End of the Week with Major Mal Drizzt Edition

[waterboytkd]

It seems to me that DDO is going to try and compete for the DnD nostalgia money, ignoring any consistency or story which has made DDO unique up until now.

The shark-pool is ready, ramps positioned, and motorbike fuelled up.
Now I'm just waiting.

This is my sentiment. We have a deep and rich world still left largely unexplored in Eberron, yet we're going to break that just to give people a spoonful of nostalgia.

With so much more in Eberron left to do, it's way too early to jump the shark.

[Dark-Star]

1979.
Summer.
That was the first time I saw a Drow.

I was introduced to DnD the year before by my mum on vacation. We had a good time, my mom as the DM, and the rest of the people on vacation playing various classes. I was an Elf. Yep, Elf as a class. I think I died being bit by a poison spider.

Everyone else went on with their normal lives, I became an addict. Those AD&D books are burned into my mind from those early years. Every picture memorized. Every list known, and usually I can still remember what page they were on. Lucky for me we had a great bookstore in my hometown that had a huge game section. My DM bought G1-3 (The giants series) and D1-3 the Drow series. A Drow? What was that? Evil elves that hate everything good in the world? Sparks the imagination. Imagine Elrond not only bad, but super powerful and EVIL, not just evil. Finally a villain worthy of my hero Lannon's time. Remember this was the days of dungeon crawls, not high drama or 'storytelling is king' that the game has evolved into.

On it went, defeating the Drow and their nefarious plans, traveling the Underdark for about a year, Kao-toa piercers, Shriekers, Xorns, a purple worm (who ate our human paladin), mind flayers, and other nasties. Then Q1 came out. Waaait. We are going to fight a goddess? On a different plane, in her home? And she has a AC of -10?!? We all gleefully died that afternoon, and even though a year of a good character was lost, we had a ton of fun.

2012.
Forgotten Realms, really?
Pinch me!

Lolth is back in my life, little Drow are running around the office, and our destination is the Forgotten Realms? Seriously, this is a dream come true. I have to chuckle about all the arguments I had with my parents back in the 80's about wasting my time with D&D and designing my own games and worlds. I guess I won those arguments 25 years later…

So now you know why we have been busy, and hopefully some confusion of what we have been doing is clearer.
In the short term, we are wrapping up a bugfix-only patch hopefully today for next week, and tromping along with Update 13.
Most of the patch will fix things we broke in December. There is some fixes to Challenges, loot and lag. And that is about it.

Maj

EDIT: See how excited I am? Go Patriots! I feel so ashamed. Well, on the day after the anniversary of the Snow Bowl when all of NE fell in love with a kicker, and all of Oakland was wondering what a tuck rule was may we as fans get a fantastic game on Sunday.

Your best post ever.

I remember being in my single digits sneaking a flashlight and the Players Handbook, Monster Manual and eventually Dieties and Demigods under the covers, pretending to be asleep, but all the while memorizing every spell, picture and word in those books. Some giants had 25 strength, TWENTY FIVE?! That's like.... way better than 18/00.

Athlete and part time bully during the week, undercover nerd on the weekends with those four-eyed kids from down the street that went to private school, running D&D campaigns until the wee hours. Some things never change...

Can't wait for this expansion. Way to step it up Turbine.

[Vengeance777]

I don't mind the campaign setting crossing especially since devs confirmed they will be developing content for both settings now. I can't wait for this summer. Campaign setting crossovers are big parts of D&D's history, Spelljammer and Planescape especially. And some of my favorite times playing pen and paper have involved traveling the planes to other settings. Traveling the Planes is usually a major part in Epic campaigns so makes sense for DDO to do it.

This isn't the first DDO campaign setting crossover either. We have a Mindflayer from Spelljammer navigating the higher level guild Airships and there's probably a lot more easter eggs as well.

If done right there could be some interesting concepts to explore. I really want to see how Lolth, Vulkoor and their Drow worshipers interact for example. The civilized Dragons of Eberron and the usually lone dragons of the forgotten realms interacting would be interesting. Would the Argonessians welcome them or wipe them from the planes? The Underdark and Khyber interacting has a lot of potential as well.

[red_cardinal]

I have to chuckle about all the arguments I had with my parents back in the 80's about wasting my time with D&D and designing my own games and worlds. I guess I won those arguments 25 years later…

You're lucky that you connected the dots sometime in the future. It finally paid off. My guess is that there isn't
anything better than realizing your childhood dreams.

Most of the patch will fix things we broke in December. There is some fixes to Challenges, loot and lag. And that is about it.

Good stuff.

[quijenoth]

This is box that I popped my D&D cherry on...



Think I was 9 or 10 at the time, good times...

[Culver.Civello]

All Hail Lolth!

You say that now...

Then when the expansion comes out, you'll all be knocking down her doors to get a piece of her and steal her valuable loot. Which reminds me... I'm really excited to see what kind of loot will come out of these epic quest. It makes me all giggly inside. ^-^

Then it makes me sad because I'll probably be going without water for a month because I have to pay for the expansion instead of my water bill... Let the nerdy basement good times begin. No body open my basement door. It will smell like a bunch of dead Driders down there.

[WizardMerrick]

The All Mighty CUBE is not pleased with all this worship of the Blasphemous Demon known as Lolth or Lloth in Drowish.

Throw aside this impure She-Spider and join me in the worship of the perfect being.

All Hail the Cube for it is perfect on six sides.

...because there's always a 10x10 room for Jell-O?

[Aesop]

I'm really hoping that we get a shot at Tiamat at some point... I mean come on badass Dragon God with a temper

Aesop


ps: I also hope that we'll be able to bring sub 20s into FR. I haven't been playing in the upper levels in some time started new characters on a new server (or 3) and been soloing slowly since. I only play once in a while now and on my new home of Orien the highest I have is 11... of course I have 19 characters on Orien and try to spread my time around among them.

[stainer]

Thy Cube will protect Thee from thy lowly incantations for thy irreverent Demon for she means nothing to Thee.

GoldyGopher! Mighty Lolth (All Hail!) has sent me a vision.



I can only assume this cube of yours is shaking like a bowl full of, well, Jello.

Stainer, Prophet of Lolth

[brightfang]

I'm really hoping that we get a shot at Tiamat at some point... I mean come on badass Dragon God with a temper

Aesop

/signed however many times it takes for me to fight Tiamat! (In my opinion the best boss ever.)

[MnaSidhe]

I just hope I dont ever run into Drizzt, or Elminster. been doing that all the time since at least the BG series of computer games, and its not much fun any more!

[herzkos]

it sucks to be who??????




yay for the dmg.

[yawumpus]

Hmmm...if the "Forgotten Realms" are remembered by so many, how can they (still) be forgotten?

Oh, for the good ol' days of the (original) Unearthed Arcana! {Talk about 'forgotten realms'....}

Unearthed Arcana? I bought that out of early nostalgia as I was no longer playing much AD&D.

New Classes:
Barbarian. Plays poorly with others. Won't play at all with magic users, eventually (I think level 2) tolerates *clerics*. Think about it. Barbarian. won't party with clerics.

Cavalier. I liked this one, and played one after it came out in the Dragon. Still, won't fight tactically with others (one rule you *know* will only be followed by accident). Overpowered (compared to fighters, nobody talked about "balance" in AD&D except player/monster balance). Try sneaking in a 18/73 strength in on a DM who doesn't know it is going to be 18/00 by level 4.

There were other rules, but it seemed pretty pointless. I'm sure there were plenty of munchkins excited about the possibility of +6 weapons instead of +5 (wait, I ground for those cove cutlasses to, didn't I?). Most of the book was a reprint of Dragon articles. This was pretty bad considering you could get just about everything in it, much more stuff, (including a lot of how stuff was published before making its way into the DMG) by buying the Best of the Dragon #1,2,3,4(more?) for roughly the same price.

[jillie]

Not to say that I have played a while.


I hope the Cube finds it worthy.

I started with that set too. While it's vanished, victim of many moves, I remember it fondly.

[Socio]

If done right there could be some interesting concepts to explore. I really want to see how Lolth, Vulkoor and their Drow worshipers interact for example. The civilized Dragons of Eberron and the usually lone dragons of the forgotten realms interacting would be interesting. Would the Argonessians welcome them or wipe them from the planes? The Underdark and Khyber interacting has a lot of potential as well.

I would much like to see something along the likes of that as well, Eberron may have much left to explore, but I am hoping for some cross planes Conflicts, Enemies uniting for a common goal against the hero's of DDO, Or even Vulkoor's and his drow, conflicting with Lolth and her drow. Maybe the Daelkyr seeing these strange new paths to new realms as a chance to escape khyber and rule over new land *Seeing We left a bad taste is poor ole Belashyrra's mouth *

[Produktion_Malphunktion]

All I have to say is....

Yessssssss!

[gloopygloop]

All I have to say is....

Yessssssss!

It took you that long to finally post about the South Carolina primary?

[noneill]

All I have to say is....

Yessssssss!

[bradleyforrest]

It's not often that you see a D-lineman as the player of the game, but he deserved it. Wilfork is a BEAST

[voodoogroves]

All I have to say is....

Yessssssss!

As I sat with the wife watching the game, I said "Kick? Are they crazy? I hate single elimination games where they play for a tie ... win or go home. If you go for the win and fail, you're gutsy. If the flip happens and you fail to tie, you're a goat. That's a ton of pressure on a kicker."


It's like I'm a prophet.

I wonder if there's a hotel room somewhere with a kicker in it with a Tebow stance....