11 April 2012 | |
Mike
We’re back with a second interview with Dungeons & Dragons Online Executive Producer, Fernando Paiz, from Pax East 2012, this time talking to him about the new Druid class.
DDO’s first expansion, Menance of the Underdark, is launching on June 25th and with it comes the new Druid class, which we got to see in action during our interview and learned a little more about it.
The Druid class has the Wild-Shape ability which allows for the character to take three basic forms, wolf (melee/DPS), bear (tank) and elemental form (fire or water), with each form having different versions of itself. For example as you level, you can open up “Winter Wolf” or “Dire Bear”, which provide different abilities or spells to the player. Each alternate version also has its own skill tree-line, with 6 lines all together to start, but possibly more versions down the road.
We also find out a little more about the new Epic Levels and Epic Destinies which allows players to level from 20 – 25, as well as complete multiple Epic Destinies, not just their class Destiny. Check out the full DDO Druid class interview below.
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10 April 2012 | |
Randy Denosha
The Dungeon Master is going to take a look at the fourth Adventure Pack for DDO, Tangleroot Gorge , a pack for characters between levels 3 and 7.
This pack consists of ten quests and includes a new wilderness area to play around in. The quests revolve around a plot line involving a friendly tribe of hobgoblins, who want the player’s help to get rid of another, not-so friendly, hobgoblin tribe that also inhabits Tangleroot. Every quest is located inside a base that the hobgoblins have called Splinterskull. In the start, the player will weed out the forces inside the fortress before finally confronting the boss, Chief Yarkuch.
The wilderness area has 9 rare spawns to kill, 8 different slayer bonuses and 13 explorable areas. Each giving a nice bonus experience. Continue Reading
8 April 2012 | |
LHStaff
The first Dungeons & Dragons Online expansion, Menance of the Underdark, is getting ready for its June 25th release and we were able to talk with Executive Producer, Fernando Paiz, at Pax East 2012 about it.
Menance of the Underdark is the games largest content update thus far and will send players into the Forgotten Realms where they’ll have to face the Queen of the Spiders, Lolth. It also introduces the new Druid class and will increase the level cap to 25 by introducing Epic Levels and Epic Destinies.
With this expansion, DDO will be stepping away from instances and steering more towards creating an open world, “We stopped short of making the world a full open world, but what we did was build it in a way you can see off in the distance the places that you’re going to and walk from place to place“, Mr. Paiz stated.
Players will also be able to get their hands on the expansion next month when the game launches into closed beta testing.
Check our the full DDO: Menance of the Underdark Pax East interview below.
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23 January 2012 | |
Randy Denosha
Every fan of The Dungeon Master Column, Dungeons And Dragons and its online version have been waiting for this moment for ages. Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment and Wizards of the Coast announced a new expansion – the first one, in fact – to the growing community of Dungeons and Dragons Online. The title is currently slated with the open moniker of “summer,” meaning we’ll see it at the early parts of the convention season.
The new expansion is called Menace of the Underdark and will bring the player base to the Forgotten Realms, the first of the different areas of Dungeons and Dragons. Not only will we go back, Turbine will add in the master of different forms, the Druid. Besides these two exciting points, the level cap will rise to level 25, which gives the players five epic levels, with that of course comes the epic feats and epic magic.
Color this writer excited for this new expansion. I really wanna see the village in Forgotten Realms called Eveningstar. I truly wanna see how Turbine made the Druid, especially the shapeshifting aspect of the character. Is the Druid going to have just several forms and will it work the same as in World of Warcraft, or is the Druid going to have loads of different forms and the player can only choose just some of them which they think will work the best.We can only wait and see.
The announcement brought some concept art and a new logo (right). The concept art you can see after the button, a little spoiler, along with the official announcement; it is really good!
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20 April 2010 | |
Heartbourne
Turbine, previously the largest independant MMO company, has been acquired by Warner Brothers Incorporated. They’ve been huge investors in the company for years, but this latest exchange is expected to value Turbine at about $160 million.
Turbine currently produces and maintains several MMOs, including Lord of the Rings Online, Dungeons & Dragons Online, and Asheron’s Call. This isn’t the first time Warner Brothers has purchased a major video game company; they bought Midway Studios, developers of the Mortal Kombat series, as well as TT Games, developers of the Lego Star Wars and Lego Batman games. This gives them a huge monopoly on LOTR games, as Warner Brothers already owns the license for all non-online Lord of the Rings games, and Turbine had an exclusive license for all online LOTR games.
All of the intellectual property that Turbine developers now has access to might be even more exciting. The combination of Warner Brothers properties and Turbine developers has fantastic potential. Could we see DC Comics franchise characters in future MMOs?
