DDO Producer's Letter - January 2017

[Severlin]

Greetings,

It has been a busy couple of weeks since we announced our transition to Standing Stone Games. We appreciate the patience you’ve shown as we continue to work on this transition, and your help in identifying various nooks and crannies that might still need attention. We all thank you! The coming year promises to bring lots of new content, so I wanted to talk about at some things you can look for in 2017.

We are currently working hard on Update 34, which will feature a new, free dungeon, a champion revamp, and the debut of Reaper difficulty. Champions are creatures that have been tainted or empowered by the Manual of the Planes with bits of planar energy to make them more powerful. To reflect this lore, and to allow you to better identify the threat they pose, champions have been revamped so they are marked with a specific plane, and gain powers from that mark. Each champion has a planar title and a crown icon to reflect the level of its empowerment, so you can identify the challenge ahead of you more easily.

One of the joys of playing Dungeons and Dragons Online is the vast amount of build customization the game offers, and many of you have told us that want more challenge for your top builds as you refine your characters and gear them up. Reaper difficulty will offer new challenges for you. Some characters cheat death so often that even Reapers take notice! In this mode the dungeons you play are much more dangerous, and Reapers roam halls that might otherwise seem familiar. In the Reaper difficulty denizens from the planes aligned with Death are actively trying to kill you, and so is the Dungeon Master! Not for the faint of heart. Reaper difficulty brings 10 Skulls worth of difficulty so you can find the challenge that is most fun for you.

At the end of February we will be celebrating the 11th anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons Online! We'll have special gifts, and the anniversary dungeon will be coming back for an encore. We are also working on Update 35, and hope to have it ready in that timeframe. It will debut several new adventures, a new raid, and a new playable race with the Dragonborn!

After Update 35, we will continue our focus on new content, with an adventure pack set in the Forgotten Realms. The Stonelands are located north of The Stormhorns, and are known as a rocky and hilly region where legend states a castle built above the clouds crashed to Earth. The Stonelands’ frequent storms may indeed come from a battle against a magical realm of old. Expect Update 36 sometime in late Spring/early Summer.

After Update 36, we still have two more updates in 2017, and we have already teased that one of those will be our expansion! We are very excited about Ravenloft, which has long been a fan favorite. We are planning lots of new content, Sentient Weapons, and other surprises.

We will continue to target game performance improvements and squash bugs, like usual, and we'd like to look at Cleric, Favored Soul, Druid, and Artificer, and do other class work as necessary. We also want to hear from you! Listening carefully to your suggestions has always helped our game be its best, and we are expanding the roster of the DDO Players Council to get more feedback from more people more often.

This will be an incredible year for DDO, and we thank you for being a part of it!

~ Sev

[Loromir]

I like it. Sounds like quantity of new content is going to ramp up this year vs. the last couple of years. I look forward to see what you have in store.


I also like that you mention sentient weapons. That will be interesting to say the least.

[PsychoBlonde]

Oooo, sounds so exciting!

[Tlorrd]

a lot of info packed into a few paragraphs ... nicely done. Looking forward to it.

[zehnvhex]

Sounds nice.

We will continue to target game performance improvements and squash bugs

Any chance UI fixes/improvements are slated at all for 2017? The UI is -really- starting to show its age. The buff bar is ugly as hell, inventory management is clunky at best, TR cache is a nightmare, etc...etc...

[jakeelala]

How do we apply for players council?

[Saekee]

thanks Sev for the letter.

Please make it 1) impossible to
do reaper 10--maybe after months and months of trials; 2) impossible to enter a quest in reaper mode while overlevel (maybe 2 levels) not counting epic. It will be cheese with level 30 toons farming heroic reaper boosts like on the helmet, further trivializing heroics

I predict sentient weapons will be smarter than hirelings!

[Severlin]

How do we apply for players council?

Watch for future posts from Cordovan!

Sev~

[vms4ever]

At the end of February we will be celebrating the 11th anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons Online! We'll have special gifts, and the anniversary dungeon will be coming back for an encore.
~ Sev

Will we please be able to turn in the 10th anniversary tokens? Some of us (well, at least me) have some that successfully hid in bags during the 10th anniversary event. And thank you for bringing back the anniversary dungeon. I am looking forward to killing off all our favorite developers again and again and again...

(Somehow it seems like killing developers is a favorite past time of DBAs.)

[Vish]

Yes, yes, and more yes.

Sentient weapons, drools
Great lore, drools
Raid(s), just drool

Thank you for a glimmer of the year to come
I know you're filling big shoes
And have great expectations

I feel you will meet those goals,
And reinvigorate the game

All I can say is,
I want to be on board for clerics
#clericlivesmatter

'nuff said

[Fedora1]

We are also working on Update 35, and hope to have it ready in that timeframe. It will debut several new adventures, a new raid, and a new playable race with the Dragonborn!

After Update 35, we will continue our focus on new content, with an adventure pack set in the Forgotten Realms. The Stonelands are located north of The Stormhorns, and are known as a rocky and hilly region where legend states a castle built above the clouds crashed to Earth. The Stonelands’ frequent storms may indeed come from a battle against a magical realm of old. Expect Update 36 sometime in late Spring/early Summer.

Looking forward to these the most.

[rsking]

whas the time frame for the expansion drop month wise?

[galamothreign]

Great! thanks for the letter!

Now I ask: What about the Aasimar and Tiefling races? they are coming with Ravenloft? Or another update?

[Aelonwy]

As you may or may not realize I am often more concerned with the aesthetics, especially those of my own characters, in that vein I would like to ask if any thought has been given to make cosmetics such as these available to purchase in the Store:

Hairstyle available to gnome females that could be made available to other races.

Center image is the hair dye Slate, the left is an alteration of Slate to create a color somewhat more violet than the current Lavender but still pastel and the the right is an alteration of Slate to make a more saturated and darker Violet (Not the fuchsia-esque Gianthold Purple) available to races other than elf and drow.

Pastel version of Royal Blue Dye to make Periwinkle.

I chose as examples what I considered to be some of the easiest to make/alter from existing. As an addendum, it would be nice if the Store exclusive dyes and hairstyles had a button for temporarily previewing on your character before purchase from the store like the coat hanger on cosmetic armors.

Also just a thought for the far distant future content but I would really like to see bulettes and displacer beasts someday.

[Hallstatt]

The OP's info makes me happy. Thanks for the smiles!

[cronusdeathspell]

Greetings,

The Stonelands are located north of The Stormhorns, and are known as a rocky and hilly region where legend states a castle built above the clouds crashed to Earth.

~ Sev

Technically it crashed into Toril

[dunklezhan]

Bah, dragonborn. Not my favorite. Mind you, I still haven't played gnome or half elf but I own them both so who cares what I think, lol!

Still, I bet the art department have had a blast. I hope so - if we're gonna have them, I want them to look good.

...is it wrong that I want to know what the /dance is?

[Aelonwy]

...is it wrong that I want to know what the /dance is?

Not wrong at all... its also something I enjoy.

[Kza]

Lovely, good luck, this is extremely ambitious. Dont forget to sleep also. :-)

[DANTEIL]

After Update 35, we will continue our focus on new content, with an adventure pack set in the Forgotten Realms. The Stonelands are located north of The Stormhorns, and are known as a rocky and hilly region where legend states a castle built above the clouds crashed to Earth. The Stonelands’ frequent storms may indeed come from a battle against a magical realm of old. Expect Update 36 sometime in late Spring/early Summer.

Thank you for the letter. I will be disappointed if the Stonelands don't have a 'Standing Stone' somewhere.