Trial by fire.
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Tag: DDO
LOTRO/DDO Maintenance Extends Into Day 3
Both Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons & Dragons Online are entering their third day of maintenance as maintenance on both game’s data centers has hit a bit of a snafu. Both games were taken down for maintenance on March 6, however it became apparent during that maintenance that there were more issues than expected. The completion time has now been extended from its initial 22 hours into its third day.
As posted on Twitter, the current estimated completion time is 2:00 p.m. on Friday March 8.
Downtime Extension: 2:00 PM Eastern Friday, March 8th
The LOTRO game worlds will remain offline for work at our data center through 2:00 PM Eastern on Friday, March 8th. We will have more information tomorrow morning. Thank you for your continued patience. #LOTRO
— LOTRO (@lotro) March 8, 2019
Wil Wheaton Guest-DMs Reign of Elemental Evil
Dungeons & Dragons Online Update 25 drops today, bringing with it the Temple of Elemental Evil. The update features voice acting by actor/writer Wil Wheaton, best known for his portrayal of Wesley Crusher in the 1987 television series Star Trek: The Next Generation. Among his more recent work, Wheaton voiced the dialogue for Abraham Lincoln in the 3DS game Codename S.T.E.A.M.
Temple of Elemental Evil introduces DDO’s largest dungeon ever, reintroducing randomized traps, roving bosses, and special encounters famous from the original D&D module. The update is free for VIPs and available to players at level 7 and 28.
(Source: Official Website)
Turbine Reveals DDO Player Council
It looks like Turbine is taking a note out of Eve Online’s book, with the announcement of a player council being set up for targeted feedback.
The DDO Player Council is a group of players selected to provide targeted feedback and valuable suggestions to the DDO Team. This will involve participating in surveys, focused discussions, as well as highly structured and targeted developer chats. Often the topics covered will be elements of game design at their earliest stages, well before they are committed to development or appear in our preview programs like Lamannia.
Applications are being taken through January 20th, with the council launching on the week of the 27th.
(Source: DDO Forums)
Turbine Responds To True Heart Criticism
Turbine’s Senior Producer has posted an announcement on the Dungeons and Dragons Online forum announcing that due to player feedback and internal testing, the price of Heroic Hearts of Wood will be greatly reduced when Update 20 goes live. Additionally, players will still be able to purchase Hearts of Wood from the Twelve barter NPC, at least for the time being.
The prices on Lamannia are not final – inspired by the Lamannia feedback, the Heroic Heart of Wood will be greatly reduced from the price displayed in the bartershop today. We’ll be looking at your additional feedback and how players play through sagas, and adjust the costs appropriately. We expect the average player to, upon reaching the minimum level requirement, spend additional hours to obtain a Heart of Wood – but never hundreds of hours.
The post goes on to explain that the original change was to address two goals, the unification to a single currency for Hearts of Wood and to address a major oversight with Tokens of the Twelve, the currency players currently use to buy Hearts of Wood. The tokens were originally intended to be rewards for completing difficult tasks, however the development team did not factor in Epic levels and the tokens have since become rather trivial to obtain. In response, Turbine has been slowly depreciating the value of the token and has not added to the reward system in the past year.
(Source: DDO Forums)
Player Protest True Heart Update In DDO
MMO gamers are hardly strangers to in-game protests. We’ve seen plenty of protests in games like RuneScape, Aion, and more over everything from updates to lack of communication and more, the removal of a mechanic or the reintroduction of one that had been removed. The size and efficiency of said protests ranges based on the catalyst and the game in question, but players have had quite a bit of success in the past with organizing sit-in’s and mass exodus or unsubscribing. There is plenty of debate as to whether or not protests actually accomplish their goals, because you won’t find many developers willing to admit if they are.
Players in Dungeons and Dragons Online organized a sit-in on the Wayfinder server in Stormreach city, to show their dissatisfaction toward a change in the True Reincarnation system coming with Update 20. True reincarnation resets your character to level one with bonuses from your “past life.” The update removes the primary way players obtained True Hearts of Wood and will require players to run epic-level sagas in order to obtain commendations to trade in for True Hearts. In layman’s terms, the update will add a lot of grind and make the process of True Reincarnation much longer, with the goal of either directing player’s attention to sagas or toward the cash shop to open their wallet.
Will Turbine cave in to player demands? Tune in next time to find out.
(Source: Occupy Stormreach)
Try LOTRO and DDO In Your Browsers With Gaikai
Well, don’t get your hopes up. Turbine today announced Gaikai, allowing players to trial Lord of the Rings Online and Dungeons and Dragons Online without having to download either game’s client. Playable through your browser, the trial is heavily limited: One hour, due to technical issues that prevent any repeat or extended play at this time.
Currently, the LOTRO trial on Gaikai will allow you to play for up to one full hour. For most players, this will allow you to create your character and complete the starting area for your race. At the end of the trial, you will be logged out from the game and your character and progress will be stored on our servers. You will then be provided with links to download the game client to continue your adventure.
You can find the entire FAQ at the link below, this promotion (for now at least) is only an incentive to give the game a try.
(Source: LOTRO website)
Dungeons and Dragons Online: Now French/German
It’s that Cylon picture again! Must be another Dungeons and Dragons Online story. Technically when Turbine stated that they were “taking back” the Dungeons and Dragons service in Europe, from Codemasters, they shut the service down entirely. Instead, European Dungeons and Dragons players were transitioned over to the North American service, where they’ve been ever since. Not exactly a global service, especially considering it was one only available in English…Sorry!
Today, however, Turbine announced the launch of Dungeons and Dragons Global, and new languages with it. German and French players will be happy to know that their languages are now officially supported.
“We’ve successfully migrated players from the former European service and we are very excited to begin welcoming thousands more to DDO Unlimited,” said Fernando Paiz, Executive Producer of DDO Unlimited. “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.”
Head over to this link to read a whole bunch of advertising lingo, or just go to ddo.com to sign up for an account. More on Dungeons and Dragons Online as it appears.
Dungeons and Dragons Online Returning To Europe
It’s been a surprisingly long time since I’ve had an opportunity to write about Dungeons and Dragons Online (since last June, actually). Those of you who play or follow Dungeons and Dragons Online may remember Turbine’s announcement last year that they would be taking back Dungeons and Dragons from Codemasters. Codemasters, who was operating the MMO in Europe, was still operating under the subscription system. Due to contractual issues, Turbine ended up canning the game’s operation in Europe altogether, and players were instead transferred over to US based servers.
Luckily, however, Turbine is bringing the game back to Europe, with support for German and French language. The current estimate is “2011,” for release. MMO Fallout will bring you more information as it appears. Players who transferred over to the North American service can likely expect their accounts to be transferable to the European service when it does launch.
Atari Vs Turbine: The Aftermath
For people like me, lawsuits are a swing and a miss, mainly because after all of the legal jargon, reading long court documents to figure out what is happening, and trying to get both sides to speak on the case, there comes the inevitable deal breaker: The settlement. A settlement, often out of court, is generally always secret, none of the agreements are released to the public and neither side can talk about who was wrong on what accord.
So you’ll have to accept my apologies when I tell you I was well aware that the Turbine/Atari lawsuit ended, not only that but it ended four months ago, around the time Turbine was acquired by Warner Brothers. The major changes? Not much to speak of, aside from Turbine reacquiring their publishing rights in Europe, although this could be a decision under the new ownership.
The lawsuit went out with a fizzle and not a bang, and it’s anyone’s guess who won, if there is a “winner.” I’m removing the lawsuit category at the end of the month, as it will no longer be needed.
MMO Fallout 