Dungeons & Dragons Online Forum News (Dec. 30, 04)

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Here are today's Dungeons & Dragons Online forum highlights, collected from Dungeons & Dragons Online forums. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Nik Davidson, Administrator

Lag Death And Other Assorted Horrors - A Question to the Devs

Good question. The answer is "sometimes". We log a lot of things, but obviously not everything, and many things can't be logged at all. We can't, for example, tell between someone's router bursting into flames and you pulling the plug from the wall. There's no real way to differentiate a "lag death" from your little sister picking up the phone while you're on dial-up.

Unique Items

No, probably not.

Unique Items

Heh, I just want to make sure there's a distinction drawn between Really, Really Rare, and Unique. RRR is good - there should and will be items that have a certain "OMG" factor to them. But the fun in seeing an item like that comes from the thought that maybe, just maybe, if I'm lucky enough and good enough, I might get one of those shiny things too. That can be fun for everyone. If the item is unique, then it's fun for exactly one person.

Post-Quest Scorecard

We've actually discussed things like this, and it's a "maybe" at this point. Speaking for myself, I really like the idea. I think it adds a fun competitive layer to the game as well as providing incentives and goals in addition to simple quest completion. Yes, it's game-y to get a report card on how well you rescued the princess, but it is a game after all.

Xundau, Community Relations

Highest level D&D characters (outside of DDO)

I think my highest-ever "legit" (from level 1) character was a 13th-level invoker back in 2nd edition D&D. As others have stated, getting to level 20 in PnP is not an easy thing to do, and the core rules for 3.5e don't even deal with anything past level 20.

PnP D&D does have rules for post-20 characters, also known as "epic characters," and while there's technically no limit to how high they can go, I agree with FatRabidRamboCow that the practical limit is probably somewhere around 50 (if not lower).

Just FYI, there are no racial level limits or class restrictions in 3.5 D&D, and this will be true for DDO as well.

Separate permadeath servers

Good point, pingcat -- in PnP D&D, it's very rare that a deceased character is completely, irrevocably gone. Powerful 9th level spells like True Resurrection, Wish, and Miracle can resurrect even long-dead characters whose remains have been completely destroyed.

In DDO, you won't have to wait around for a cleric to cast Raise Dead (or one of its variants) on you if you don't want to, although there will be some kind of tangible advantage to being resurrected by another player character.

How we handle the question of what permadeath actually means on a hyopthetical permadeath server is something we'll have to decide when/if we actually implement it.

Testing and Forum Activity

People will get into beta based on a number of obvious and not-so-obvious factors -- a healthy dose of randomness will be involved as well. We'll have more details when we formally announce beta.

Posting activity (with quality emphasized over quantity) and length of time on the forums will probably factor into the formula in some way or another.