As a follow-up to my previous posts about Turbine rumors, today the latest one hit: is Turbine bring DDO to consoles? This appeared first on Joystiq, then Massively picked it up and ran with it.
First, consider DDO’s active real-time combat system. This particularly lends itself well to consoles in terms of the base melee aspect. On the PC, melee is a single right-click and your character does a random combat animation. Press a key to block, another to dodge… all combat mechanics very familiar to most console gamers.
The instanced nature of DDO would also be a boon for the console platform, given that consoles usually have much fewer resources and RAM than a comparable PC would. The instanced zones and dungeons would keep performance maximized on the consoles.
Communication… well, that’s always been a topic in regards to console MMO’s but as I’ve said before, both Xbox 360 and PS3 accept any USB keyboard and the Xbox has a mini-keyboard attachment that snaps right onto a controller. More importantly, while there is a degree of chat in DDO, nearly everyone utilizes the game’s integrated VOIP during adventures. No idea about the PS3, but I think all 360’s come with a headset for use on Xbox Live already so no additional purchase necessary.
Currently, DDO has the typical $15/month MMO price scheme (although I jumped on the $10/month they offered awhile back). Massively Speaking #8 (hey, that was great hearing Cameron in a podcast, by the way!) hinted that Turbine is actively looking at alternate pricing schemes for DDO, including free-to-play. I can see DDO doing quite well for itself switching to the Guild Wars 2 model: pay for the game, play for free, then charge for additional content packs. I’ve stated many times that I foresee issues particularly with Xbox Live’s Gold members when they discover they have to pay one fee for the Xbox Live services they’ve been using, but a totally separate fee for any MMOG’s. Xbox Live users are already accustomed to paying for new Downloadable Content (DLC) so that particular price scheme, I feel, would be a tremendous hit on both platforms and we’d see DDO’s total population grow.
Adding fuel to the fire are two items from Turbine themselves. First, as I mentioned a few days ago, Turbine is looking for a Senior Console Engineer. Then came yesterday’s announcement from Turbine’s Community Manager, Meghan “Patience” Rodberg, that DDO’s popular Weekly Development Activities will be ceasing because what the DDO team is working on is under tight wraps, and that additionally DDO is going to be getting some major PR pushes in the coming months. Here are two blurbs from her announcement:
Q: Why is the WDA going away?
A: There are two critical factors that went into the decision, so let’s talk about them a little:
The first is that following the completion of Module 7, the DDO development team has been working full-tilt on several things that are still under tight wraps. This means we’re unable to include them in the WDA – making it next to useless.
More importantly, though, is that DDO will be getting more and more focus from Turbine’s marketing and PR teams over the coming months. This renewed focus has already begun, in fact, and you may have noticed an increase in the publicity for DDO. This is a good thing! The pickle is that as time goes on, we will be getting even more press coverage for the game; this means that we’ll need to offer exclusives to the media about things that are coming up next for DDO – things that as a result cannot be included in the WDA.Q: What are these top secret things you mentioned?
A: They are top secret. In time we will bring you more information, but currently we’re not at liberty to discuss them. If we told you, we’d have to… well, you know.
Now for a huge negative: DDO’s UI. No I don’t mean those fugly icons (seriously Turbine, get some new icon art) but the complexity of it all. My highest character is level 7 so far, and I already have the same number, if not more, hotbars onscreen that I had back when I was raiding and PvP-ing in WoW. And a lot of the slots in my WoW hotbars were fluff; just items I put there for convenience not because I needed them. In DDO, I feel like I need those slots onscreen, and I can only see it getting worse as I progress to higher levels. Real-time combat or no, DDO does have a standard MMORPG UI and that is simply unacceptable in a console environment. I’ve wondered if a shift to drop-down hotbars would work, similar to how EA designed the UI for the console versions of their RTS titles, Battle for Middle Earth 2 and Command and Conquer 3. That UI works great within the scope of an RTS, and could possibly work well for our standard turn-based MMORPG’s but again, DDO is real-time, fast action, and I don’t know how that would translate when it comes to a fighter quickly needing a Trip skill or a caster needing to quickly select a spell from his repertoire. If a console DDO is indeed on the “top secret” plate over at Turbine, I am extremely interested how they handle the UI translation.
Now, just to put away all thoughts that Turbine is going to blow all their recent fund-raising just on DDO, I’ll reiterate Time Warner was one of the lead investors last week, and their representative specifically said “Online interactive entertainment is a huge growth market and we are very excited about Turbine, its unique capabilities and the obvious opportunities that exist with our own broad portfolio of IP.” In my previous speculations, I linked Time Warner’s involvement to their Harry Potter IP, but don’t forget the potential aspect of implementing aspects of the Lord of the Rings movies into the MMORPG. Turbine only had a license with Tolkien Enterprises for the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit series of novels but nothing with New Line Cinemas. However, Time Warner is the parent company of New Line, so who knows? Maybe as an eventual result of this new turn of events we’ll finally hear Howard Shore’s glorious soundtrack in-game? Maybe we’ll see the NPC graphics reflect the looks of the actors? So much potential here, it would be a shame if it fell short. As their rep stated, Time Warner does indeed have a huge IP portfolio, so I’d still keep a Harry Potter-themed game as a possibility, or any number of their more popular franchises that could be brought to the MMO space.
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Very nice!!