D&D Online: Eberron Unlimited – Past, Present, and Future

After spending some time with DDO producer Erik Boyer and design director Ian Currie during this year’s PAX East, MMORPG.com brings us a quick look at the “past, present, and future” of Turbine’s free-to-play MMO offering. The months ahead sound promising:

Following the demo we spoke to Erik and Ian about the future of DDO, which certainly sounds promising! In a recently released State of the Game letter, DDO Executive Producer Fernando Paiz announced that DDO will feature guild housing as part of an update to be released later this year, but what we didn’t know is what form said guild housing would take. To that end, Erik and Ian were excited to share with us that guilds will establish their bases in airships, which will be fully customizable on both their interior and exterior. You’ll even be able to add amenities such as banks and auctioneers to the airships, and upgrade the ships crew. Guild airships will also serve as transportation, allowing guilds to unlock transportation points so that they can quickly travel throughout the game world, including being quickly whisked away to DDO’s various dungeons and raids. Guilds will participate in a new guild leveling system in order to access and upgrade guild airships, and the system will scale for both small and large guilds. The leveling process was described as being similar to earning favor, just on a guild-wide scale. Interestingly, airships will also be viewable in public spaces, as the developers are emphasizing the ability for guilds to show off their creations.

Looking ahead a bit further, another new adventure pack is in the works, which is said to be designated for characters around level nine. The pack will feature underwater combat, and an entirely new wilderness area. A new race will be available for play in DDO later this year, as well. In the aforementioned State of the Game letter, Fernando Paiz announced that Half-Orcs will finally become a playable race in DDO this year, but we were able to find out just a teensy bit more about the new race at PAX East, learning that Half-Orc’s will be one of the game’s strongest races, coming out of the gate with a +2 STR racial bonus. Half-Orcs will be available as both females and males, and will allow for a good level of customization. The new race will not be based on either the 3.5 or 4.0 editions of D&D, but will instead be a bit of a hybrid of the two. Rounding out our glimpse into DDO in 2010, we also learned that players can look forward to a bevy of new cosmetic items, including hats and shields that will be available exclusively in the DDO Store.