GB Feature: Dungeons & Dragons Online Interview

With a seventh post-F2P update to Turbine’s Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited just around the corner, we felt it was a good time to grill design director Ian Currie about what the new content patch will bring to the game, how the team intends to deal with certain gameplay issues, what we should expect from future updates, and more. A snippet:

GB: What new enhancements will you be adding with the addition of the Half-Elf and Half-Orc? What will make these races unique, particularly in the case of the Half-Elf?

Ian: Most people know the Half-Orc is all about an extra +2 strength, making him the strongest race. But it doesn’t stop there. In addition to that, the Half-Orc gets an interesting line of enhancements called Orcish Fury. The first version gives the character a +2 morale bonus to strength when below 50% hit points. With Orcish Flury II you get an additional +2 when below 50% hit points and Orcish Flury III provides an additional +4 (for a total of +8) when below 10% hit points. It’s a pretty cool concept that can allow a nearly defeated Half-Orc to make an incredible comeback.

The main attraction of Half-Elf is the Dilettente feats. This allows Half-Elves to choose a ‘˜splash’ of another class without having to truly multi-class. Some examples of this are that a melee character could use scrolls and wands like a first level caster, or a Wizard could gain proficiency with martial weapons. In the future we plan on adding enhancement lines to further improve these ‘semi-multiclasses’. Of course Half-Elves get access to all Elf and Human feats and enhancement lines by default, allowing for a lot of flexibility.

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GB: With both free-to-play implementations behind you, where do we stand on the possibility that either game might be brought over to consoles?

Ian: I think many of us think that DDO would play very well on a console, especially with its instancing and active combat system. It’s by no means a direct port though and in any case a lot of the technology, UI and gameplay would likely be at least a little different. As game designers it’s certainly attractive to imagine the possibilities. 🙂

Additionally, I’ve been diligently working to bring our DDO equipment database and DDO spell database up to date by including much of the epic equipment and other items Turbine has added to the game in recent months. My plan is to have everything 100% up-to-date by the time Update 7 launches, but feel free to browse through both databases now as they’ve been an ongoing project of mine since beta. Enjoy!