Gen Con 2004 @ GameRifts

GameRifts has put together a large article that details this year’s Gen Con, complete with information about Dungeons & Dragons Online, Dark Age of Camelot: Catacombs, and more. Here’s a snip about the D&D Online:

Eberron is the game setting which was selected two years ago to be the new home for DnD created from a player submitted contest, which mixes technology and dinosaurs. It’s being built for the latest incarnation of the rules set 3.5 for paper. Before we get too far into it, rest assured that Turbine is doing a great job with the granddaddy of all titles which fantasy gaming today I based on. There is a ton of pressure as one can imagine with having this name in the house, and it’s a running mantra within the Studio to do it right.

Game play will start from a central hub, or a community town center where everyone who plays on that server will initially log in. Then as you take on quests or adventures, you will move out and away from the central location after forming your groups or party members. Unlike other games which are promoting 10,000 simultaneous users online at the same time, Turbine took a step back and noticed that we the players do not enjoy worlds where we don’t know anyone except our guild mates.

“How often is it that you can see the name of a person on your server, and never see that person again,” explains Nik. “Instead of multiple servers were looking to form communities, so instead of large servers were going with smaller multiple servers.” For those who have done early betas, remember how you knew the people you interacted with, and formed friendship or rivalries with selected folks.