Turbine Shows Off Latest D&D, Asheron's Call Announcements

Thanks to Warcry for its coverage of MMO creator Turbine's 'Turbine Nation' fanfest, an event which has included new details on the 2005-due Dungeons & Dragons Online, confirming "dungeon randomization as well as instancing in... the game (when you enter a dungeon, a completely separate version of that dungeon is created for you and your party)." GameSpy also has multiple new articles on D&D Online, including a new preview mentioning "D&D Online will be extremely combat-heavy. A whole lot of thought was put into its real-time combat system." Finally, Warcry has details on the Asheron's Call expansion, being developed following Turbine's buyback of the franchise, which apparently includes a "level cap... raise from 126 to 275."

Re:sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

Just when I thought they had let in the last 12 year old...

ironical..

[gl4ss]

that d&d online will be combat heavy..
when playing real d&d in it's best form has very little to do with just bashing it off.

(though.. I have known some games which have gone so ridiculous that I don't know how anyone bothered to play in them after 20th "2000 orcs attack! they can't hurt you! you win!". really shitty dm)

Instancing...

[Taulin]

I don't understand why MMORPGs make such a big deal of 'instancing a new dungeon' when entering one. Anarchy Online has been doing this since release, and it is over two years old. To my knowledge, it was the first, but I am probably wrong.

Re:Instancing...

[MayonakaHa]

It was one of the first, and I liked that about it. I found AO a very interesting game and it kindof appealed to me, but it was just too buggy on release. I'm not sure what they've done since then but their reputation was damaged too early on to get back easily.

I'm hooked on City of Heroes now, too, and they have instanced dungeons. In fact, I thought I remember hearing that they were supposed to be doing instanced *outdoor* missions. Now that would be something new.

Re:Instancing...

[darkwing_bmf]

Well there is some instancing to the outdoor missions. Sometimes when you take a hunt down # badguys and the game will spawn a few to attack you ... especially noticable when you exit a building or somesuch ... you know its just for you because the enemy levels will be different than the normal zone enemy levels plus they will come straight for you instead of waiting for you to attack them. However, the numbers usually aren't enough to finish the mission and you still have to find more.

Re:Instancing...

[MayonakaHa]

Well that and like in the Clockwork King task force mission set, after one of the last few missions the giant clockwork Babbage spawns right when you get out of the door who you have to defeat before you can continue. The one thing annoying about that, however, is when a high level team has to do a patrol and decides to just leave the "ambush" spawns alone and go do the rest of the missions. They tend to run rampant and kill the lower levels in the area.

Re:Instancing...

[MayonakaHa]

I just found the section I was looking for in the updates that refers to instanced outdoor missions. It seems to have been part of the last update, "Through the Looking Glass", but I haven't encountered any of these yet.

Outdoor Mission Maps:

* The villains of Paragon City have taken the fight to the streets. Battle your foes in instanced outdoor missions within the city itself, or journey to bizarre alternate worlds and spread justice throughout the multiverse.

http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/updat [cityofheroes.com]

Re:Instancing...

[slaker]

You need to be level 40+ to do an instanced outdoor mission. They're pretty much the missions you get from Portal Corp on Peregrine Island (and if you don't know where Peregrine Island is, don't worry, you wouldn't live long enough to find out). I know one of the missions gets you to a level 40 Psychic Clockwork King and another set brings you Praetorians, the evil versions of CoH icons like Statesman, Synapse and Bastion.

Maybe to be used as a tool for Table Top Play?

[NashCarey]

Many times DM's have a hard time getting the players on the same page with long descriptive monologues of areas the players are in. With this concept maybe the players only need to look so far as a laptop computer to have a complete idea as to the layout. And if the movement and other things follows the basic rules set forth they may be able to use this as a replacement of purchasing expensive minatures, paints, and markers to help the players visualize. I personally like when different formats come together to create a new style of play.

For instance I have recently put on an ARG (Alternate Reality Game) at http://ruaware.org/ [ruaware.org]. Many people feel the game is more an RPG than an ARG, but whatever it is, it is new, and when games come together, everyone wins.

Re:Maybe to be used as a tool for Table Top Play?

[MayonakaHa]

Your ARG looks really interesting. I kindof want to join it but I'll have to see what my girlfriend thinks of it before I do. She's into roleplaying, however, so I don't think it'll be a hard sell.

small server size vs. lag vs. finding a group

[bbingham]

Turbine's plans to have very small servers - did I actually read 200-300 per server? may mesh with the need to dramatically reduce lag.

Since they are proposing an almost-twitch game they'll get hammered by people complaining about the lag.

Small servers -> less server-based lag and also could imply less network latency depending on server locations and connectivity.

However, the downside is finding someone compatible to play with when you're on. I wonder if they are intending something like City of Heroes instanced locations (Steel Canyon, Steel Canyon 2, etc) that keep the number of heroes down to a reasonable number in an area but give you lots of opportunities to find pickup teammates. COH has instanced missions also - they work fine and clearly all new MMPORGS will have something similar.

All in all, Turbine seems to be on the right track. They should be heartened by the awesome launch of COH - the MMPORG market is far from saturated.

Re:small server size vs. lag vs. finding a group

[will_die]

From what I can understand, from other sources, thier will be will central city. This central city is where everyone will start and will be the main meeting point. The city will have some adventure points, like sewers, dark alleys, etc but most of the adventuring will be outside of the city.
With thier just being one central meeting place it will make for easier in the locating of team members. Once you have your team formed you move on out and the all dungeons and location outside of the city are instanced to your own team.

Instancing sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's contrary to the appeal of an MMOG (IMO obviously). Making your individual mark on the persistent world is the attraction.

If the so-called persistent world is really just mostly an area where avatars meet to go do instanced content together, and not interact at all with the rest of the world (who are themselves in a million instanced areas), isn't the "MMOG" really just a meta-game, or chat room?

If games whose main content is party-instanced areas can count as MMOGs, then any game with an online comp