For those who are not able to see the forums and for those lazy bastards


DDO Producer's Letter July 2014
Hello! I’m writing today to tell you more about our plans for DDO in the coming months, and introduce you to a few folks you might not know. We’ve made some adjustments to our “road map” for 2014 that we think you’ll be excited about, and we’ve added a few folks to the team that we want to introduce you to.

For those of you who missed my letter written for DDO’s 8th anniversary, my name is Athena, and I’m DDO’s Franchise Director. I’m the person heading up the DDO team, working with our partners, producers, and teams leads, and making various business decisions that keep the engines running. We’re really pleased to have added Design Manager Severlin to our team in recent months, and I notice that you’ve already been seeing his design leadership in action in the Official Discussion Forums (and in the game!) Severlin comes to DDO from Asheron’s Call, where he served as Producer (and wore many hats) for quite some time. Additionally, we’ve added two other members of the Asheron’s Call team to our staff: NoWorries and Kintani, who are working on items, quests, systems, and more! Of course, it takes a huge amount of creativity to keep DDO going, so I also want to thank the many other developers, quality assurance, production, operations, art, and community people I work with every day for all of their hard work – thank you!

When Rowan spoke with you back in December, we outlined a plan for 2014 that we’ve delivered so far (like Epic Three Barrel Cove, Haunted Halls of Eveningstar, etc.) However, we’re making a few changes to our calendar for the rest of the year, and I want to make sure you are up-to-date on our plans. Initially, we were considering creating Anauroch for Update 23, and raising the level cap to 30 in Update 24. Rowan also talked about the concept of “Sentient Weapons” in his letter, although that wasn’t assigned to an update. You can expect all of these things to happen! But, our team has been looking at alternatives, reading your ideas on the forums (and Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Twitch, etc.), discussing our plans with the Players Council, and gathering their feedback on what they’d like us to work on. We’ve been talking amongst the team as well, assessing what it is we’d like to do, and when the right time to do it is. In that context, we’ve shifted our plans slightly.

Update 23 will bring Epic Orchard of the Macabre to DDO, along with a new Epic raid! While the raid will share some locations and similarities to the current Accursed Ascension raid (“Abbot raid”), our team will bring a whole new series of challenges to adventurers brave enough to enter. We’re not simply “adding hit points to the Abbot”, but are rather re-thinking the raid space for an entirely new battle, with a new story line, baddies, loot, and more! One of the things we’re looking to do in the coming year is to provide more high-level questing and raiding to DDO, and we think an Epic Orchard of the Macabre fits nicely with that goal.

Besides newly Epi-fied versions of the quests found in Orchard of the Macabre, we’re also planning to make sure the Orchard itself is ready for high-level adventure with exciting battles against rare enemies, werewolves (yes, in Eberron!), new loot, and more! We’ll be talking a lot more about the Epic Orchard of the Macabre in the coming months, and I can’t wait for you to see what our devious devs have planned.

Update 23 will also feature a series of improvements aimed at making sure heavy armor-wearing adventurers feel powerful and ready to go toe-to-toe with some of DDO’s toughest enemies, updates to improve the Paladin class, and other changes that will give our melee players a boost. We’re also creating new Augments for our Crystal Cove event that higher-level players can slot into their favorite weapons, armor, and items, and expect to bring those new Augments to you when Crystal Cove reopens after the release of Update 23.

Update 24 will round out the year with new quests, new Festivult cookies, and a new event that centers on something we can all agree on: looting chests! We’ll be continuing our work on the Anauroch Desert (in the Forgotten Realms), planning for Sentient Weapons, and developing another Classic Dungeon like the Haunted Halls of Eveningstar. We expect these to be something you’ll see in the first half of 2015. We’re pushing out the level cap for now to make sure we have plenty of questing to support your journey through the highest levels of DDO. Hitting level 30 will be a big milestone for DDO, and we want to put it out when the timing is right, and make sure its design keeps up with the way you, the players want to play DDO.

And these are just the tip of the iceberg that is our whiteboard. We are constantly reviewing our ideas and your suggestions, and making adjustments based on your changing needs and requests as well as our own excitement on new ideas for you to play with, so you may see a few more surprises pop in over the next year as we get closer to releasing our updates.

Thank you for reading, and I look forward to hearing from you about these plans, and anything else you’d like to see happen in DDO! Happy adventuring, and we’ll see you in Dungeons & Dragons Online!

Cheers!
Athena “Vyvyanne” Peters
Franchise Director – Dungeons & Dragons Online

Only bit that confuses me is upgraded Cove loot... They didn't mention it.

Perhaps they plan to get the Cove out again soon with upgraded loot, then after u23 with new Augments?... Unless they cancelled the upgraded loot all together.

BAAHAHAHAAAA! 

Bones wrote on Jul 1^st, 2014 at 11:21am:


I believe the augments ARE the "upgraded loot."

Glenalth wrote on Jul 1^st, 2014 at 11:45am:


Sure sounds like it.... 

... Wait a sec...

Flav wrote on Jun 22^nd, 2014 at 3:07pm:


Ah... That's probably what Flav meant by that?...

Glenalth wrote on Jul 1^st, 2014 at 11:45am:


Will I have to dupe something new to get them?  Yummy.

I think it's interesting we have a couple of the Asheron's Call folk on board now - I wonder if the teams are merging more than people are moving to the DDO team? That would make it easier for eventual mothballing.

i like the postponing of the cap raise too, but only because of my eTRs and iTRs 

Athena lies, just ask Kratos.

Ohfaq wrote on Jul 1^st, 2014 at 1:37pm:


Do you Lesser True Reincarnate too?  Epic Reincarnation isn't a True Reincarnation. Rule of thumb:  Does it reset flagging?  Lesser/Epic: No. Not True.  Heroic/Iconic: Yes. Is True.
Leave the T out of the "eR" abbreviation, or a less kind but equally anal Vaultie will likely point out that you'd have to be a mouth-breathing, jizz-slurping, cum-guzzling, gutter-slut to make such an obvious mistake. Repeatedly.

Rubbinns wrote on Jul 1^st, 2014 at 3:09pm:

Here's the question?  Can they make a raid/new content loot pack WITHOUT completely invalidating all previous end game content?

Let's see:

CITW/FR Release - Invalidated pretty much all Level 20 Epic Raids and Epic content.
Gianthold and FoT - Invalidated pretty much everything that came before except a handful of the CiTW weapons.
Stormhorns and Wheloon - Invalidated FoT and Gianthold loot for the most part (even without having a raid)
Haunted Halls and Thunderholme - Invalidated a lot of shit and made old content less likely to be run for anything but Epic Reincarnation leveling. 

They gotta stop with this process.  Outside of Shroud, I can't think of another time where 1 adventure pack so completely took over the loot. 

They had it right when people were running eChrono, eVon, eDQ, ToD, LoB/MA, Shroud, eFens, eCarnival for loot all the freaking time.  Was the best time for DDO end game. 

Since then they have lost focus and keep making the new stuff the only stuff worthwhile to grind.

AnalFissure wrote on Jul 1^st, 2014 at 3:21pm:


in all fairness, you`re right. it`s indeed eR. i was just using the term TR out of habbit and i hadnt noticed it`s wrong.
that been said, thank god you are kinder than those name calling anal vaulties. to whom i would respond to diaf. repeatedly.

Woho, I can do all etr I want now, no need to go fast.

Asheras wrote on Jul 1^st, 2014 at 3:33pm:


I'm beginning to think that's Turbine's strategy to combat duping.  Making all the old stuff obsolete makes for a whole new grind!

(Well, at least for the first few hours of release until someone finds a way to dupe again...)