It’s still hush hush, but we just finished a contract with Turbine to help them build an awesome new MMO intended for consoles.

If you want more than that, you’ll have to take it up with Turbine, because we can’t spill the beans on their top-secret game.

It was a fun project, and we’re proud of our work. We can’t wait to play it ourselves when it’s released.

This is exciting news! Twisted Pixel has produced two of the most highly-acclaimed XBLA titles out there – The Maw and Splosion Man – and gives me hope that whatever the game may be, it won’t use the Turbine Engine. I enjoy Turbine’s games, but that engine is coming up on a decade old and it seems like they keep piling features on top of the ancient crap instead of cleaning it up and keeping it updated under the hood. Epic and id update their engines and design entirely new ones; it’s time Turbine stepped up to the plate as well.

Of course now the speculation goes into overdrive of what the game will be. I could have swore Turbine said (or implied) it would be a new IP but players won’t seem to drop the idea of a DDO port. The concept of DDO – a co-op group completing adventures – would work perfectly on consoles; after all co-op is the Big Thing this year, but would require a massive overhaul of the UI and inventory mechanics. We are also accustomed to buying DLC Adventure Packs already on consoles, though I have my doubts that a full in-game store would go over well in the console world. The instanced adventures would work well given that consoles have much more limited RAM and resources than higher-end PC’s. I could see a console DDO going over quite well if it were given a better engine and the fluid controls and graphics/animations we’ve come to expect on modern AAA console titles – something Turbine struggles with on the PC with limited success.

A console version of LOTRO? Nah, DIKU and consoles just don’t get along. An “arcadey” version of LOTRO with a playable evil side? Why would Turbine bother when Snowblind is already finishing up that exact idea (non-massively multiplayer) with Lord of the Rings: War in the North?

The much-speculated Harry Potter MMO? Now we’re at least talking with not only a new IP but one that belongs to Turbine’s new Dark Lord owner, Warner Brothers. It’s been talked about for a long time, and WB has stated they would like to see the IP given the MMO treatment. My own hope is that if it happens, it’s not too kiddy-fied. Not everyone who enjoys Harry Potter is a kid, nor are a good deal of console players, and I would hate to feel flatly excluded from a title.

How about a console MMO set on Dereth, the world of the Asheron’s Call games? That would bring some attention back to that IP and perhaps to the original MMO that is still running (and I’m certain Asheron’s Call will end up going the hybrid freemium route eventually) and possibly lead into an Asheron’s Call 3 MMO on the PC as well.

How about moving on from fantasy (Turbine has 3 fantasy IP’s already) altogether? Done correctly, we console players certainly still love our fantasy, but also seem much more willing to accept other settings than are our PC compatriots.

© Scott for Pumping Irony, 2010. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Turbine announced today that DDO will be going Free to Play, though it sounds almost like a hybrid Freemium model. The new DDO will be entering closed beta soon, signups are on the new Eberron Unlimited announcement page, along with specific details as to what premium “VIP” subscribers receive versus the free players. They claim all current subscriptions do not change, so I’ll leave mine alone since I got that $9.99/month thing they offered last year and find out if it changes or not.

I do wonder how they’ll be dividing up the Adventure Packs out of the current content, though. It does say all the Stormreach and vicinity content will be included in the base game for free players. Going off that, I’d say additional places like the Menechtarun Desert, Meridia, and so forth would be in the Adventure Packs. This will most likely affect the way future Module updates are released as well, unless Turbine plans to sell each Module separately to the free players, which is probably not a bad idea.

A DDO Store will be opened for the game and players can buy (get ready for it) Turbine Points (say it with me: “ugh!”) which are then used to purchase items from the store. A quick glance at the VIP vs. Free chart looks like the store will contain the Adventure Packs, obviously, character slots, a shared bank slot, the Monk and other new classes (one new class is in the announcement!), and the Drow and Warforged race.

Personally, I do have a problem paying to unlock the Warforged race since that was always a standard race in DDO. The Drow you had to unlock with favor (DDO’s reputation system) anyway so I’m on the fence about the drow. Separating the Monk class seems on the surface as yet another (yeah, I’m going to say it) “slap in the face” to the Monk, which seems to get no love from Turbine, and while Free players will most likely increase the overall player base, paying for a class will probably mean the Monk will stay relatively rare like it is already.

Regardless, this all sounds exciting, and if nothing else all the DDO servers may see a population increase of players, and that’s always a good thing!

© Scott for Pumping Irony, 2009. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

Reading through the massive (I’ve heard it’s around 40 pages printed!) release notes for the upcoming Module 9, all quest instances (except solo and raids) will scale to the size of the group. When I first heard this mentioned on DDOcast, I initially thought they were eliminating the whole mechanic of selecting a difficulty level (Normal, Hard, Elite) in favor of scaling, but the release notes say otherwise; the group selects the difficulty then the scaling occurs on top of that when entering the instance.

Similarly, in Massively’s interview with Jeffrey Steefel for LOTRO’s 2-year Anniversary, Steefel mentioned that the Book 8 update scheduled for June will also have new scalable instances; the current working name for them is “skirmishes.”

I also noticed Steefel mentioned Book 8 will have “customizable soldiers that you can train and bring into these skirmishes,” which seems to have escaped most readers’ notice over the excitement of skirmishes and the post-Book 8 hints. Why do I have a sneaking suspicion they might be moving DDO’s Hireling tech over to LOTRO? I was a little skeptical of the need for AI companions in LOTRO but it sounds like (for now) they may be limited for use in the new scaling skirmish instances. Probably a good thing, the tech and the AI is still very much being worked on in DDO, and quite frankly LOTRO is having enough problems already with AI and pet pathing since Moria launched…

In other Turbine tech news, one of the big changes to DDO in Module 9 will be the new “soft targeting” system. Players can toggle this on and off, but when enabled will have a targeting system similar in some ways to Mass Effect. Just moving your cursor or the mouse reticule near a target will select it (though I think you can simultaneously keep another target hard-locked?). DDO is also getting a first-person camera. Previously the camera would only scroll right up behind your character’s shoulders, and for screen shots players would have to scroll all the way in then click the Hide skill to make the character duck below the camera. But that’s not all! DDO is also getting a new “shooter-style” control scheme, selectable in the options, which will remap a lot of the controls to make the game control and feel similar to how shooters do. I’ll hazard a guess that the control scheme will work in both first and the normal third person view.

Not only will the new camera, control and targeting scheme provide a whole new feel to DDO but I also can’t help but feel DDO is being used as a guinea pig to test various schemes for Turbine’s secret in-development console title. Despite all the rumors of DDO or LOTRO being ported to the 360, I just don’t see it. LOTRO is a traditional DikuMMO with all the hotbar and inventory aspects to the UI that would be extremely problematic on a console. Despite its emphasis on fast, visceral action, I find DDO to be even more cumbersome to deal with because it has so many abilities, “clickies” on most gear, switching items constantly… that just won’t cut it on a console. At level 8, my wizard in DDO already had as many hotbars onscreen as my druid in WoW did at level cap and raiding! I’ve only bothered to put a fraction of the stuff available to my wizard on the hotbars, otherwise it would be even more cluttered. LOTRO is Turbine’s cash cow right now, and they’re still working on a new UI sytem for their engine and games. As Steefel mentioned last year at, the core of their UI subsystem was written in 1997! Yet I’m supposed to believe they have a fully functional and brand-new UI system for consoles to handle their existing games? Sorry, not buyin’ it. Until proven otherwise, I’ll continue to believe that their console MMOG will be a whole new game, not a port of one of their PC MMORPGs.

Slight tangent, but I’ll just say that in the spirit of getting both DDO and LOTRO up to parity, the DDO team needs to get crackin’ on the UI. Out of all the UI’s I’ve ever had to work with in any MMOG, DDO is by far the fugliest. It’s functional, yes, but it’s obvious from all the work the team has been putting into DDO the past year (and Module 9 is proof of that) that they’re looking to reboot the game. It’s being given an all-new look and feel, starting with the new tutorial area added in Module 8 (Module 9 is adding full voiceovers to the entire Korthos experience, thereby fully realizing the Age of Conan-esque “the tutorial was a lie!” comparison. ) and the makeover to the Harbor. Module 9 is continuing this trend, with a makeover to the Marketplace. I know a lot of people who like to scale their UI intensely dislike LOTRO’s because it actually resizes rather than scales, which leads to a blurry and pixelated appearance. That’s one of the many things Turbine will fix in their UI 2.0 system but there has been no news whatsoever of when we might actually see that. In the interim, I’d at least like to see DDO’s UI get brought up to the same as LOTRO’s, so that when UI 2.0 does come out it can be fit into each game at once.

Speaking of rebooting the game, Jerry from DDOcast posted this morning that briefly, DDO.com was showing the game under the name Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unleashed. It’s been changed back now, but a quick search on the ESRB site does in fact show DDO under that name! (Interestingly, they also have the Forsaken Lands expansion that was instead released as one of the Module content updates.) Turbine has been hinting for quite awhile now that something “vast and mysterious” was coming to DDO. While I’d love to see them switch to the LOTRO engine tech for a huge seamless world that would probably bring in a lot of new players, doing that would be the equivalent to the NGE and I don’t think they’ll go there. What this probably means is now that Module 9 finally brings the game to D&D’s level cap of 20, they’re putting even more emphasis on new content and moving the focus away from the city of Stormreach into even more areas of Eberron. I’m hoping they make a compromise and take some of the existing zone tech from LOTRO, as well as Moria’s “dual height map” tech and give a nod to Age of Conan, adding population-limited public zones to adventure in.

© Scott for Pumping Irony, 2009. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: DDO, LOTRO

I checked in with my kinship in briefly, but for the most part I am waiting for Book 7 to go live on Tuesday before I make any effort to get back into LOTRO. I’m not positive but I thought I either read or heard in a podcast that due to the lore regarding the elves of Lorien, having player housing there is out of the question so I’ll probably be making the rounds in the Ered Luin neighborhoods to look for a suitably scenic Deluxe plot. I suspect I’ll have a difficult time with it – those Deluxe houses are always crammed up against other houses in rather non-scenic areas. My existing Standard house is in one of the most scenic spots in the neighborhood. I wish I was allowed buying a Kinship house; I could certainly use the storage space. Yes, I can afford one.

I spent most of what little gaming I did this week in DDO. After joining the guild Chainmail in November, I’ve barely spent any time in DDO whatsoever due to my overall MMO burnout/malaise. While walking this week I caught up on my podcasts, part of which was six or more episodes of DDOcast, which got me in the mood to get back in. So I’ve been getting to know the guild, letting them get to know me. I spent time in voice chat with a few asking questions about the wizard class, then we set out running some adventures. Now, Koriander is two ranks into level 8, roughly 60% to the third rank. Also got a few new items, my favorite two being an Aberrant Robe which has Wizardry II (+50 Spell Points) and +17 Spell Resistance, and Clever Goggles of Jump which gives a +2 to Intelligence as well as a clickie for the Jump spell that can be used 3 times per day. That might save me the need for carrying Jump potions for now.

Also I’ll mention that  the leader of the Chainmail guild, James “Lagin” Thomas, will be featured in DDOcast episode 108! The segment will be recorded tomorrow afternoon and I think the topic will be about old-school D&D gamers who have stuck with the game through the years and all its various incarnations. He’s been playing since the original white box D&D set and even still has the original set of the very first modules ever printed for the game. I may have misunderstood what he was saying about the formation of the guild but it sounded like he also had to jump through some hoops to even use the name Chainmail but ended up being approved by Wizards of the Coast. Something like that. Perhaps they’ll get into that discussion on the show.

Finally, I realized my Vanguard subscription was still active for some reason so I canceled that a few hours before the announcement that Live Gamer RMT would be coming to all US servers. I have some feelings on that, which I more or less stated over at Stargrace’s blog, as well as over IM with Karen/Jaye. I feel my points are spot-on but primarily for the modern PvE games. Others have counterpoints which apply more directly to Vanguard and its non-instanced, contested content nature and I absolutely concede to and agree with that part. I don’t know… I almost think Vanguard is too old-school (despite having more modern UI and mechanics) for Live Gamer. Or that adding “appearance tabs” ala EQ2 and LOTRO then selling optional fluff outfits with no stats like EQ2 is doing may have been a better fit for Vanguard. But that would facilitate actually programming in the appearance tabs, and I don’t see that happening. [Edit: I obviously missed in the patch notes that appearance tabs were in fact added two weeks ago!] I am unsure I can even name a specific reason why I secretly like the game and wish it success, but let’s be honest: the new content that was “promised” to arrive by Christmas still hasn’t arrived four months later. The reason I don’t play is because the population is nearly non-existent when I login. In a group-centric game, that clinches it, and I logout. I’m not interested in grinding mobs solo to level cap and missing everything in the game just to grind the one single raid currently in the game. No thanks.

© Scott for Pumping Irony, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

First, DDO’s Birthday Bonus XP:

DDO is celebrating its 3rd Birthday! As part of the celebration, we’re giving out bonus XP and Loot!

Starting this Friday, February 27th, and running through March 1st, DDO Players will gain a 50% XP bonus and +1 tier bonus to loot quality! But the fun doesn’t stop there! Once 50% XP and +1 loot are over with on Sunday March 1st, starting Monday March 2nd, enjoy 10% bonus XP for 2 weeks!

Be on the look out for more fun and previews as we celebrate DDO’s 3rd Anniversary together! Happy Birthday DDO!

Sounds great! My MMO Burnout isn’t quite over yet but I have been getting interested in checking back with DDO. Maybe I’ll put in some time next week with the +10% XP? DDO players were really hoping Turbine would have Module 9 ready for the birthday but they didn’t quite make it. Senior Producer Kate Paiz posted a Letter to the Players today saying that Turbine is close to announcing the release date for Module 9 as well as spelling out five of the changes or improvements it will bring:

• A shared bank tab. From the description, this sounds like the bank system Hellgate: London had where each character had its own bank space but a shared tab existed where all characters on that server can share items contained within.
• Combined chat channels. Rather than each public hub having its own channel, a single global public chat will be used, and will also be available while inside quest instances.
• A new soft targeting system, which sounds interesting and will probably be helpful to the way I usually play the game, and improved combat feedback on the UI.
• Level cap increases to 20!
• Continuation of the Shavarath storyline. Players will take the fight to Shavarath, the Plane of Battle to fight for Xen’drik in a new multi-part raid. Kate put up a few sneak-peek screenshots.

Meanwhile out in space, the AFS Special Intel issued some dire news Friday: the Neph, a cousin race to the beneficent Eloh, have re-emerged with newly mastered wormhole technology! All bases were ordered to fortify their bases in anticipation of full-scale Bane attacks, which began yesterday. To quote the final paragraph of the AFS missive:

We request that all military personnel begin fortifying defenses at every AFS base in preparation for a massive Bane assault. If enemy troop movements are as large as we fear, and the Neph are truly prepared to lead all out war against us, this may be our last stand. Penumbra has been informed of the situation and is standing by on the use of their last resort weapon. We can not afford to be complacent or uncertain, but if it is truly our destiny to be destroyed, we are taking them all with us.

It sounds like the TR Live team is giving us one final live event where the Bane will overwhelm the AFS and rather than being enslaved Penumbra Division is going to nuke everyone? Guess I’ll find out, I plan on putting some time into the game today and I’ll be there when the server goes offline.

The shutdown event schedule was posted as well, and short enough I’ll just quote the whole thing:

### Incoming Transmission ###

The final Bane assault on Foreas, Arieki, and parts unknown will commence on Saturday, February 28th. Please join us to help battle back the Bane armies one last time!

The attack is slated to commence at approximately 8 PM GMT on Centarus and then later at 8 PM CST on Hydra. Servers will shut down at approximately midnight GMT and CST respectively.

Get out your best gear, load up on ammo, and raise a final cheer for the troops of the Allied Free Sentients!

### End Transmission ###

© Scott for Pumping Irony, 2009. | Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags:

No, this time it’s the Risia test server being taken down for a bit due to a “secret project” coming soon to the game!

The decision was recently made to close Risia to the public in the coming weeks to prepare it for use in an upcoming DDO project (you may have heard us allude to something big coming down the pipe!). However, Murphy’s Law of MMOs bit us with a hardware failure on Risia on Monday during our regular maintenance. Since the closure was already fast approaching, we re-evaluated our plans and have decided to leave Risia closed for the immediate future. We know this will generate many questions, so we’ve tried to answer a few of them in advance. We’d like to thank everyone for their participation in the preview program! Please stay tuned for more announcements:

Q: What do I do with my Risia installation?
A: You can uninstall the Risia client and delete any installation files. New preview server installations will be incompatible with the current Risia installation.

Q: Does this mean there won’t be a preview program any more?
A: The preview program has been undergoing some changes based on play patterns. The active population on our preview servers tends to be very small between updates. Activity picks up when a new Module becomes available, and then quickly dies back down. We’ll have more information about the preview program in the future.

Q: Can I transfer my characters from Risia to the live servers?
A: Unfortunately, preview characters are not eligible to be transferred. Risia characters are not up to date with the Live servers.

Q: So… this “DDO related project”. Can you tell me what it is? Is it super secret stuff?
A: We can’t tell you just yet, but the wait to find out about it won’t be long! More information about the fate of Risia will be available early this coming Year!

Source

The response to the second question mentioning active population on the test server is identical to one of the Q&A’s back when Turbine decided to keep LOTRO’s Roheryn test server offline except for when new content was uploaded to it. I predict DDO’s Risia test server will resume on a similar schedule.

As for the “secret project” that’s anyone’s guess right now. Turbine said months ago they had big plans for DDO. The recent Module 8 with its New Player Experience was the first step in that direction. They’ve also committed to renovating more of Stormreach (and the older content?) but I’m curious what the big secret is. Expansion-quality content such as a new city in one of the other areas of Eberron? Public landscape areas with quests, mobs, etc.? The ability to contract multiple Hirelings at once like Guild Wars’ Heroes?

I’m anxious to find out what’s happenin’…

© Scott for Pumping Irony, 2008. | Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: DDO

• Hireling contracts will no longer work on a timer system. Instead, all Hireling contracts will be one-use, and you can carry the contract for as long as you want until you need it! Once summoned, your Hireling will stay with you until you enter a public area. You will still only be able to summon one Hireling between rests, and if you dismiss your Hireling or enter a public space, you’ll need to rest before you can summon the next one with another contract.
• Contract prices will also be significantly reduced. Hiring your Hireling will be more affordable than ever before!
• High level Hireling vendors will be available in more locations.
• Hirelings will support a “Defensive” command, in addition to “Passive” and “Active” commands. Defensive mode will be the new default for all Hirelings when they enter your party. In Defensive mode, Hirelings will remain Passive until enemies attack them or their master first, at which point they become Active to heal (if applicable) and engage in the fight.
• Improvements have been made to Cleric Hirelings. They will be more concerned with healing both themselves and their master. They will also be more responsive to explicit Healing commands.
• Many bugs were able to be fixed related to Hirelings; the full list will be available in patch release notes.

Sounds like some nice changes to the system coming up; I’ll look forward to seeing the full patch notes whenever that goes live. The tweaked Cleric AI especially sounds like a welcome change. One Alesia (Guild Wars henchmen monk who thinks she’s a tank and would rather not heal anyone) is enough…

© Scott for Pumping Irony, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: DDO

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:

Q: 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.

© Scott for Pumping Irony, 2008. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: DDO, MMO Gaming

Gwylan’s Stand is a pretty big quest, it’s listed as “Very Long” in the description, consisting of a large outdoor area (not a wilderness landscape) with several smaller dungeons inside. Our group ranged from levels 7 to 9, though we may have had a 10 with us. On Elite setting, many of the mobs were CR10 up to CR15. I still have no idea what CR (Challenge Rating) actually means or how to approximate its relationship to character levels, but suffice it to say I’d never seen enemies that strong before! This was truly a challenge, but what was even better: the group respected that challenge and rose to it rather than zerging.

This group was amazing! I had thought I’d been in a few good groups in my short time in DDO, but I was obviously mistaken. DDO plays fast and furious, and even I mostly play in mouselook mode (except with my wizard, too many spells and clickies to keep track of) and play more like a console action RPG than the slower pace we play Diku-MMO’s at. But this group actually took things slow, planned strategies for encounters and used the class roles as they were meant to be used. Rogues actually scouting ahead? Rangers shooting near mob’s feet to get their attention without pulling entire groups? Players working as a cohesive unit? Whoah! I had the most fun with this group that I’ve ever had in DDO. Crowd control was particular interesting; a ranger would lay down some sort of spike trap, I would cast a Grease spell on top of it (well, until I ran out of material components… gah!) and the sorcerer cast another crowd control spell on top of that. Three spells to slow, stop or damage the enemies as they tried to get to us. In several places, we cast those right in the middle of traps as well, so any mobs who managed to get through it all were severely weakened and easily dealt with.

We successfully managed to complete all the bonus objectives as well for the additional XP, which was enough to get Koriander to level 8! He learned two new spells, one of which is Phantasmal Killer. I keep hearing that spell being talked about as if it’s single-handedly the Totally Awesome Spell of Total Awesomeness, so I gleefully added it to Kori’s arcane arsenal and look forward to seeing it in action soon!

I had so much fun with this group, who treated it all like a normal Diku-MMO instance or raid, thinking encounters through and giving a role to everyone that I joined their guild! It was completely a spur-of-the-moment impulse decision, but one I feel will revitalize my short- and long-term interest in the game. My old guild has nearly dried up, and until last week I hadn’t been able to find a group in months. I was beginning to peruse the guild forums anyway, so perhaps this was meant to be. If this turns out to be a good guild, I can foresee DDO truly becoming my second game rather than the occasional dabbling every few months that I’ve been doing. My eyes have been opened to a whole new way of playing DDO, one that matches my playstyle in LOTRO and other MMO’s while taking advantage of DDO’s active combat and fast pace.

Next will be learning to play the wizard class better. Something I’ve been struggling with all along, but I’m hopefully getting a grip on things. I’ve asked in forums and everyone has suggested at low and mid-levels that I concentrate on spells that provide buffs and crowd control, with only one or two combat spells. That worked last night until I ran out of material components but luckily I’d memorized a couple other crowd control spells that did not require them. I love versatile classes over one-trick ponies, and the wizard certainly fits that description, but I’ll admit I’m anxious for Kori to finally become fearsome and powerful, nuking the hell out of enemies in addition to providing other benefits for the party.

© Scott for Pumping Irony, 2008. | Permalink | 1 comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: DDO, MMO Gaming

For tonight’s Hireling preview, Hireling vendors are now available in the following locations: the Harbor, Marketplace, Gianthold, and Meridia. Look for the vendor icon on your map.

If my theory is correct, the vendors are level-bracketed in each location. The Marketplace vendor sold contracts for Hirelings in the level 4-6 bracket. The Harbor vendor would have had levels 1-3 Hirelings, then level 7+ starting in Gianthold. I didn’t run around testing this though; and I cannot get to Meridia anyway.

In the Marketplace, contract prices were as follows:

• Level 4: 653 gold, 4 silver
• Level 5: 1,257 gold, 3 silver
• Level 6: 2,158 gold, 2 silver

All classes were available, though Hirelings appear to be single-class only; no multi-classed Jack of All Trades for hire.

Contracts last one hour, and the timer starts ticking at the moment of purchase not the time of summoning the hireling! However, it would seem that hour means an hour logged in. If I got a contract then logged out for a few hours, the contract would resume its countdown the next time I logged in.

Feeling especially evil and mischievous, I bought a contract for a level 6 elf fighter, Kastinalia Windblossom and headed into the Searing Heights landscape, which has always been extremely challenging for me even in full groups on the upper end of its level bracket. Being just a duo of an uber-squishy wizard and a hireling fighter, no heals, nada… I wasn’t expecting to last long anyway, and the denizens of Searing Heights didn’t let me down in that regard.

Upon loading into Searing Heights, I double-clicked the contract icon in Kori’s inventory and Kastinalia appeared. The Party UI also came up and Kastinalia appeared to be a normal party member except for a very small additional icon on her vitals which real players wouldn’t have. Hirelings have their own new hotbar for controlling them, very similar to what you’d expect in your typical pet-command hotbar for pet classes in other MMORPG’s. DDO’s hotbars are 10-slot and so is the Hireling hotbar. The first 6 slots are the standard controls, and the final few are class-specific. Kastinalia had 3 fighter skills. It’s possible the other fighter hireling had different ones, I didn’t try it. The cleric hireling I tried later had 4 cleric spells, for example.

Standard Hireling Controls: (listed by slot number)

1. Order your hireling to stand ground.
2. Order your hireling to follow you. (Default)
3. Order your hireling to abandon anything it is doing and move to your location. If your hireling cannot for various reasons, it will teleport to your location.
4. Order your hireling to become active. Your hireling will perform actions that it believes are useful at will. (Default)
5. Order your hireling to become passive. Your hireling will not perform any actions unless specifically commanded.
6. Order your hireling to interact with your current target. If this is a usable object, your hireling will attempt to move to the item and use it. If this is an enemy, your hireling will attack that creature.

As I noted, the default modes are Follow and Active. As it turns out, part of the Active behavior is the equivalent to setting your pet in other MMORPG’s to Aggressive. Then feeding it steroids. And crack. Holy mother, these guys have an insane aggro range! And they’re not afraid to use it! I am officially giving Kastinalia the middle name Leeroy; she’s earned it…

The interact command is particularly interesting. Obviously it can be used for attacking, and it was very handy in Searing Heights when I’d manage to tab-lock onto a stealthed target which was completely invisible but I could tell Kastinalia to attack and she’d run right to it! Nifty! Exploit? Perhaps, but on the other hand maybe I shouldn’t be able to tab-lock invisible targets in the first place… *cough*

Most pet commands end with “attack” but this interact truly lets you do just that! If I click a rest shrine, the hireling will run to it and use it, regaining its Hit Points and Spell Points. If the hireling dies, I can grab its soul stone and carry it to a resurrection shrine and tell the hireling to resurrect itself. I’m guessing I could probably use a hireling to talk to an NPC to activate scripted events, too. Turbine mentioned rogue hirelings using traps, etc. but I’m wondering if they can detect the traps on their own? Because if I cannot, and my Search skill doesn’t find the trap control box then I can’t target the box to have the hireling disarm it. I wish I’d thought of that before the event ended, I would have loved to have seen what the rogues can do.

The three fighter skills Kastinalia had were: Attack Boost I (+2 Armor Class for 20 seconds), Haste Boost I (+15% attack speed for 20 seconds) and Intimidate (taunt).

So Koriander and Kastinalia rush off in Searing Heights. I was madly spamming the tab key to find any stealthed mobs and told the hireling to “sic ‘em!” That worked well enough for the first few mobs. Then I ran onto a toppled pillar stretching over a river that I thought was one of the explorer locations. While running down to the pillar I’d been playing with the Stay and Follow modes so Kastinalia was running further behind than she normally would have been. Right in the middle of the pillar was a stealthed Quickfoot bandit who ganked the hell out of poor Kori! Doused me in a flaming oil then critted me a few times left me incapacitated quicker than I could fire off a spell or two. Kastinalia rushes to my rescue, slaying the weasely bandit and using her Heal skill which revives incapacitated players back to 1 Hit Point. (In D&D, incapacitated is 0 to -9 Hit Points; death occurs at -10 and lower.) She has Heal?! That’s awesome but I would have liked to have known that. However the flaming oil was still on me and almost immediately incapacitated me again. I haven’t had to use Heal in a very long time so I don’t know if it has a refresh time or if she only had a single healing kit in her inventory, but at this point Kastinalia apparently had enough of my squishy shenanigans and left me to die covered in the still-flaming oil. There were three black wolves hidden (probably stealthed too) under a bush down the hill from the pillar. Without a screen shot it is difficult to describe how far away they were, but I was lying with my robes on fire on the far edge of the pillar. Much further and I’d have fallen down into the river below. These wolves were all the way back across the pillar, down the hill a bit, hidden by terrain and stealthed and yet the crazy elf bitch still somehow sensed them and rushed off to attack! I wish I’d had WeGame or Fraps running, that moment was pure gold! I was laughing my ass off the whole time…

So, that was a quick wipe with a Wizard/Fighter duo, let’s try something safer and get a Fighter/Cleric team. I logged into my level 5 warforged fighter and bought a contract for a level 5 Cleric hireling from the Marketplace vendor. Even though the Marketplace vendor had contracts up to level 6, they will only sell contracts of a level equal or lesser than that of your character. This time I decided to try the revamped Three Barrel Cove landscape.

The cleric came with the following spells: Turn Undead, Cure Light Wounds, Dispell Magic, Cure Serious Wounds.

This went much the same as Searing Heights only it lasted longer since warforged are a little tougher, plus I had a +2 heavy shield. On the downside, warforged only take 50% (I think?) of Cure spells since they are sentient constructs not living beings. The cleric still had a crazy aggro radius but we were doing fine until we pulled two groups of mobs and I took enough crits to kill me. The landscapes weren’t going so well, as they’re intended for groups of 4+ so I took the cleric hireling into a normal quest instance. I chose “Missing in Action” which is next to the Rusty Nail tavern in the Marketplace. It’s listed as a level 2 quest and I chose Normal difficulty. The cleric performed very well here and we completed the quest easily. His aggro radius was still a factor when he’d charge off to start a fight in a different direction than I was planning on going but aside from that, the Fighter/Cleric team is as good as it would obviously seem. From what I can tell, the current AI is set to cast heals if anyone goes below 75% of their maximum Hit Points. Above that and you’ll need to manually command it to cast Cure Light/Serious Wounds. I also noticed that instead of self-casting, the cleric would drink Cure Light Wounds potions! I wasn’t expecting them to have personal inventories; I wonder what all they carry, and how much of each item?

The first public test of hirelings seemed to have gone well. The server I play on was packed with players, so many that lag was getting to be an issue even outside the city itself. The hirelings behave as advertised with the exception of the aggro radius/cone of vision/CIA spy satellite implant/whatever being larger than I expected. I would imagine this in particular may be dealt with before hirelings go live on a permanent basis, and Turbine has said this is Hirelings 1.0 — it will be an on-going process of developing and tweaking their abilities and AI. They’re a great addition to the game, offering enough control to take the place of a player without being able to create a full group of AI like we can in Guild Wars. When it comes to overall abilities, Hirelings are a bit of a compromise between a Henchman and a Hero from Guild Wars. Like a Hero, they are fully controllable including skills and spells, but like a Henchman the player cannot equip them with specific gear, skills or spells; they are pre-configured.

© Scott for Pumping Irony, 2008. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: DDO, MMO Gaming