Dungeons & Dragons Online Interview

Ten Ton Hammer had the chance to sit down with Dungeons & Dragons Online executive producer James Jones to learn more about the team’s current and future plans for the MMORPG.

Q: So Module 4 comes out in less than a month, barring any development concerns. You’ve got a lot of features coming out, new spells, several new monsters and 2 new areas. After that there are going to be Dragonmarks. In the summer you’re going to have Mod 5. In the fall you’re planning monks, half orcs and half elves. What sort of things can we expect in the between now and module 5?

A: One of the things we are introducing in module 4, that I think may not have gotten as much exposure but I like, is our new landscape adventure system that we put in. We’ve got the two adventure zones coming in module 4, the ones called the Cerulean Hills, which is lower level, and then there is the high level area based around the primary story arc, which is Gianthold. These new adventure areas give players a great re-playability. You go in, you play in what I call (meta-quests), it is either kill quests, or exploration quests, or special encounter quests. There are a series of many dungeons connected to them. They are open landscapes, and when you leave, the next time you go back to that landscape, your status, your place is remembered.

One of the things we want to do this year is continue to introduce these adventure areas, these landscape adventures. And we will probably touch some of our old adventure areas, Tangleroot, Three Barrel Cove, previously areas that didn’t get a lot of play outside the one or two times you go in to get your favor points. We want to really open these areas up, give players a lot to do there. And part of those revisits will include new dungeons, new encounters, new monsters, new quest series, across a wide range of levels.

We expect to work on those throughout the year, a lot of our monthly updates are going to include having some of those landscapes redone, and introducing some new dungeons as we have done in the past.