A Look Ahead - Producer's Letter January 2020

[Severlin]

We are entering a new decade with grand plans for Dungeons & Dragons Online, and I am writing today to share some of our ideas with you. The past decade-plus has been an amazing adventure, and we thank you for being a part of it.

We're kicking off 2020 with a bit of polish and refresh to two of DDO's most historic adventure packs: The Catacombs and Delera's Tomb! Both of these adventures will get Epic versions in our next game update, which also features the previously-announced Alchemist class. The Alchemist mixes and matches spells to create powerful reactions that help allies and incinerate foes. Expect Update 45 to arrive in February!

Season One of the Hardcore League was met with enthusiasm and excitement, so we're making it a recurring event! In Season Two, Mortality will be replaced by DDO's classic foe Arraetrikos, who will empower new Champions with devilish powers. Expect future seasons to test your skill in how you build and play characters, in addition to new rewards! You will read more about these changes as we near future seasons.

2020 will also bring a long-standing community request to the game: a 64-bit client. The 64-bit client can improve the overall performance of the game for many, and we look forward to its release later this year. We also have user interface improvements planned for the Shared Account Bank to make it easier to store, sort, and access the items you've collected. Other quality of life improvements are in the planning stages as well, and we'll talk more about it later this year.

Spring will bring a new adventure pack set in Stormreach, where the Gatekeepers need your help to determine the fate of some missing acolytes in the Cerulean Hills, and investigate the sudden appearance of a strange hut in the Harbor. In the summer, we're considering a new adventure pack in addition to some Legendary versions of well-known raids, but we want to keep that unannounced for now.

As we gaze further into the second half of the year, we are thrilled to share news about our next expansion, which will see players travel into the mystical plane of the Feywild! Joining characters on their trip will be our next new player character race: the Shifter, capable of temporarily embracing their bestial aspects to rend enemies and survive. Another thing we can say today about our upcoming Feywild expansion is that you will need to learn new, powerful ways to overcome challenge, and doing so will gain you the experience necessary to push past level 30 for the first time in DDO history.

We have other surprises in store for 2020 as well, but the above is a high-level road map of our current schedule. As always, the road map can change, and we will endeavor to let you know how things are going as plans become realities. We are very thankful for your support of this game for more than a decade, and we are thrilled to embark on a new decade of adventure with you.

Sev~

[AlmGhandi]

woot!
more thought over comments to come....

[HungarianRhapsody]

Get those Epic lives now before they cost 20 Million XP each...

[mikarddo]

Oh my, not more levels. That is a bad idea indeed.

[AlmGhandi]

Finally DDO characters L31..... current legendary content becomes obsolete....

Hardcore.... no more mortality? Arratreikos? Harry? Are we going to spam the place full of hardcore traders to get the rewards on the normal servers? That is going to be a lot of running around! … Hardcore Harry.... someone will probably have to add to the "disambiguation" on wiki.... lest people trying their google luck end up on the wrong page*.

Someone is going to have to remind me about the Feywild… I was hoping for Planescape….
What is the Feywild…. and does it crash my graphics card with purple lighting?

*sadly something is broken and I cannot edit my posts after I post them.

[Tianie]

Isle of Dread?

[Drwaz99]

More hamster wheel and still not enough endgame. Check, please.

[Cocomajobo]

Isle of Dread?

Isle of Dread is not currently planned for 2020. We are still investigating the possibility of eventually adapting it to DDO but it is not currently on our schedule.

[AlmGhandi]

More hamster wheel and still not enough endgame. Check, please.

Harry Hamster

[GoldyGopher]

Someone is going to have to remind me about the Feywild… I was hoping for Planescape….
What is the Feywild…. and does it crash my graphics card with purple lighting?

https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/43-d...wild-explained

[AlmGhandi]

https://www.dndbeyond.com/posts/43-d...wild-explained

Thank you.... so it is more on the Forgotten Realms side of things? Elminster departs....
The Shadowfell / Wheloon was great at crashing my system...….

[AlmGhandi]

Isle of Dread is not currently planned for 2020. We are still investigating the possibility of eventually adapting it to DDO but it is not currently on our schedule.

First time I played Isle of Dread.... party wipe.
Chainmail armor on board a ship is not such a great thing....

[GoldyGopher]

As we gaze further into the second half of the year, we are thrilled to share news about our next expansion, which will see players travel into the mystical plane of the Feywild! Joining characters on their trip will be our next new player character race: the Shifter, capable of temporarily embracing their bestial aspects to rend enemies and survive. Another thing we can say today about our upcoming Feywild expansion is that you will need to learn new, powerful ways to overcome challenge, and doing so will gain you the experience necessary to push past level 30 for the first time in DDO history.

Thinking about this little section has me slightly confused.

If I recall correctly Feywild is a Forgotten Realms plain of existance, the polar opposite of the Shadowfell. The Feywild is is home to the Fey/Fairies (think Lost Girl). Shifters are an Eberron playable race. Kind of odd they would be together. Yet at the same time makes kind of sense.

[Thar]

. Another thing we can say today about our upcoming Feywild expansion is that you will need to learn new, powerful ways to overcome challenge, and doing so will gain you the experience necessary to push past level 30 for the first time in DDO history.

Sev~

The game doesn't need to go to 35... There is always too much of a gap in Epics that the power creap is a bit much for new players to catch up on TR's. Unless you can still TR at 30. The TR train doesn't need to be longer...

[AlmGhandi]

Thinking about this little section has me slightly confused.

If I recall correctly Feywild is a Forgotten Realms plain of existance, the polar opposite of the Shadowfell. The Feywild is is home to the Fey/Fairies (think Lost Girl). Shifters are an Eberron playable race. Kind of odd they would be together. Yet at the same time makes kind of sense.

At least they are not having us running around casting "raise dead" on soul stones....

I'm hoping that the Feywild makes funky green lighting that crashes my graphics card.... purple is so.... passé

[HungarianRhapsody]

Another thing we can say today about our upcoming Feywild expansion is that you will need to learn new, powerful ways to overcome challenge, and doing so will gain you the experience necessary to push past level 30 for the first time in DDO history.

Anyone have the search-fu to go find the DDO Forums posts where SSG promised that level 30 would be the level limit going forward and that it wouldn't be increased again?

Raising the level cap past 30 seems like a really bad idea to me.

[MeliCat]

"push past level 30 for the first time in DDO history" hmmm... not sure about this... it was nice that 20 to 30 didn't seem such a grind.. this though... lol... thinking about how all our stats are going to look when +6 was as good as you could get for such a long time

Great to hear about another expansion pack though Looking forward to that.

[AlmGhandi]

Raising the level cap past 30 seems like a really bad idea to me.

They are not raising the level cap... they are "pushing past".

Probably there is going to be....

30 A
30 B
30 C
30 D

just like we halflings were doomed to after L8 in the old days of PNP

[HungarianRhapsody]

They are not raising the level cap... they are "pushing past".

Probably there is going to be....

30 A
30 B
30 C
30 D

just like we halflings were doomed to after L8 in the old days of PNP

Good point. Have to monetize the new system by selling a new type of leveling instead of just increasing the amount of leveling we can already do. Especially with the weird way that, "Feywild expansion is that you will need to learn new, powerful ways to overcome challenge, and doing so will gain you the experience necessary to push past level 30 for the first time in DDO history," was phrased

[Graskitch]

very exciting news.

neverwinter has had feywild setting for a while, so I am very interested to see how ddo visualizes the feywild.

they have not really mentioned how they are going to push past level 30, so yeah it is not necessarily a bad thing - there could be a new reincarnation introduced, something called legendary reincarnation that brings you back from level 50 to level 30, so that you do not necessarily have to do the grind of the 20-30.