I’m making my annual pilgrimage to the mecca of nerdery on Wednesday. If you’ve never been, you can think of GenCon as sort of a pen-and paper E3, only without the cute women or the bathing.

I kid. Mostly.

The MMOG folks are ever-more interested in the con of cons, though, and at least three publishers are going to have a presence there this year.

Turbine’s announced that they’ll be unveiling the Forsaken Lands [Forum post may disappear] at their booth. DDO was a big draw at last year’s con, and I imagine it will be so again with its new info.

Pirates of the Burning Sea is planning a big show for the con, with demos and (probably) some info on the user-created content addition they’re making to the game.

You may have already heard that Guild Wars is holding a massive tournament this weekend. $5,000 in cash to the top 32 winners. Too bad I suck, or I’d be right there.

I can’t see any confirmation, but with Jack Emmert’s past in the tablet-top industry City of Heroes/Villains has usually had a presence at the event. They usually say they’re going, though, so mayhap with Mr. Emmert’s fading into the background they’ll be keeping a lower profile as well. Shame.

I expect to be a little post-light this week, as a result of my busy schedule, but I’m sure I’ll have lots of post fodder ready to put up when I return.

I’ve said some pretty negative things about DDO, and Turbine in general lately. Here, and elsewhere, I’ve been snotty about the plans the company has for the game, and about the game itself. I’d feel more remorseful, but I kind of feel like I’m justified.

In any case, it’s rude to concentrate on the negative, especially considering all of the effort the team and Turbine have made to bring the game to market and keep it going for the players. I’d like to talk a bit about some things that I do enjoy about Dungeons and Dragons Online. In fact, (like elements of Prey), I’d love to see some of DDO’s core elements show up in future games.

Read more

The fine people of MMOG Nation have answered a call. The result? A new beachhead on the rocky shores of GameSetWatch. I’ll be writing some MMOG-related blah-blah every other week for Gamasutra’s alt.games blog. I’m going to steer clear of the boring design-related stuff … I talk about that enough here. Instead I’ll be aiming for funny/interesting/general audience posts.

Here’s hoping it works out.

My first post concerns the Drow of DDO, and why they’re a sign of bad things ahead.

MMORPG.com has the word that Keith Baker will be writing for Dungeons and Dragons Online.

I don’t really understand this move. I mean, I certainly think that DDO needs more content. That’s not a question. The confusion I have is centered around the big name. What does that say to the folks in the trenches? I’m not that big a fan of the quests in DDO, but a lot of people obviously put a lot of work into the thing.

What does it say to the designers when the company very visibly hires a ‘big name’ to come in and flavour up the world?

What it says to me is that Turbine has no faith in the people working on the project. The game hasn’t recieved the response the company wants, and so they’re pulling PR stunts in order to get pen and paper gamers more interested in the product. Which is a losing proposition. Keith Baker is a good writer, but the reality of the situation is that gamers (especially the finicky pen and paper variety) go where the good games are. How many gamers love the X-Files? The card game made about the show in the late 90s should have been a hit, right?

It bombed miserably because the game just wasn’t any fun. While DDO isn’t devoid of fun, the amount of fun squirreled away in the streets of in the Stormreach isn’t going to increase because of a high profile writer.

A for effort, though, and I’m sure the resulting quests are going to have great flavour text.

but it’s really really hard when WarCry makes it so easy.

“April 5th, DDO finally patched in a big, bad red dragon. Less than 48 hours later it was dead. Now, it is basically getting farmed. Strategy guides for taking down the toughest encounter in the game are appearing less than a week after the content was patched in.”

My review for DDO is up on Slashdot.

The thin layer of Eberron that I mentioned above is mostly related through quest text, and what is offered through NPC interaction is cookie cutter and boring. Quests usually have a voice-over, from an intangible Dungeon Master, to spice up your understanding of the situation and evoke the table-top setting. In my opinion, the voice-over doesn’t add much. In truth, the storytelling that Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft manage through questing makes the story attempts of DDO look like a student project MOO in comparison. 

Already? Already. The Dragon’s Vault will have a raid, 15 new dungeons, and an actual dragon! Now, as Kill Ten Rats jokes, they can be called Dungeons and Dragon. Just one more and they’re accurately named.

From the release:

The new dungeons provide a variety of additional content for players of all levels in the game. Turbine announced today that the Dragon’s Vault module will be free of charge for all current DDO subscribers as a way to say “thank you” to all of its fans. Turbine also declared its plans to release additional modules over time that include new content, features, and other improvements to the hit MMOG.

I love that they’re calling them modules. That’s just classy. I hope to have something up on Slash tomorrow on this game. I hope. I’m so conflicted.