Another review, another MMORPG. It seems like these things are reproducing like rabbits recently, springing up at every turn and eating my lettuce. But now we have an MMORPG with quite a heritage behind it, and arguably the brightest beacon for super-nerdom: Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach. There have been numerous computer games that have adapted the D&D; rules (most notably Baldur’s Gate and Neverwinter Nights), but never in an MMO setting. This is the lofty goal of Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach: to appease the obsessive fanboys while delivering a solid gameplay experience. How will the twelve-sided die fare in an online locale?
Module 2 will be introducing a number of new enhancements (purchased with action points) that will let players further customize and specialize your characters. Almost everyone will be getting some new enhancements to choose from; over the next few weeks we will be posting in-depth descriptions of what these new enhancements are and how they work.
New Enhancements for Spellcasters
We have several new lines of enhancements for arcane spellcasters, designed to help them specialize in specific types of spells. With these new enhancements, casters can score spell criticals on damaging spells, similar to the critical hits that the sword-swingers get when they get lucky on an attack. Each enhancement is specific to one energy type, and gives you a percentage chance to score a critical, and a multiplier to damage. For example, a sorcerer with the enhancement “Lineage of Force 3” has a 15% chance of scoring 50% extra damage on their magic missiles; if he prefers to use fireballs he could instead take “Lineage of Deadly Fire” which only has a 3% chance of scoring a crit, but will do triple damage when it does.
How They Work
Each energy type will have two lines of enhancements, one that increases the damage done as you take higher enhancements and one that increases the probability of a crit as you take higher enhancements.
If you take both, you will get both the better probability and the better damage (i.e. if you have one enhancement that has a 3% probability of 3x damage on fire spells, and another that has a 15% probability of 1.5x damage on fire spells, you overall get a 15% probability of 3x damage).
Area-effect and damage over time spells make a single roll for the spell, and either crit on everything or crit on nothing.
Sorcerers and wizards will have enhancements for fire, acid, negative, force, cold, electric, and sonic damage, as well as repair; bards have enhancements for healing and sonic.
Similar effects will be available from items; these will also stack with the enhancements by taking the best probability and the best damage multiplier.
Spell crits will stack with other effects that cause your spells to do more damage.
Negative damage (i.e., Chill Touch) will behave in the same manner as arcane damage spells.
But wait! I’m already level 10!
In order to give players who are level 10 the opportunity to swap out their old enhancements in favor of the new enhancements (and remember – the enhancements listed here are just the first group! We will be introducing other groups of new enhancements over the next few weeks) we will be implementing a new experience system for level-capped players. Once a player achieves level 10 they will begin earning experience points towards an action point token. This token will give players the ability to visit a trainer and trade in one of their current enhancements for a new one. Every time a player gains 20,000 points worth of action point experience, they will gain a new token. It is important to note that the action point experience gives you the ability to trade in one of your four enhancements for a new one - it does not give you additional enhancements on top of the four, nor can you stockpile more than four action point tokens (just like regular action points).
What will happen when the level cap is raised?
The action point tokens will go away when you level up, just like normal action points. So, when the level cap goes up, spend your remaining action point token to rearrange your benefits, then simply gain 1XP and talk to a trainer to get to level 11.
Can read the entire thread at the official DDO boards HERE
Catalyst Drivers Print News | Mail News ATI has released their latest Catalyst Drivers, 6.5, for those with a Radeon series card under their hood. So, waste no time and click on over to bring your card up to date....
All game servers will be down on Wednesday, May 24 for maintenance. Downtime is scheduled for one hour from 11AM to 12PM Eastern.
__________________
Victor Wachter
Community Relations Manager
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE™: Stormreach™
Many games claim they are akin to a pen-and-paper D&D; game. Many bank on the D&D; ruleset, but when Turbine went out to create a faithful D&D; experience, the development studio did want to be very faithful to the series and to the ruleset.
"Hello everybody! This week we would like to start a new feature entitled “Weekly Development Activities.” The goal is to give you solid expectations on what you can expect to see in future updates.
In the beginning. as we get up to speed, we might not have an update every week, but our ultimate goal is to do a weekly update. We will also be expanding the update to include not only what you might expect to see in the next update, but also some of what’s on tap for the next module and future updates.
In QA These items are in QA and should be a part of the next update.
Vendors and NPC’s
The Jewelry and Clothing Pawnbrokers will be moving to the Marketplace Tent. Vendors selling non-magical consumable goods will take their place in the House shops.
We will be correcting some of the (now) incorrect NPC dialogue following the recent relocation of several quest NPCs.
Items
The variety of Bane/Greater Bane/Slaying arrows and bolts will be significantly increased. Additionally, we will be adding Bane and Greater Bane missiles to the loot tables for chests.
Warforged Oil (Drink) will be significantly improved so that it is comparable in effectiveness to similar to non-oil drinks of equivalent cost.
The Brooch of Waterbreathing will once again have a 90 second effect.
Players will no longer find Slaying arrows that don’t have killable monsters associated with them.
Hold Person scrolls will now be available for sale with the rest of the level 3 Arcane Scrolls.
We are changing the description of some resistance items to help clarify stacking. For example “of resistance” items do not stack with items that give a bonus to a specific category of saves (i.e. will saves).
There is the possibility that some items have been created that cast Fireshield. Fireshield has not been fully implemented into the game and does not return damage to enemies that attack a fireshielded character. These items will no longer be created, but Fireshield items already in existence will not be changed. Fireshield does reduce damage from fire while it is in effect.
Holy, Axiomatic, and Anarchic weapons no longer display the Immune message when a player of the correct alignment equips them.
The Brooch of Shielding and Raktu’s Trifle will no longer display an alert icon for their Magic missile shielding effects.
Any new Docents of Filtration will be properly identified as docents.
Any new Thanatos Weave Robes will be properly identified as robes.
Combat
We will be making some improvements to combat feedback for critical hits.
We will be changing the tooltip description for the Power Attack feat to help clarify that this feat only applies to melee attacks. We will also be changing the language of several additional tooltips to help make sure their meaning is clear as well.
Performance
We are fixing a graphics memory leak that causes performance to severely degrade over time, eventually causing instability or crashes. This should also help alleviate “hitching.”
Fixing a bug that sometimes causes players to crash while teleporting.
We have added or corrected several focus orb images.
Face it - those nerds so often mocked for playing Dungeons & Dragons have found a way to combine imagination, creativity, statistics and even some history into a fun, social experience.
You wish your life could be that enriched.
The prototypical nerd fantasy game has officially made it to the wonderful World Wide Web, allowing gamers around the globe to ban together and bludgeon the crap out of ... I mean, partake in mentally stimulating challenges. Without little painted figures.
Yes, the seemingly endless line of MMO games has touched the Dungeons and Dragons series. Will it turn out to be a touch of death, or a new lease of life?
Some might say that the original RPG, even before the time of computer consoles, was this rather enigmatic series that has won over millions of people’s hearts over the years. Now, the D&D; series aims to win over a new generation of fans with the online reincarnation of the famous franchise. Taking this into account, Turbine has attempted to mimic the pen-and-paper method of the real-life game virtually.
UPDATED: All game servers will be down on Friday, May 19 for maintenance. Downtime is scheduled from 7AM to 11AM Eastern.
__________________
Victor Wachter
Community Relations Manager
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE™: Stormreach™
Bane Arrows / Bane Bolts: A bane weapon excels at attacking one type or subtype of creature. Against that type of creature, the weapon's effective enhancement bonus is +2 better than its normal enhancement bonus and it deals an extra 2d6 points of damage against the foe.
Greater Bane Arrows / Greater Bane Bolts: A bane weapon excels at attacking one type or subtype of creature. Against that type of creature, the weapon's effective enhancement bonus is +4 better than its normal enhancement bonus and it deals an extra 3d6 points of damage against the foe. Please note: there is a known issue where the text description says that Greater Bane items have a +2 bonus instead of +4. This is a text error only and will be fixed for the Twilight Forge Module.
Slaying Arrows / Slaying Bolts: These arrows and bolts are keyed to specific types or subtypes of creatures. If they strike such a creature, the target must make a Difficulty Check 20 Fortitude save or die (or, in the case of nonliving targets, be destroyed) instantly.
Problem: Variety and Supply
Currently there are only a few types of Bane, Greater Bane, and Slaying arrows and bolts in the game (Reptilian Bane, Elemental Bane etc.). Additionally, these specialty missiles are hard to obtain, as they are a random reward from a limited number of Collectors.
Solution
We are increasing the variety of Bane/Greater Bane/Slaying arrows and bolts. We are adding Undead Bane, Ooze Bane, Construct Bane, and many many more.
We are also adding Bane/Greater Bane/Slaying arrows and bolts to the loot tables for chests. This should significantly increase the amount of bane missiles available on the market.
One of the greatest ironies about Dungeons & Dragons Online is that it may have hurt itself by being too true to its pencil-and-paper inspiration. Many of the game's most sterling qualities come when it reproduces the feeling of exploring a brand new dungeon with a small group of buddies. Unfortunately, for all the game's virtues as a reproduction of the original D&D;, it seemed to fall short when providing what MMO players have come to expect from the genre -- solo content, PvP, crafting, and fostering a good environment for common social experiences.
We are aware of an issue where players may receive the following message when they attempt to log in:
Cannot Find DBGHELP.DLL 6.0.7.0 or Greater:
Debugging help functions could not be loaded. Please make sure you have version 6.0.7.0 or greater of dbghelp.dll. You can put this DLL anywhere in your PATH, except your System32 directory. If you do not have this dll then you can get it by installing the Debugging Tools For Windows package.
The team is working on resolving this issue as soon as possible. In the meantime, please disregard the message you receive and do not install the new file. This is a debug tool for developers and should not be applied to the end product.
We apologize for any inconvenience this issue causes and hope to have it resolved soon.
UPDATE: An update has been released that will resolve this issue. Please restart your launcher to begin downloading these files. Thank you for your patience!
__________________
Victor Wachter
Community Relations Manager
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE™: Stormreach™
All servers, including the world, authentication, and billing servers, will be down for maintenance on Monday, May 15 from 6:00am to 4:00pm EDT.
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Do me a favor, don't make The Cube angry.
Turbine Adds New Solo Content To Dungeons & Dragons Online™: Stormreach™[ 38 Comments ] Print News | Mail News Turbine, Inc. announced today plans for a range of expanded player features and content, including more solo-friendly game play, to be included in the second content module for DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE™: Stormreach™ (DDO), the hit game that has quickly become one of the fastest-growing MMOGs (massively multiplayer online games) in North America.
Free to all current DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE™ subscribers, the Twilight Forge module is slated for release in July and will include the new drow race, new content for players of all levels, an improved new player experience, and enhanced replayability. Following on the heels of the successful retail launch with over 300,000 units sold worldwide, the Twilight Forge module is the second in a series of planned updates that will provide new content and features for DDO.
E3 Happenings Print News | Mail News The Vault Network just wanted to remind everyone there will be plenty of representatives at this years E3 bringing you the latest news. So, stay tuned to each and every site for the latest from the showroom floor! Also be sure to check out IGN's offerings for this years show:
IGN E3 Central - One stop shopping for the latest happenings from around E3.
LiveWire - Your #1 source for all your live streaming coverage from the show floor.
