Dungeons & Dragons Online: Interview #8

Dana

Steve Moy, the Beta Manager of DDO, takes the time to help us resume our Q&A series today. He answers questions about character customization (see below), instancing and much more.

MMORPG.com: I don’t want my male elf to look like everyone else’s male elf. How much customization are we going to have in creating the look of our characters? Steve Moy: You’ll be able to choose your character’s hair style, eyebrows, eyes, nose, lips, facial hair (for the men), and facial detail (scars, earrings, piercings, glasses, etc.), as well as their hair color, eye color, skin color, and (for the ladies) lip color. The people of Eberron have appearances as diverse as their cultures, so you can expect to see plenty of options and variations. The choices for warforged characters are slightly different but no less varied: you’ll be able to choose your base head color (light or dark), cranium, eyes, eye color, nose, mouth, and overall color. Warforged facial details are in the form of an optional maker’s mark – a reminder that this race has only recently won its freedom.

You may read the entire Q&A here.

Anageth

Interesting.

Personally I don't mind paying a monthly fee for any MMO, as long as I know that I will get new content. Sure GW gives the same, but with no fee...but how can you compare the two?

I'm all for it, go Turbine!

kmilner

Sounds good, but you have to understand I'm a bit cautious. Ever couple of years an MMOG comes out that "Is about the customers". In October 2004, WoW's website had a big description of how they have a live team constantly adding new content. How their customer service was by gamers for gamers. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Personally, I think this game sounds fun, but I just don't trust MMOG companies to shoot straight with us any more. They bring in too much money, so thats what its all about. Their Q&As read like marketing ploys. I hope you prove me wrong, Turbine. I really do, but I've been burned before.

remny

Well I feel that the first review was a little over negative.  This game looks MUCH BETTER THAN WOW!  That's not oppinion but a technical fact, there are just waaay more polygons and much more detailed textures.  The spells look much better than WOW too.

EVERYTHING you do is instanced, unless you are running around town in which case it is packed and lagged, reminds me of guildwars, but not quite as bad because at least you must party to do the majority of quests, so far finding parties has been easy, but I imagine it will get harder when people start to spread out in level more.

The quests are RAD, there are puzzles and a narator that talks through your quest, this part of this game is totally new to the MMORPG realm because the quests have much more detail and interaction, its not just kill a monster bring back loot anymore.  There are puzzles and switches and doors and hidden passages.  Bad guys will talk to you, it is very story driven and they use a lot of voice which I like.

Character creation is acceptable, in fact it is better than most MMOGs, only thing I can think of that's better is City of heroes/villains.  There are enough different facial items to play with as well as facial colors and they are very noticable in their differences.  Yes, having more body customization would be nice or a more morph like customization would be nice but it is much better than lets say FFXI, WoW, guildwars, and lineage 2, to name a few.  At least you can customize different parts of your face, so the odds of seeing someone with your EXACT SAME FACE are not too high, though possible.

The game has been fun, I would love it except for 2 details.  IT'S COMPLETELY ANTI SOLO and... there is not enough to do... just quests in dungeons and more quests, No trade skills, No PVP, no things to do and practice to break from the norm of just running quest after quest after quest.  Also, not enough of the armor actually shows up on you, bracers, gloves, cloak, none of them appear on you as well as other things, however the armor that does show up looks AWSOME.

I doubt this game will be a serious competitor for the current reigning MMORPGs out there.  People are used of more freedom and more to do especially comeing from FFXI and WoW.  Its a nice game, but it could have almost been a stand alone, non-online game with an online option... like diablo.  There's no player economy or anything that makes haveing 1000s of people on at once have any point, all you'd ever need to play through is a small party of 6 or 7 people, something like that, can't remember how many you can have.

Buckarama

Turbine's game is horrible. This interview was horrible. Not only is it spin control on Turbines part, it does a terrible job.

Hard hitting questions just weren't there. The first question acts like it's addressing a problem, it's not. It's Turbine saying we thought we'd throw in some stuff that has nothing to do concerns brought up in the first review.

The second question is about epic items. You can't use epic items at level ten that are going to be worth anything. If You can, then you are cheating.

Third question is about money. Good question.

Fourth question, was that given to you by Turbine? Look! our death system is JUST like D&D PnP! Probably a question that had to be asked before Turbine agreed to do the interview.

The last question,(Yes there are only 5) is probably the only question listed worth asking and is about character customizing. They sure say they can change the look of a character, but not enough. The only colors are still yellow and brown.

 

 

Gluegun

I bought the 10-day pre-order.  Played it. Liked it! Waiting for the release with anticipation. With the right group using voice chat, group tactics and using each characters specific skills... You will enjoy completely owning a dungeon.

I play EQ1 for 6+ years (2nd month of release), EQ2 (since day 1), and have tried many many others (Too too many to list). And as with other games anticipate updates and improvements.  No game is perfect at release.

 I will enjoy adding this to my monthly credit card debt.