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Role Playing (Games)

Dungeons and Dragons Online Alpha Registration 49

Posted by Zonk from the pick-me! dept.
Evil Avatar (and everyone else) picked up on the registration announcement for the Dungeons and Dragons Online Alpha phase of testing. From the article: "The world of Eberron awaits your arrival, as you embark on the great adventures that Dungeons & Dragons is known for. Register through the members only area today -- and prepare to master this unique new online campaign world!" If any Turbine folks are reading Slash today, I'd just like to mention how much I like your logo. :)
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Dungeons and Dragons Online Alpha Registration More

Dungeons and Dragons Online Alpha Registration

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  • Closing the barn door after the horse is out.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @09:49PM (#12172404)
    Well, after years and years of text and graphics online games that copied or were inspired by D&D, D&D finally felt it was time to do their own....

  • I'd just like to mention how much I like your logo (Score:5, Funny)

    by RotJ ( 771744 ) on Thursday April 07, 2005 @09:52PM (#12172419) Journal
    I don't think their logo is anything special. It looks more like an orange cut in half than...oh, you're trying to suck up to them in order to get into the alpha. Never mind. Good luck with that.
  • Not that I have been following the games development much but I would have expected forgotten realms as the setting, Eberron is a pretty cool setting with a nice mix of magic and science.
  • I am too busy mastering the dungeons of doom.
  • I hope the low number of reponses mean not many people have bothered to sign up... better chances for me to get picked!

  • Too late to join for most: (Score:5, Informative)

    by ghmh ( 73679 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @01:30AM (#12173564)
    "Please Note: At this time, Alpha signup is reserved for registered DDO forum members only. Non-forum members who attempt to sign up during this exclusive signup period will be disqualified from participating in the Alpha."

    • Re:Too late to join for most: (Score:5, Informative)

      by ghmh ( 73679 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @01:35AM (#12173582)
      Hate to reply to my own post, but talk about confusing, the paragraph following changes things...

      "Alpha signup is reserved for registered DDO forum members only. Non-forum members who attempt to sign up during this exclusive signup period will be disqualified from participating in the Alpha.

      So if you are an adventure seeking registered community member, sign up now for your chance to get into the DDO Alpha! If you aren't a DDO message board member yet, no worries! You can join by clicking here and then immediately sign up for your chance to be in the Alpha. The official Alpha start date will be announced soon. We will be inviting players into the Alpha on a regular basis once it begins."

  • I cast... MAGIC MISSILE (Score:3, Funny)

    by dswensen ( 252552 ) * on Friday April 08, 2005 @02:13AM (#12173718) Homepage
    Can I attack the darkness?

  • Is anyone really wanting another game from Turbine (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Shivetya ( 243324 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @05:52AM (#12174437) Homepage Journal
    They have two of the most coveted titles for upcoming MMORPGs and yet the level of excitement on various message boards is next to nothing.

    They currently manage two of the least popular MMORPGs out there, AC1 and AC2. Both of which are going to offer expansions in the coming months.

    The problem Turbine faces is that a good number of the current MMORPG crowd associate them with cheating and exploiting all because of their idiot choice of condoning AUTOMATED (but attended) combat macros (bots) in AC1. Combined with the fact that once they let the cat out of the bag people were no longer in the lore of their game and only in gaining experience. It has to be pretty sad when your GMs have to randomly check obvious bots to make sure someone is actually at the screen when they should have been actively preventing the occurence of automation in the first place.

    Turbine had a great many good ideas but they squandered it pandering to their worst fans. They allowed one abuse after another and then to top it off hired some of the same people who wrote some of the automating applications.

    The big question for Turbine is, can they get enough new to the genre players into D&D to start to change their reputation? How much will their current reputation hinder acceptance of these two new games. Last, is there any real anticipation for this game anymore?
    • For a long time, battle.net was known for it's bugs and hacks. With Diablo I there was a bug where you could dupe anything by dropping it in a certain manner, god mode, invisibility mode. It kept me from buying Diablo II or playing D I online. It hasn't stopped me from trying WoW though.

      As far as Turbine is concerned, they've had to live with Microsoft's legacy and AC2 was simply a pitiful flop. Sequels really don't make sense in MMORPGs. While you might draw in some new players, if the new game is perceiv
      • DECAL is a third party software that captures packets coming into the game and provides them to other third party "plug-ins" that then use commands available to the game client to act on them.

        What Blizzard offers in no way compares. With Blizzard you can automated very simple tasks but you cannot run combat with them.

        The exploiting in AC isn't blown out of proportion. What has been blown is the effect Microsoft had on the franchise. Remember Turbine has had over 2 years to take the game back and yet it
        • With Blizzard I could do everything I ever did with Decal. Including running bots. The difference is that Decal has a huge learning curve, you have to understand COM and shared memory space. (or be a VB weanie) With WoW, if you can do a little XML and just the basic OOP, you can write a plugin. BTW, I have written plugins for both for my own personal use.

          And FWIW, the bug you mentioned in another post was the spike bug, making spikes and selling them back for a profit. After all the yelling, whining, and h

    • Re:Is anyone really wanting another game from Turb (Score:4, Informative)

      by Oliver Wendell Jones ( 158103 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @09:42AM (#12175925)
      You are for the most part correct, with one minor discrepancy.

      Turbine was the developer and Microsoft was the publisher. Microsoft provided the servers, Microsoft provided the bandwidth, Microsoft provided the in-game and out-of-game technical support. Microsoft handled the billing. Microsoft provided the login servers (via Passport - Ick!).

      The people at Turbine have on numerous occassions stated that they wanted to put an end to most of the 'cheating' and 'hacking', even going so far as to writing the code to do so, only to be told "No" by Microsoft. Microsoft did not want to piss off it's customers (as hard as that is to believe) and Microsoft basically ran Asheron's Call into the ground until they didn't see any future profits.

      At that point the gang at Turbine bought back the rights to the AC franchise, bought the servers and moved them to their own location, transitioned the billing away from Microsoft and put all new rules and code in place to put a stop to the 'cheating' and 'hacking'.

      Bottom line: Turbine does not approve of any cheating or hacking and it's really unfair to them that their first big game got such a bad reputation for them.

      I have started and stopped playing Asheron's Call (not AC2!) at least 3 times to play other MMORPGs and will probably start again on time #4 when the new expansion pack is released in May. I get lured away by flashy, newer games, but I keep coming back to it. It has the best, most detailed and most player-involved background and history of any on-line game world I've ever played (and believe me, I've played *all* the popular MMORPGs).
      • They just changed what they consider cheating.

        To them an ATTENDED automated combat bot is not cheating. To the rest of the MMORPG genre that view doesn't even pass the laugh test.

        I also laugh at anyone who blames Microsoft for all of AC's woes. Microsoft wasn't the reason for the consistently buggy patches that required hotfixes. Some of the biggest EXPLOITS have occured since Turbine took total control. One of the biggest and most glaring dealt with working the system for experience by using trade sk

  • System requirements? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LordNimon ( 85072 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @08:21AM (#12175162)
    Has anyone noticed that it's pretty difficult these days to find out what the system requirements are for games? That information used to be plastered on the home page and everywhere else, but these days it's like trying to pull teeth.

    I searched the ddo.com web site, and I just can't find any info on this.

    • This is an alpha. They probably have not done any testing to see what the system requirements are. I am pretty sure that people don't design a game with requirements in mind. That would be very difficult. Im fairly sure that they just make it as small as they can and hope it will run well.

      Anyway, I rarly find any that are really right anymore. Command and Conquer: Generals needed a lot more ram than they said on the box.
    • Most likely cause it isn't even in Alpha yet so they are probably a long way from finalizing the requirements.

      Check back when they go to beta.
    • At the alpha stage it's impossible to know what the final requirements will be. With the state of software development these days, they have no idea when the game will be released. Nothing is ever on schedule, not when people will accept 'when it's ready'. Part of the alpha will be to determine what hardware is necessary for acceptable play. And to an extent they are waiting to see what advances there will be in computers. They will aim for the average configuration being sold at the time of release. That w
      • I'm not just talking about how much RAM and disk space it needs, I'm talking about what platforms it runs on. PC? Mac? Xbox? I don't have a PC, so I'd like to know if there's even a chance I can play this game. Since it's an MMO game, I doubt it, but it would still be nice if they told people.
  • My blooming work system is blocking the site - any word on the system requirements?
  • Asheron's Call was way fun back in 99. I especially liked the action element where you could jump out of the way of high damage spells and arrows. If a MMORPG capitalized on action, and made it so you had a wide variety of actions and counters you could do depending on the spell/ability flying your way, it'd be king for a long time.

  • Unique? (Score:5, Funny)

    by CoffeeJedi ( 90936 ) on Friday April 08, 2005 @12:10PM (#12177701)
    ...unique new online campaign world
    how is it unique? every other mmorpg has expanded the basics of D&D to fit an online persistant world, what can they possibly do now to make themselves "unique" when everyone's already copied their style? force everyone to role-play somehow?

    hmm, maybe have a filter that would translate OOG chatter, like the word "car" would become "horse-cart" and "yo whuddup bitch!" would turn into "forsooth yon shrewish maiden!"
    • They already do this in Puzzle Pirates [puzzlepirates.com]. Instead of "bleeping" certain words they convert them to pirate speak. For example, "bitch" is "tart" and for some reason "fuck" translates to "scupper." It can be quite funny in certain situations.

  • Are D&D 3.x and MMO games (calling them RPG's is like calling Windows secure). And now that they have been combined, everything else in the universe will suck less, according to the First Law of Suckage Dynamics.

    • D&D 3 and 3.5 are not games in their own right, they're game systems. The rpg aspects come in how the DM runs his game. yes a DM can run a purely combat oriented game, or a very rpg type game. the rules are very flexible in that regard... which of course is part of the reason it's a system not a game.
  • Is if thay make the NPC to PC ratio at least 10 to 1, going so far as to build entire LIVING citys. Day and night cycle, people going to work and home, farmers in the fields who really do have a home AND a bed. Now with a world build with this much detail you could add a quest system that lets you play a lot better. Basicly I want the more realistic world that you get when playing the pen and paper version.

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