For those who missed the first Hireling Preview last night, Turbine’s Community Specialist Tolero has announced that the next event will be Friday (tomorrow) and the latest update in the thread extends the preview all day rather than the four hour window of Wednesday’s event. Tolero mentions if things go well, they’re hoping to extent the event for the full weekend, however no patching will occur — the hireling behavior will be identical to the first event.
More events should take place this month as they use the feedback to tweak the AI behaviors, then Hirelings go live full-time in December.
Did you miss your chance to try the Hirelings during the Wednesday night Hireling Preview? By popular demand, we will be having a Hireling Preview encore all day Friday, November 14th! Now is the perfect time to try out Hirelings and let us know what you think about them through our game survey and/or community forums!
Beginning tonight, Thursday November 13th, at 6:30 PM EST (-5 GMT) Hireling vendors will be turned on for the Friday preview. If all goes well, we will extend the preview through the weekend!
Not sure how to use a Hireling? Click here for a helpful guide! Also be sure to check the Known Issues related to Hirelings, and the following FAQ:
The vendors are already live, and the event ends Friday night at 10pm EST. I snipped out the FAQ in that quote due to length, but I will quote one of them, which addresses a question Openedge1 and I brought up in the previous article:
Tags: DDO, MMO GamingQ: Will my Hireling disappear once the 60 minutes on the contract is over?
A: The contract will disappear after 60 minutes. If you’re in a dungeon and have your Hireling out when this happens, your Hireling will stay with you until you dismiss them or enter a public instance, even if the contract has disappeared.
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YESSSssssss….
Thanks for that FAQ about the 60 minute limit.
This is looking better now.
DDO needed these at launch. D&D 3.5 is simply not balanced for solo play, and people can’t group 100% of the time in MMOs. I quit solely because I spent more time shouting LFG in the inns than playing.
I tend to treat DDO as a group-required multiplayer game and I’m paying $10/month for continued updates rather than treating it the same as a “worldy” MMORPG where I can solo and gather materials and craft or whatever fluffy activities to occupy myself.
D&D (any edition) has always been about you and your group of friends adventuring, not soloing. Matter of fact, I can’t think of a single tabletop RPG that was “balanced for solo;” it simply wasn’t done. A GM could adapt a session or so but overall the games were not intended to be solo content.
Having said that, I definitely feel ya… it was so nice to join an active guild so I can play DDO more often instead of logging in, trying to get a PUG with the LFG tool, then giving up and logging out for a week or few.
Hopefully hirelings will help in that regards, and also help the small group of friends or spouses who game together.