A Look Ahead - 2019 Producer's Letter

[Severlin]

Greetings! I’m excited today to share a look at our 2019 road map, featuring a new expansion, new quests, a new race, and more! DDO enters its 13th year with a passionate player base and a development team dedicated to making DDO great, and it couldn’t be done without you.

You've known about our plans for an expansion into Sharn for a while now, and last week we were able to start sharing more information with you, including the debut of our first Sharn-related preview material to our public preview server, and an announcement that we will begin accepting preorders for Masterminds of Sharn in March. Bookmark ddo.com/mastermindsofsharn to make sure you have the latest information.

We intend to follow up Sharn with a new adventure pack set in the City of Towers, but you won’t need the Sharn expansion to run these quests. Update 43’s adventure pack set will be free to VIPs (and Season Pass holders). Update 44 will introduce our next new class as well! More information about what this class will be is under wraps for now, but we will have much more to share later this year.

Update 45 will arrive later in the year as well, and feature our next classic adventure pack. We don’t feel it would B2 early to talk about it, so we’re pleased to announce that Keep on the Borderlands will offer a new experience for players adventuring at the lower levels of the game. The classic pack will also feature several other dungeons, similar to what we did with White Plume Mountain and Other Tales.

Some other things we are hoping to do this year is to work on Epic Destinies, with a few targeted changes per destiny along with additional work to Knight of the Chalice, and the debut of a new racial variant!

As always, we are honored to be the place where you enjoy the most authentic Dungeons & Dragons experience in video gaming, and we will continue to work hard to earn your patronage.

Sev~

[Xharath]

Greetings! I’m excited today to share a look at our 2019 road map, featuring a new expansion, new quests, a new race, and more! DDO enters its 13th year with a passionate player base and a development team dedicated to making DDO great, and it couldn’t be done without you.

You've known about our plans for an expansion into Sharn for a while now, and last week we were able to start sharing more information with you, including the debut of our first Sharn-related preview material to our public preview server, and an announcement that we will begin accepting preorders for Masterminds of Sharn in March. Bookmark ddo.com/mastermindsofsharn to make sure you have the latest information.

We intend to follow up Sharn with a new adventure pack set in the City of Towers, but you won’t need the Sharn expansion to run these quests. Update 43’s adventure pack set will be free to VIPs (and Season Pass holders). Update 44 will introduce our next new class as well! More information about what this class will be is under wraps for now, but we will have much more to share later this year.

Update 45 will arrive later in the year as well, and feature our next classic adventure pack. We don’t feel it would B2 early to talk about it, so we’re pleased to announce that Keep on the Borderlands will offer a new experience for players adventuring at the lower levels of the game. The classic pack will also feature several other dungeons, similar to what we did with White Plume Mountain and Other Tales.

Some other things we are hoping to do this year is to work on Epic Destinies, with a few targeted changes per destiny along with additional work to Knight of the Chalice, and the debut of a new racial variant!

As always, we are honored to be the place where you enjoy the most authentic Dungeons & Dragons experience in video gaming, and we will continue to work hard to earn your patronage.

Sev~

cool stuff ahead! keep up the great work!
A new class
a racial epic variant
some more sharn stuff
and a classic module! Keep on the borderlands!

[Arkat]

A new class and a new racial variant. I'd say those are pretty big news.

Let the speculation begin!

BTW...Thanks, Sev.

[MistaMagic]

So 3 more Racial tr's for Tiefling and then some heroic Tr's for a new class and then more racials LOL. Keep the Hampster wheel rolling

[Maelodic]

I feel like it's a pipe dream but psionic would be incredible

[Impaqt]

underwhelming to be honest. looking forward to the class of course.. but we pretty much knew the rest didnt we? what systems are we going to see updated this year? And more enhancement tree updates? new trees?

[Arkat]

underwhelming to be honest. looking forward to the class of course.. but we pretty much knew the rest didnt we? what systems are we going to see updated this year? And more enhancement tree updates? new trees?

The racial variant is also new information.

[Aelonwy]

Aww you missed the opportunity to keep stringing it along till April first.

Sounds cool. Looking forward to all of it. Especially epic destiny work. Nice.

[Sam-u-r-eye]

Woot!

Aww you missed the opportunity to keep stringing it along till April first.

Sounds cool. Looking forward to all of it. Especially epic destiny work. Nice.

me to about the epic destiny work

[Lynnabel]

Aww you missed the opportunity to keep stringing it along till April first.

I was overruled on this front, I'm sorry. I let you down.

[GramercyRiff]

New class?

I'm going to guess Archivist because I want it to be Archivist. It heavily uses a skill not in DDO, but Artificer is nothing like its 3.5 origin, so changes can be made. Hopefully it retains more of its power than Artificer did.

This Producer's Letter whelmed me. New class, new variant race, and other needed changes.


Also have you good folks at SSG looked at Alternate Class Features and could/would these ever see the light of day in this game?

[Hafeal]

Sev & all DDO staff -

Thank you for continued work on our game.

A question:

Update 45 will arrive later in the year as well, and feature our next classic adventure pack. We don’t feel it would B2 early to talk about it, so we’re pleased to announce that Keep on the Borderlands will offer a new experience for players adventuring at the lower levels of the game. The classic pack will also feature several other dungeons, similar to what we did with White Plume Mountain and Other Tales.

WIll this be part of a new starter area? Just hoping for a new path for the TR experience.

Also, are there any major quality of life enhancements? Specifically, I have to agree with the sentiment in the recent thread on inventory - it is a drag and prevents me from actually playing the game while I do the tetris dance trying to manage it. Any others you can hint at would be appreciated as well.

Thank you!

[Kza]

New class = fun!
Epic destinies = really good - hope get better synergy for artificers for example. Probably other classes as well.
racial variant - decent
I hope that new lowbie area will be open for reaper? so you could play as hard/easy you want? -) Classical adventures is always nice. Loved wpm
Great you do an adventure pack for Sharn after- my only sadness with awesome Ravenloft, i want more quests in that setting!


Had hoped for some major system revamp (better inventory-64-etc) Everything good but that had made it great in my book.


Thanks for the info!

[axel15810]

Very cool though was hoping for more details.

I'm going to guess the variant is Duergar. Dwarf variant would be neat and it'd make sense.

New class I have no idea, though I hope it is something hybrid or melee since last new class was caster.

[Itchybeard]

Thank you very much for this letter. Everything sounds exciting

If I had my way, I would like the dev team to produce something like a Necromancer. Imagine the Pale Master extracted from the Wizard tree and given its very own class. The idea of using negative energy to heal and use multiple forms is unique enough to have its own class. They could take the various types, Zombie, Vampire, etc. and give them unique trees. I would love to target dead enemies, bring them to life, and make them do as I command them. Muwhahaahaaa! On the flip size, it wouldn't be hard to give the Wizard a new tree in exchange.

Even if this doesn't happen (a pipe dream, I know), any work done on Pale Master is appreciated.

[cave_diver]

Is it just me or is the producers letter completely lack of any detail. Seems it gets shorter every year.


Let me save you the time, and I will write 2020's letter:

Dear players,

Welcome to our 14th year in DDO. Stuff is coming out.


Thank you

[Saekee]

Thanks for sharing Sev and for your team's diligence.


Please add to the roadmap big tweaks to the new player experience.

[Memnir]

our 2019 road map
Sharn
a new adventure pack set in the City of Towers
our next new class as well
Keep on the Borderlands will offer a new experience for players adventuring at the lower levels of the game
work on Epic Destinies
work to Knight of the Chalice
a new racial variant

As always, we are honored to be the place where you enjoy the most authentic Dungeons & Dragons experience in video gaming, and we will continue to work hard to earn your patronage.

Sev~

[FuzzyDuck81]

Speculation time!

Anniversary livestream mentioned NDAs - I suspect this is one from WotC & will be related to something in a forthcoming 5e book, as there's nothing else officially released for that yet besides the core classes... tiefling uses the 5e +CHA version rather than the classic +2 DEX & INT, -2 CHA version so I think this could be a good bet for adapting some of the newer stuff. As for what it is... hard to say. Something psionic is possible i guess, or maybe a spirit shaman for a primal magic based spontaneous caster, could be something else entirely - I suspect spirit shaman is likely though due to...

...the new racial variant which I think will be Talenta halflings - again in the anniversary stream, there were mentions of visiting other areas in Eberron & also mention of dinosaurs. Talenta halflings are nomads who ride dinosaurs & if there's another iconic added too it'd probably be a Talenta halfling barbarian as one of the only remaining f2p classes available plus it'd certainly fit with the lore. Also, having the spirit shaman class becoming available at the same time as introducing those tribal nomads would fit too.

All seems like it should be a lot of fun though, will be looking forward to it

[FuryFlash]

The absolute most exciting thing here is the new class. The biggest reason I play DDO is for the character customization and options, so anything increasing that area is great in my books. I'm hyped for the Epic Destiny passes for the same reason - Epic play has so little customization/progression compared to heroics, having more meaningful and varied ED choices would be a great first step.

Of course, Sharn is super awesome, and I look forward to the other packs as well! Can't wait to hear more about these exciting updates in the next few weeks.

~Fury