Menace of the Underdark FAQ

[sirgog]

One question for the list:

Will current Epic items remain ML 20? Will this still be the case if they are augmented?

I'd hate to see +6 stat augments add 12 to the minimum level...

[Calebro]

^This. I can understand (sort of) having to pay a little extra for an entirely new game world, and even a 'Premium' class like Druid. But as a VIP, I'd expect that a certain 'base' amount of the new content would be covered by my subscription.

Is this the first MMO that you guys have ever played?
Expansion means you'll have to buy it. If it were going to be free then it would be called an adventure pack.
In many other games, you buy the game and pay a subscription. Every so often an expansion gets made. You then have to buy that and continue paying your subscription. Then another expansion gets released. You then have to buy that one and continue paying your subscription. And so on and so forth.

To be perfectly honest, I'm surprised that we've never had an expansion in the six years prior to this. We've had enough content released for multiple expansions, but they decided to release them in smaller packs instead of holding a number of them back to be released at once and making us buy them. We've been lucky.
Taking us to a whole new world and introducing the Realms will also bring more players, and it is certainly worth an expansion in my eyes.

[wax_on_wax_off]

Will the expansion be purchaseable via TP? Will the expansion include Druid as a bundle?

[skyjuice]

All I can say is, really don't worry about it. Your TR will not be wasted.

edit: as for voice actors I wanted Betty White for Lolth but I got voted down.

Since this is the first Xpack ever, how much portion of it's development resources be dedicated to voice acting? I'm sure the masses will like to know, in light of a recent AAA mmo title that allocated a huge portion to this aspect of story telling.

P.S in fact, i think outside of Misery's Peak, i haven't heard as much V/O ever since...

[Antheal]

Since this is the first Xpack ever, how much portion of it's development resources be dedicated to voice acting? I'm sure the masses will like to know, in light of a recent AAA mmo title that allocated a huge portion to this aspect of story telling.

P.S in fact, i think outside of Misery's Peak, i haven't heard as much V/O ever since...

Go play the Lordsmarch Plaza quests a few times.

[umeannothing]

Go play the Lordsmarch Plaza quests a few times.

Oh KRICKEY!!!!!


That pack was the final nail in the coffin of the DM voice on my end.

I guess I was just sick and tired of phony accents, I truly wish His Lord Gary Gygax had done every single voice in the game until his untimely smite/banish/disruption.


I truly am tired of fake accents. give me a real accent, or just hire some average joe millionaire to do the job, for sure.


In fact, I am particularly fond of the way Canadians say "oot" instead of "out" and such, so please, let a Canadian do the voices.

Umeannothing oot.

[smatt]

All I can say is, really don't worry about it. Your TR will not be wasted.

edit: as for voice actors I wanted Betty White for Lolth but I got voted down.

I want the "no on Betty" voters names and addresses.... I'll fix this situation

[Artos_Fabril]

Is this the first MMO that you guys have ever played?
Expansion means you'll have to buy it. If it were going to be free then it would be called an adventure pack.
In many other games, you buy the game and pay a subscription. Every so often an expansion gets made. You then have to buy that and continue paying your subscription. Then another expansion gets released. You then have to buy that one and continue paying your subscription. And so on and so forth.

To be perfectly honest, I'm surprised that we've never had an expansion in the six years prior to this. We've had enough content released for multiple expansions, but they decided to release them in smaller packs instead of holding a number of them back to be released at once and making us buy them. We've been lucky.
Taking us to a whole new world and introducing the Realms will also bring more players, and it is certainly worth an expansion in my eyes.

Then there's the City of Heroes model. Release content patches regularly, an expansion every few years, after the expansion is a year or so old, roll it into the base content.

[dkyle]

All I can say is, really don't worry about it. Your TR will not be wasted.

Thank you for the reply, but that's not quite what I was concerned about.

I'm not worried that past life benefits will go away. I'm concerned that TR will reset Epic XP, in addition to Heroic XP, thereby greatly increasing the cost of TRing.

Basically, I'd like to see as much freedom as possible to pursue end-game advancement, and TR, interspersed howeve we want. But even with just tomes and Raid completions getting lost on TR, there's aleady significant pressure to TR until "done" (which is really an unknowable moment) before running heavy end-game stuff. Loss of Epic XP would make it even worse.

[UrbanPyro]

Deleted.

[thandros]

Will We be abel to use the Greater Teleport spell to go between Forgotten realms and Eberon? or No more quick portable hole restock runs?

[Entelech]

My FAQ questions are:

(1) Will Fred be able to grant the Spellfire feat, or will I have to roll a new character to get it?

(2) How many Turbine Points will it require to become a Chosen of Mystra? If it's more than 500, her 'blessing' is overpriced.

[Krell]

Is this the first MMO that you guys have ever played?
Expansion means you'll have to buy it. If it were going to be free then it would be called an adventure pack.
In many other games, you buy the game and pay a subscription. Every so often an expansion gets made. You then have to buy that and continue paying your subscription. Then another expansion gets released. You then have to buy that one and continue paying your subscription. And so on and so forth.

To be perfectly honest, I'm surprised that we've never had an expansion in the six years prior to this. We've had enough content released for multiple expansions, but they decided to release them in smaller packs instead of holding a number of them back to be released at once and making us buy them. We've been lucky.
Taking us to a whole new world and introducing the Realms will also bring more players, and it is certainly worth an expansion in my eyes.

Yup, that is pretty much how things work in the MMO market. It is nice to get the smaller chunks of content along the way with bits of new artwork and functionality. If you want a huge chunk of new content at once including art, classes, etc. you're looking at an expansion pack. As long as the price is reasonable, it is worth it to me to have a big box full of new toys to play with for a while.

[Antheal]

Oh KRICKEY!!!!!


That pack was the final nail in the coffin of the DM voice on my end.

I guess I was just sick and tired of phony accents, I truly wish His Lord Gary Gygax had done every single voice in the game until his untimely smite/banish/disruption.


I truly am tired of fake accents. give me a real accent, or just hire some average joe millionaire to do the job, for sure.


In fact, I am particularly fond of the way Canadians say "oot" instead of "out" and such, so please, let a Canadian do the voices.

Umeannothing oot.

U trollin'? lololol

The Lordsmarch DM is The. Best. VO. Ever.

Gary Gygax, bless his soul, was atrocious and his voice work in Delera's was cringeworthy.

[altrocks]

My FAQ questions are:

(1) Will Fred be able to grant the Spellfire feat, or will I have to roll a new character to get it?

(2) How many Turbine Points will it require to become a Chosen of Mystra? If it's more than 500, her 'blessing' is overpriced.

Ooooh... is there going to be a lot of Pantheon crossing over or are we going to stay mainly with Eberron deities?

[skyjuice]

Go play the Lordsmarch Plaza quests a few times.

DM voice overs don't count.

[aerendhil]

* Expansion pack will have to be purchased by everybody.

* Druid class will be free to VIP, P2P for others. VIPs deserve that much (disclaimer : I'm premium)

[Razcar]

but with Stainer's discovery and subsequent thread about it, they figured that the cat was already out of the bag.

No, it was discovered by a guy who tried to register a domain for his guild over the holidays, and found that sites such as ddounderdark.com, ddoforgottenrealms.com and ddomotu.com had recently been registered by Turbine. Really well spotted. He ("Andy B"? Can't be bothered to listen again...) then sent a mail to DDOCast with this cool information. So this guy discovered it, and sent a mail to DDOCast which reported on their podcast, think it was episode 244. Then others made posts about it here on these forums.

Yes, details, but it was a nice catch and credit for it should be placed at the right door. You don't give the newstand salesman the Pulitzer, do you

[Razcar]

U trollin'? lololol

The Lordsmarch DM is The. Best. VO. Ever.

Gary Gygax, bless his soul, was atrocious and his voice work in Delera's was cringeworthy.

I so agree. The woman that did Lordsmarch and Attack on Stormreach is the best they've had. Great range and hilarious over the top impressions. The only one worse than Gygax in Delera's was Dave Arneson in Threnal. It is of course brilliant that these guys did DM voices, but for their history and D&D pedigree reasons only...

[EllisDee37]

I had a feeling once that I read that the experience would be seperated into its own catagory that that's how it would work. Heroic Levels into Epic Levels. My wild guess then is that from Level 20 Fighter, Level 21 will be a generic Epic Level where you gain a Hit Die, AB, Skills, and hopefully epic feats at 21 and 24. Adding additional levels of Fighter or other classes might be game breaking in epic...

My thoughts exactly. As soon as I heard that epic xp/levels was a separate system, I assumed that the epic levels don't have any particular class attached to them. So I guess it would be like Wizard 18/Rogue 2/Epic 2, as opposed to Wizard 20/Rogue 2.

I also assume that the tr xp scaling will be a non-issue for epic xp. My guess is that because epic xp is a separate system, it will only ever have a single scale that isn't increased by tr. A fair trade-off for not scaling this xp for trs would be to reset it on tr, which is in keeping with the concept of tr. (Special exemption for crafting xp due to the ridiculous grind compared to anything else in the game.)

Bear in mind that I know nothing and this is wild speculation.