With PAX East being in Boston, it’s natural for us to reach out to the resident MMO studio in the neighborhood every year, especially in light of the recent announcements made at their player meetup last week. We sat down with Standing Stone Games’ Executive Producer Rob ‘Severlin’ Ciccolini to ask questions about the state of both MMOs being developed by his studio, Dungeons and Dragons Online and Lord of the Rings Online, and to gather more details on the big ticket items announced at the Adventure Pub. Here’s the video of the interview recorded at SSG. Please note that the LotRO content starts at approximately 19 minutes in.
DDO Highlights:
- Database update still coming, won’t take as long as LotRO‘s did
- Alchemist happened to have a different caster style
- No accessibility concerns re: Alchemist
- What 64-bit client brings to the table
- Summer update features new story leading to Feywild xpac, new dungeons, not yet decided which new raid to add
- Clarification on the road to level 40 (Spoiler: it won’t be all 10 levels available at once)
- Possibility of a future megaserver setup, not the same as LotRO‘s consolidation
LotRO Highlights:
- Race changes pretty far along, sooner now that Shelob raid is live
- Server transfers: Decommissioned servers need the database update first so returning players can restore their stranded characters, live-to-live transfers need policy decisions and implementation to avoid misuse
- Rohan housing will have new hookpoints to allow for mounts to be displayed, decisions not yet final as to just inside the stables or also outside in corral structures, possibility of hitching posts, not whole pastures to roam
- Gondor content will be doled out piecemeal on the Legendary Servers, not jumping from Helm’s Deep to Mordor
- New carry-alls are coming, instrument gig bags getting more testing now that the raid is live
- Legendary Item updates, shorter-term ease to acquire Scrolls of Empowerment (adding to endgame content), longer-term essence-style system in the works, still early days in development, subject to change
- Possibly a good chance on the next race being the river-Hobbits, possibly new classes for them not available to current Hobbits
- New content coming, one set for endgame, the other called Missions that will allow lower-level players to visit higher-level areas
- War of the Three Peaks is NOT the three mountains from Khazad-dûm but rather one mountain with three peaks, most likely Mount Gundabad
- Possibility of a new kind of Legendary Server, more likely limited-time event servers like DDO‘s Hardcore League
- Wedding of Aragorn and Arwen intended to be a yearly anniversary event, other festivals/events may shift or merge to accommodate it
- Legacy of Durin and the Trials of the Dwarves is a single title, not two separate content updates
- Severlin is playing a warden to gauge player comments about their shortcomings as tanks
Many thanks to the folks at Standing Stone Games and to Ciccolini himself for the interview!
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