The Prestige Enhancements (PrE) of the classes (and, in the future; races) are in my view a really fun addition to the game. They open up a lot of avenues for creative multiclassing and are great for pure classes as well. It is a system that adds both versatility and power to the character building part of DDO.
If we check the PrE’s that are
planned to be in the game, we find will have three PrE’s for each class (with Sorcerers having four) and there will be a few extras for the Eberron Houses. Personally I can’t wait to get my hands on many of them.
However, I’m a little concerned over when we will get there. I made some very loose calculations which are the cause of my concern: If we check the total amount of PrE tiers planned there are 132. We now have 44 in the game. That leaves 88 PrE tiers still to implement.
Now, it is very hard to estimate how many PrE tiers will get developed each year. But let’s hope that the new schema with 6 updates a year - of which 3 will be system updates – will continue. In the last 2 system updates (if including update 5) we have gotten 9 Tiers (Pale Master 3, Radiant Servant 2, Shintao 2 and Ninja 2). Lets say we get 6 tiers in update 7 as well. That will mean 15 tiers in three system updates/one year.
Seeing as we have 88 tiers to go, that means we will get a full set of PrE’s in over 6 years time, if we estimate Update 7 to come around the end of 2010. So sometime 2016/2017.
Yes, this is a very loose estimation, both considering that we might get new classes, requiring more PrE’s, and that we don’t know the pace of future PrE development, which might be faster or slower.
And this is where my suggestion comes in: to please put some more development resources on finishing the PrE system. Maybe have a system update or two that concentrates almost exclusively on PrEs rather than portioning them out over the next six years.