PAX East 2010: Half-Orcs and Guild Housing Coming to Dungeons & Dragons Online
“Didn’t Dungeons & Dragon: Online gain a million new accounts since going free-to-play?” I asked the producer of Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited, Erik Boyer.
“Yeah, we’re now in the millions, but get this: since going free, we’ve doubled our subscriber-base. Two times as many people are paying to play DDO now that you don’t have to.”
“I knew that would happen,” I replied with a smile. One of the largest problems with DDO was the dwindling community, and it made sense to me that an influx of players would bring old subscribers back.
“I wish you would have told us. We would have loved to have known that.”
Since the release of Ebberon Unlimited, Dungeons & Dragons: Online has grown quite a bit. The game itself has changed to adapt to the new pricing model, and both new and old fans seem to be taking to it fairly well. In order to continue the success, Turbine has big plans for future updates to the game. It started off with Update 3, which came out in February, and added free high level content, a “casual” difficulty type to instances, and removed leveling sigils, which prevented free-to-play players from progressing without eventually spending money. Now, it’s possible to go through the entire game without dropping a dime, though it’s still obviously beneficial to visit the DDO Store from time to time.
At this year’s PAX East, Turbine showed a bit of Update 4, entitled “Sentinels.” Due out in April, Sentinels will add a new adventure pack and an Epic difficulty level, to balance the addition of the Casual difficulty. They’ll also be adding the ability to purchase upgrades to the in-game bank and, even more interestingly, the ability to gain Turbine Points in new ways. Beyond using a credit card, the ability to purchase point cards is being experimented with, as are third-party options, like allowing companies to reward players with points for taking surveys.
But they’re not stopping there. Revealed for the first time at PAX East were some improvements to the game coming in the summer of 2010 and beyond. Within the next few months, there will be incredible changes to the Guild system, allowing Guilds to level up with a system comparable to the “Favor” system already in the game. This will unlock a number of new things, but none greater than Guild Airships, which will take the place of the heavily-requested Guild Housing. They can be customized, upgraded, and flown in public areas. Later in the year, Half-Orcs will be added to the game, checking off another item from the list of “things people have been asking for since 2007.” Half-Orcs will be the most visually customizable race in Dungeons & Dragon: Online, allowing players to favor either race when building their brute.
UI upgrades, engine improvements, and a number of other changes should make 2010 the best year yet for Dungeons & Dragons: Online. Ebberon Unlimited really did great things for the game, and Turbine should be proud of the MMO they’ve made, and pulled back from the brink of collapse.
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