Tag: Dungeons and Dragons Online

DDO Announces Chill of Ravenloft Expansion


It’s pretty chill.

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Unlock Everything and the Kitchen Sink From Standing Stone Games (LOTRO/DDO)


Generosity in these uncertain times.

Continue reading “Unlock Everything and the Kitchen Sink From Standing Stone Games (LOTRO/DDO)”

Dungeons & Dragons Online Brings Back Permadeath


Trial by fire.

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Turbine Suffers Layoffs


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Turbine is in the midst of a round of layoffs. According to a news article on Gamasutra, the game developer let go an unspecified number of employees, with the explanation that the layoffs were necessary “in order for us to invest in growth areas at Turbine.”

“These are always tough decisions, which we don’t approach lightly, but it’s crucial that Turbine is structured in a way that reflects the current and coming marketplace.”

How these layoffs affect Turbine’s games, including Lord of the Rings Online and Infinite Crisis, will have to be seen.

(Source: Gamasutra)

Turbine Reveals DDO Player Council


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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


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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


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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)

Turbine Lays Off Unspecified Number Of People


As it is, layoffs in the MMO industry are common. Jobs are often based on contracts and temporary in nature, and developers tend to over-hire when developing the game itself or a large piece of content, and then follow the launch with a round of layoffs. In that regard, I’ve always said here at MMO Fallout that more information is needed than a simple “X developer is laying off staff,” before we are all free to run around screaming about the end of the world. In today’s case, developer Turbine Entertainment has laid off a number of staff as part of restructuring at Warner Bros. In an email, Spokeswoman Remi Sklar stated:

“As part of the continual review of our business operations and fluctuating market conditions, we have had to make reductions in our Turbine workforce,”

Our thoughts go out to the unknown number of Turbine ex-employees, and we hope you all find jobs quickly.

(Source: Boston Globe)

Steam Summer Sales Assault The Wallet


It’s sale time, so get out your wallet and replace the next month’s meals with Ramen because this year is looking fantastic. Right now there aren’t many deals in the MMO realm to speak of, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get in the fun! Check out the current sales below. Remember, as always, prices are in USD and may vary by region. MMO Fallout does not guarantee that items are not region locked, so please read carefully before making your purchase.

Get Some DLC On Steam For Cheap


Steam’s Summer Sale has yet to begin, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get on with some DLC price drops early.

Update: Corrected the Dungeons and Dragons pack. It ends July 9th, not July 7th.