D&D Online

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Even though I'm not a big fan of Eberron myself, I'm not worried b/c the game itself will end up like NWN with people creating their own non-Eberron environments. I can't exactly blame WotC for wanting to promote Eberron, but I think the jury is still out on whether it will be a successful, long lasting campaign world or not...

 

[Insight]

Even though I'm not a big fan of Eberron myself, I'm not worried b/c the game itself will end up like NWN with people creating their own non-Eberron environments. I can't exactly blame WotC for wanting to promote Eberron, but I think the jury is still out on whether it will be a successful, long lasting campaign world or not...

That's not how persistent worlds work in MMORPGs. The game exists only on the company's servers. There are no mods to create, nor alterations you can make. You either take the game as is or not.

Now if they somehow came up with a way you could change the setting, or at least have different 'worlds' to appeal to a wider audience... that would be awesome. But, since I have zero interest in Eberron, I'll be passing as well. I would like to have seen D&D Online be more standard sword & sorcery fantasy fare (Greyhawk, Realms, etc) than what Eberron professes to be.

 

[Remathilis]

I dunno, I'm lookin forward to it.

 

[Felon]

I read the review. Looks interesting, but I hate the fact that a high level character can only use his bonus to hit and other powers in the context of "combo" moves, like in most action console games. That really annoys me. If those combo moves are fun and easy to perform, fine, but the way they make it sound is that it's based on timing and reflex. Sounds like a game better suited to the next gen XBOX than the PC.

Supposedly, you have mechanics like BAB and AC in addition to real-time maneuvers. Dodge probably gives a flat bonus to your AC in addition to the evasive maneuver.

But it is more of a twitch game than a lot of MMORPG fans care to see.

 

[Wayside]

Now if they somehow came up with a way you could change the setting, or at least have different 'worlds' to appeal to a wider audience... that would be awesome. But, since I have zero interest in Eberron, I'll be passing as well. I would like to have seen D&D Online be more standard sword & sorcery fantasy fare (Greyhawk, Realms, etc) than what Eberron professes to be.

This is what bothered me about WoW. With the Frozen Throne expansion for War3, Blizzard's World Editor became at least semi-useful, so I started modding and ended up with the most popular map on Battle.net for the first 6 months of FT. There were and are still too many limitations in War3 modding though, so despite pushing the envelope and creating a number of totally dynamic systems for it (mostly by exploiting errors in JASS, god bless Blizzard's incompetence), it became very boring and we stopped working on it. If WoW was moddable, like it should be, we could've taken it to the next level. Instead we'll probably end up going with the Unreal 3 engine, which is 50x better anyway (HL2 isn't bad either, and you can even get the custom version of Softimage to model for it for free, which is an amazing step on their part).

Hopefully some kind of moddability will come with a D&D MMO, even if it comes later, even if as a separate buy. NWN was a good start, but we need something with a totally transparent engine.

But it is more of a twitch game than a lot of MMORPG fans care to see.

Yeah, strangely this is the only reason I'll even give it a shot. I'd still prefer that a level 1 can kill a level 50 if he's smart about it, but I'd like to at least see how this real-time combat works out.

 

[BonesMcCoy]

IMO they change too many rules for it to really be considered 'D&D' anymore. Especially changing traditional vancian magic to a mana-based system. They should rename it 'D&D-ish Online' or 'Sorta D&D Online'.