They'll get it.  The DND rights holders will renew because as bad as DDO may be managed, its still a DND product that gets the IP out there.

noamineo wrote on Feb 9^th, 2021 at 12:50pm:


I concur. Even if they weren't buying just DDO, but a whole bunch of other IP.
It might not have stopped the buy, but it would have lowered the price by a good chunk if they were not certain the IP was going to be renewed,since DDO is one of the best revenue providing IP they were buying.

Look at it the Hasbro/WoTC way : they have two MMO out there that are totally different in style and gameplay.
Both apparently still have a bunch of people willing to pay money for them ( even if we can only guess how NWO is faring we have some hard values for DDO thanks to that merger ). Both catter a different crowd but all of them are at least remotely interested in Hasbro/Wotc PnP and assimilated products.
Why would Hasbro/Wotc kill that almost free ad. ( actually it's even a revenue for them... so they earn money by having games that basically are adverts of their products [ Ravenloft anybody ? Sync release of it in DDO and NWO a few month after the PnP release [ just when the PnP hype about it was coming down ] ])

Have you seen how much money they are making?  I'm sure WoTC gets a piece of that action.   What is the cost to WoTC to continue it?  A piece of paper that they have some lawyers spend a few hours on every couple of years?   There's no reason not to renew it.   It's free money for WoTC.

Dragonborn wrote on Feb 12^th, 2021 at 11:11am:


What’s it like wearing a doctor-prescribed crash helmet and being the biggest retard in every room your care worker wheels you into?

Hardcore_Girl wrote on Feb 15^th, 2021 at 3:36am:


SSG will never get the licensing for any future Forgotten Realms content.  The only reason they got any D&D IP to begin with was because they went with Eberron - which absolutely nobody else wanted.

Honestly though, it’s not like they’re actually capable of producing professional quality content anymore.  Everybody with half a brain left quite a while ago, so we’re stuck with the intellectual runts of the litter.

Just look at how badly that talentless dog carcass flea circus fucked up the last expansion.  Expect the same bugged out, half assed mess from that raid they’re about to drop on us all like turkey shit.

Hardcore_Girl wrote on Feb 15^th, 2021 at 3:36am:


if you want the Sword Coat, Neverwinter Online is your game. DDO will never come near the Sword Coast. ( because that bit is reserved for Neverwinter Online Obviously )


Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz wrote on Feb 15^th, 2021 at 7:29am:


When DDO came out NWNII was still a thing, and Eberron was the the Official support universe for 3.5. So it was  basically obvious that Eberron had to be used. Wizard  ( that just had bought TSR ) wanted to get rid of all the old stuff because it contained lots and lots and lots of muddled IP and was a legal nightmare. ( For example : Krynn ( aka Dragonlance, Nothing can be published by WoTC without the consent of Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis. And since it's an utterly fucked up IP Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis cannot edit anything on their own without the consent of WoTC. It's the more or less the same for most if not all of the Faerun stuff, the Greyhawk stuff and all the D&D ( Boxed ) stuff. ( not going into Spelljammer, Darksun, and all the other settings... similar issues most of the time... all the PnP game companies that published at that time have the issue with old content [ Eg : ICE can't write anything about Shadow World without Amthor consent and Amthor can't write anything in Shodow World without ICE consent... luckily they are talking together and are cooperating to get things published  )

Eberron was a clean slate. TSR/WoTC owned the IP ( it was part of the deal they made ) and paid ( one shot, no muddled IP ) people to write adventures in it.

Nobody wanted Eberron also in PnP because we all had spend hours and hours and hours in Krynn, Faerun, Oerth, or another setting and didn't want to waste hours learning about yet another setting.
So having Eberron in DDO was a way to promote it... Since lots of PnP players were going to at lest give a look at DDO. ( and at that time anyway since NWNII was still a thing the Sword Coast was already not allowed. )

Quote:


I wouldn't call it a minority but I think fewer people care about "setting" than some of the more vocal proponents realize. Personally I am not a huge fan of teleporting all over the landscape. Specifically I mean "Walk through a portal and you teleport in Eberron and you are teleported to wherever the hell Ravenloft is". One of the things I really liked about DDO pre-MOTU was the lengths they went to to make it feel like you were having adventures in and around the city of stormreach.

They appear to have given up on that shitentirely.

Flav wrote on Feb 16^th, 2021 at 4:56pm:


See and I constantly wonder why they DIDN'T do an open world. Asheron's Call had a for the time revolutionary engine(that's actually still pretty impressive today). With a few graphics overhauls it could have made DDO incredible. You can see it in places like the Vale. From the right vantage point you can see clear across the map - even WoW has to have zones.

I remember when i first started playing DDO, my initial reaction was pretty much "Well, this is fun, I guess. But I don't see how it will last without being open-world.

Of course since then most other MMOs have abandoned the openworld concept, so here we are...



Flav wrote on Feb 16^th, 2021 at 4:56pm:


yeah  feels like with motu they gave up entirely and just said "fuck it, everyone teleport all over the place".

I remember some of the content even had special loading screens depicting a map and a dotted line showing you exactly where you'd traveled. I miss it.

Flav wrote on Feb 17^th, 2021 at 3:09pm:


It only really has to be that way because SSG has made so many poor design decisions.

I remember back in the early days of vanilla wow(before they started up all that teleporter bullshit). The idea back then was you met up with your friends in a city and then set off together to travel to the distant dungeon. The journey was part of the adventure. It worked because in most cases you didn't do a particular dungeon more than once or twice(unless it was an end-game raid). When it actually worked out it was fun and exciting. Of course many players didn't "get" this and bitched about it constantly.

DDO on the flip side is based entirely around grinding specific quests until you want to kill yourself. If it didn't have the close-quarters hub-like structure I don't think it would be even remotely playable. As is when shit is way out in maze-like wilderness areas I very frequently find myself saying "Fuck it" and closing out the client when thats the only option. I never did Gianthold much because navigating that son of a bitch was so much more trouble than its worth.

If you box most of you're lives, and willing to suck Grands dick for more, and can not run Gianthold, then I feel sorry for you really.

Latetotheparty wrote on Feb 18^th, 2021 at 1:38pm:


I did plenty of lives with no boxing and non gianthold and only reasonable amounts of Grand dick-sucking. Its not so hard(the lives, not Grand's dick. That thing was a fucking diamond).

noamineo wrote on Feb 17^th, 2021 at 4:59pm:


Well in the early game days the path was clearly set :
complete as many as possible of the Cove Class Challenges as well as Euphonia's Challenge, then move to lower harbor, grind that to death, take the quest to reach the upper harbor, go straight to Waterworks, get the pass to the Market, STK, then GMW, Farm the hell out of Gwylan, then Co6 and VON are your friends until cap. ( normaly you were hitting Co6/VON at level 6 or so... remember underlevel bonus... not dicksucking bravery bonus. Mastering VON3 with a LVL 5/6 party ( of then first life characters... most if not all of them 28 pointers ) was really a challenge [ and it was rewarding ] )

noamineo wrote on Feb 17^th, 2021 at 4:59pm:



You missed LVL 10 PoP farming ( basically the way to elvel from 10 to 14 in a few pops ). sadly they nerfed the XPs into oblivion ( the XP you get nowadays are something like less than 20% of what was initially given... and the underlevel bonus was still there at that time )