 20th
While fans of Dungeons & Dragons Online in North America have had good reason to celebrate the game's transition to a free-to-play model and its subsequent revival, European players have had to make do with the regular (i.e. subscription-based) version of the game under Codemaster's rule. Like angry twins facing each other across a crowded cafeteria, the two versions of this MMO created an uncomfortable tension in the air over the past year. This is about to change, however, as Eurogamer reports that Turbine is taking operational control of the game from Codemasters. With this move, Turbine is bringing DDO Europe in line with its North America sibling, transitioning the game to free-to-play on August 20th. This transition includes bringing European players together with NA players with global servers. Looking to calm any apprehensions by the players, Turbine plans to pave the way to their new global servers by giving current DDO Europe players 5000 Turbine Points to spend in the DDO store. While there will only be an English service initially, French and German account services are in the works.
Captain's Log: The C-Store and the perils of going freemium
Welcome to another installment of Captain's Log, in which we explore -- and sometimes complain about -- the uncharted depths of Star Trek Online. This is your captain speaking from behind a rickety card table in a basement somewhere in the murky New Jersey Nebula. Isn't moving the worst? Last week, we learned a little bit about Daniel Stahl, the brand new executive producer on STO. But not enough to prepare us for the crazy truth bomb with which he torpedoed the official forums. On Sunday, Stahl suggested that he could see STO going free-to-play. Seriously. I had planned to discuss the Cryptic Store this week anyway, and this fits in nicely, given micro-transactions' importance to the free-to-play model. Would Cryptic Studios' switching STO from subscriptions to an F2P model be a godsend or a hellish nightmare? (Hint: It would wind up somewhere in the middle.)
LotRO's Kate Paiz praises community, addresses F2P switch
Over at Mordor or Bust, Lord of the Rings Online's new executive producer Kate Paiz sat down to talk about what's on every hobbit's mind: the transition to LotRO's free-to-play version this fall. Paiz took the reins of LotRO just as the F2P change was announced and is bringing her experience from DDO Unlimited's transition over to LotRO's team. In the interview, Paiz spends a considerable amount of time both praising the community and reassuring it that these changes will benefit the game as a whole. One of the issues she addressed was the lack of Player versus Monster Player (PvMP) combat for non-subscribers, saying that it was necessary for now, but that may change in the future: "While we plan to introduce [PvMP] at some point in the future to the rest of the playerbase, we wanted to first focus on delivering the quality PvE game that we have to players in a way that continued to drive great interest and fun in the game." While she declined to comment on whether Turbine would be giving refunds for lifetime subscribers who purchased that option shortly before the announcement of the F2P change, Paiz did say they'd like to offer lifetime VIP subscriptions again at some point. Paiz also said Turbine has "a lot of ideas" for additional classes, and it is working with the CDC to get LotRO launched in China. You can read the full interview over at Mordor or Bust!
The Road to Mordor: Touring the fall's new content with Turbine (part two)
Last week we began a tour through the upcoming content Turbine have planned for Lord of the Rings Online, including the new-player experience, instance scaling and the region of Enedwaith. By themselves, those features represent so much exciting content that we could've ended there and been satisfied, but that wasn't the half of it. Well, it was the half of it, actually. Here's the other half. Buckle up, it's gonna be a bumpy ride on the Buckleberry Ferry!
Exploring Eberron: Grouping is king
Wednesday night's Nights of Eberron in Dungeons and Dragons Online was fun for all, as usual. We welcomed quite a few new members into OnedAwesome, even managing to get one through some Korthos Island quests at light speed to catch up with the rest of the crew. Once we got settled, OnedAwesome descended on House Phiarlan to make our first foray into premium content: Tangleroot Gorge. As a level 3-7 Adventure Pack with a huge explorable as well as a popular series of dungeons, it fit our group nicely. Since it offered more than one method of play, each group was free to do whatever they liked: hunt down rare encounters, pursue the slayer title, or head straight for the dungeons. It's becoming the norm in OnedAwesome for guild chat to scroll madly at the beginning of the evening as we chat among ourselves, share information about the evening's planned activities, and sort ourselves into groups. As the level of actual gameplay rises, guild chatter settles down and goes quiet as everyone gets involved in their activities. Last night's guild channel went silent very quickly, broken only by the occasional greeting as someone logged on or an announcement of an achievement -- much fun was had by all. In the month that Nights of Eberron has been up and running, I've noticed a recurring comment among those participating. Follow along after the cut as I take a closer look at what it is and why they say it.
Exploring Eberron: What is all this stuff in my inventory?
Wednesday night's Nights of Eberron was its usual crazy success, and the diversity of player types makes for an interesting mix. "Interesting" is a very good thing in this case, as the guild is made up of players on every part of the spectrum from those with several years of experience in Dungeons and Dragons Online to people who are rolling their very first character. For those new players, or even those who gave the game a brief try back when it went free-to-play, it can be a bit confusing. I'm going to spend some time in this column going over things for the newer players, because Dungeons and Dragons Online offers some pretty handy items that you don't want to miss out on. OnedAwesome, Massively's official Dungeons and Dragons Online guild, ran through the Waterworks Wednesday night, killing an absolutely ridiculous amount of kobolds and picking up some handy loot. It was our first foray outside of Korthos, and at the end, there were lots of things in our inventory that were a mystery to many players. Follow along after the jump as we take a look at what they were.
Dungeons and Dragons Online releases new Sentinels screenshots
Player attention may have been focused on the DDO Offer Wall the past few days, but Turbine jumped in and made it right pretty quickly. Hopefully the focus will head back to the fun stuff pretty soon -- namely, Dungeons and Dragons Online Update 4. If you've not heard the talk about Update 4, the Sentinels Adventure Pack, and the infamous zombie-pirates...well, welcome to Massively. We're glad you stopped by. Turbine has released another round of gorgeous screenshots from Sentinels. These give us a peek at some pretty interesting things, including Captain Tew and Ratty, a flaming airship, some unusually well-dressed Kobolds, and -- surprise surprise -- zombies and pirates. Sadly, they are not zombie-pirates, just one of each. Still, the screenshots are a great look at the Adventure Pack, so take a peek at the gallery and then head into Dungeons and Dragons Online to check it out for yourself. %Gallery-90857%
Dungeons and Dragons Online announces bonus XP event
If you're one of the Massively readers planning on joining for Massively's Nights of Eberron in Dungeons and Dragons Online on Wednesday nights, you'll be happy to hear that there's an extra treat in store for that new character you rolled. To celebrate the release of Update 4 and the new Adventure Pack (we're telling ourselves that they are also celebrating the beginning of Nights of Eberron), Turbine is offering a 10% XP bonus for quests, which will give a nice boost to all players who are still leveling characters. If you've got some Experience Elixirs lying around, be sure you grab those, because they stack with this bonus. If you don't, they're of course available in the DDO store in single packs and "Super Stacks", discounted packages of five. The event is going on now and will last until April 18th, so you've got plenty of time to take advantage!
DDOn't miss out on Massively's Nights of Eberron
Remember when Massively's Choose my Adventure visited Stormreach? It was fun, but all good things must come to an end, right? Well, not in this case. Justin and I got to chatting about Dungeons and Dragons Online recently, and decided it would be great fun to play the game together. But two is not a full party and hirelings are terrible conversationalists, so we turn to you guys -- won't you join us? We'll be logging into Dungeons and Dragons Online every Wednesday at 9:00 PM EST beginning this week, and we'd love to play with you, our readers. Join us on the Cannith server with a new character and we'll begin our journey on Korthos Island just after the tutorial. We've rolled our respective characters, so add Syp and Rubialina to your friends list (Hey, we save our creative thinking for work), and we'll see you Wednesday night!
Exploring Eberron: Can you really play free?
When Dungeons and Dragons Online went free-to-play last summer, the change attracted an amazing amount of attention, and brought this quiet little game to the forefront of the MMO world. Nearly a full year later, that hasn't changed. Dungeons and Dragons Online is one of the most continually popular games in the fantasy genre as well as in the free-to-play arena. Before we go any farther, let's clear the room of elephants: Turbine is not a non-profit organization. They are a business created to make a profit, and at the end of the day, yes: they want you to spend money. They are going to make that item shop as attractive as they possibly can in order to draw you -- and your credit card -- in to purchase some Turbine Points. In that respect, they are no different than every other MMO developer out there. They want to provide entertainment in exchange for some of your cash. So what makes them stand out? It's the fact that Turbine managed to hit on that perfect combination and truly offer something for everyone: those who want to simply pay a sub fee and be done with it, those who prefer to pick and choose via microtransactions, and those who want to play completely free. It's that last thing that we're going to look at today. That's the big question for many people: is it really possible, or is Turbine just paying lip service to draw people in? Follow along after the jump and we'll take a look.
Turbine releases screenshots from Dungeons and Dragons Online Update 4
Yesterday's State of the Game for Dungeons and Dragons Online gave players a lot to look forward to, and brought about a storm of questions and excitement from fans. The new race, the respec option, and particularly the introduction of guild housing left the community very anxious for Update 4 to arrive. Almost lost amidst the other features was the announcement of a new adventure pack. "Sentinels" will take us back to House Deneith and Searing Heights -- places you may not have explored much lately -- to meet a new kind of undead and fight a pirate band led by Captain Tew. So while we're counting down the days until April and Update 4, if for no other reason than to satisfy our curiosity about these upcoming changes, we've got some time to wait. Turbine has given us some gorgeous new screenshots of House Deneith to hold us over in the meantime, so check out the gallery below and enjoy. %Gallery-88447%
DDO State of the Game released
In our interview with Fernando Paiz last week, he mentioned that a state of the game address was coming for Dungeons and Dragons Online. The address was posted today, bringing news of exciting new updates coming to DDO. Guild housing, another update, a new race, bug fixes and more: DDO players have a lot to look forward to. Update 4 is scheduled for release in April, and is currently available on Lammania for preview. "Sentinels," the adventure pack coming with this update, will take players back out to Searing Heights as well as into House Deneith. You'll encounter undead and pirates. While this pack starts at level 7, Epic mode will be unlocked right out of the gate for high level players, so everyone will be able to enjoy it. The new adventure pack is exciting -- we all love new content -- but this time it's not the only big news by a long shot. There are new items coming to the game, guild housing (which is being implemented as a reward for guilds to work for), and even a new race. If you've ever wanted to play a half-orc, it's your lucky day. The list of additions to the game is extensive and promises to keep players busy for quite a while. Check out the state of the game address for the full story.
Dungeons and Dragons Online Valentine's Day screenshot contest
Love is in the air, and so are Turbine Points. No, really. Dungeons and Dragons Online is holding a Valentine's Day screenshot contest, and Turbine Points are up for grabs, as well as a special forum title for the winner. There are five categories in the contest, designed for individuals, couples, and groups in DDO. Categories are I <3 DDO, Cupid's Arrow, Perfect Pair, Most Romantic Individual, and Most Romantic Guild. Just pick your category and send your screenshot in along with a short description. Original screenshots only, no photoshopping, if you please. A full description of the categories along with all the rules and regulation can be found on the official site. The winner in each category will receive 500 Turbine Points and a special forum title of either "I <3 DDO" or "Hopeless Romantic." The contest began today and will run until February 21st (at which time winners will be announced on my.DDO), so good luck!
Turbine releases new screenshots from DDO: Update 3
Update 3, the latest offering of new content for Dungeons and Dragons Online, has been live for a week now. Casual mode is back in business, and players are happily leveling without sigils, waiting for the weekend so they can fling themselves off the ski jump a few hundred more times, and enjoying the new quests. If you haven't taken a look at the four free quests introduced with Update 3, Turbine is holding out a bit more eye candy to tempt you. Five new screenshots from level 13 quest Mired In Kobolds were released today, depicting our favorite scurrying little foes, as well as some beautifully scary shots of the first dragon encountered at the end of the quest. Take a look at the new shots in the gallery below, and then head into Dungeons and Dragons Online to check out the quest. It's on the free-to-play side of the game, which makes it even more tempting! %Gallery-85110%
