Dungeons and Dragons Online Interview With Turbine

Bruha writes "Dungeons and Dragons Warcry has posted its first interview with Turbine Entertainment's development team for Dungeons and Dragons Online, an upcoming MMORPG based on the famous role playing game. Many subjects are covered, including what rulesets will be applied to the game at release." It's a good look at the conversion process a game undergoes when taken from the tabletop and moved to PC.

Nice honesty

[Cipster]

It's like this - if we say four, and there turn out to be six, we're heroes. If we say six and it turns out to be four, we're scum.
I wish more game developers thought like that. Too many times they promise a ton of features but do not deliver.

Re:Nice honesty

[Dachannien]

In this case, the low bar they are setting for themselves will cost them a sale (and, I suspect, more than one). The main reason I didn't buy the new version of Pool of Radiance was because they did such a horrible job of bringing the 3rd Ed. rules to the screen, and fundamental to that failure was somehow being unable to implement basic character classes like "wizard".

Black Isle has done it (mostly) successfully with both 2nd (AD&D) and a variation of 3rd Ed., and created best-selling games in the pr

Nice interview

[daeley]

That was a cool interview, albeit short. In the discussion [warcry.com] that followed it, I enjoyed the comments about the dragon hoards. Instead of it artificially disappearing after x amount of time, though, it would be cooler if a crapload of other monsters and/or PC/NPC adventurers started showing up to get a piece of the action. Epic battles ensue, and the original dragon killers are already weakened by their first fight -- do they stay and fight it out in their condition or grab what they can and jam? In any case,

Spells

[Lord_Dweomer]

I really hope they bring all the spells over. Granted, some can't because it requires too much direct DM interaction, but just once I'd like to see them implement Wish properly, or Prismatic Spray, etc. Also, I really hope this doesn't just turn into "D&D does EQ". The thing about D&D that made it fun is that the story revolves around you and your party. It's not D&D if you go out and just kill rats till you're level two, then off to kobolds. As a big D&D fan, of course I'm hoping this

Re:Spells

[Kwil]

Please reconcile this:
some can't because it requires too much direct DM interaction
with this:
but just once I'd like to see them implement Wish properly

After admitting that you realize some spells require direct DM interaction, you then choose Wish to be one of the spells you want to see implemented properly?

Uh..what kind of lame wishes did you make?

Re:Spells

[Lord_Dweomer]

Actually I never made any lame wishes cuz I was the DM.

Not another one.

[readpunk]

Damnit. Am I going to have to rescue Tsukasa from another "world"? I am sick of all these new MMORPG's, don't the developers know what can happen!?

Say what now?

[bluemeep]

There's going to be a D&D MMO now? Oi. I can honestly say I long for the days when a new MMORPG was a huge deal that made cover stories in gaming magazines. Now there are so many that I can't go a week without hearing about half a dozen new ones promising to be "Everquest...but BETTER!!"

Teleturbies

[Aggrazel]

I just hope the people who are working on this game are the turbineites who made AC1, and not the ones who made AC2.

Re:Teleturbies

[Cipster]

Or the one who made Pool Of Radiance 2. Quite possibly my biggest gaming disapointment. After playing all the Baldur's Gate games, the most excellent Planescape Torment I had such high hopes....
I hunted down the game the first day it came out drove home popped it in and after 30 min of game play I was cursing at the monitor.

Will they survive with their thunder intact?

[Garwulf]

I hate to say it, but they might have quite the task ahead of them. With any new MMORPG, you're looking at facing the "been there, done that" syndrome - that's what you get when you're playing a type of game that's been around since Islands of Kesmai in 1985 (earlier if you count MUDs). With this game, though, Turbine may find it ten times as hard.

As far as MMORPGs go, they first have to deal with competing against the online juggernaut, EverQuest, which is already doing pretty much exactly what they're

I'll admit it...

[WinnipegDragon]

I'm the sort of geek that this is made for. I've been staying away from MMORPGs simply because nothing has really grabbed my fancy (not even SWG). This however, is a holy grail. This will be the one to make me play online.

I think I'm going to have to get some sort of catheter.