DDO Unlimited: Devs Speak Out On the New Model

The best kept secret in the MMO universe was unveiled by Turbine today when it was announced that Dungeons & Dragons Online would become "free to play", following the model of many of the Asian MMOs on the market today. The DDO community and D&D fans around the world were rocked by the news.

To help give some perspective to the announcement, WarCry editor Suzie Ford and columnist Jim Moreno had a chance to sit down with Turbine's Adam Mersky, Kate Paiz and Fernando Paiz.

Read Full Article

Although I'm all for an optional real-money store I do think the way it's implemented might breaks the rules, showing a clear preference of revenue over authenticity. First they state this:

"Finish one module book," she said, "and you buy the next book. DDO simply takes up what D&D players are familiar with and takes it to the next level."

Followed by this example:

If a player neglects to bring an adequate supply of arrows, for instance, three quick clicks to the store via a keyboard shortcut or a persistent UI button, and the arrows are instantly delivered into inventory.

How is a magical arrow delivery system "what D&D players are familiar with"? If a player didn't bring an adequate supply of arrows, he should just go back to town and buy some more, or trade them with another player, or craft them, but not have them magically appear. I understand the "buy the red key to access the new content behind the red door" idea, but the instant shop idea for non-unique items makes me shiver.

Yeah, I don't like the sound of this idea at all. So, you pay for your "VIP" subscription. What happens if you do a LOT of gaming and use up all of your 500 points for that month? You have to spend MORE in order to buy such simple items as health potions, arrows, bolts, etc? That's lame. And what good is all the gold that one has gathered? Is it going to be transfered 1 for 1 over to these idiotic points?

This idea is stupid.

Synther - If I understand the publicly available info correctly:

VIP subscription == everything like it is now, plus 500 points for items, hirelings, and cosmetics from the game store. There will still be brokers, the auction house and vendors to exchange your in-game plat for goods.

Devs have also said that you CAN'T buy a level or a straight grant of XP.

Just to build on what moorewr said, you can buy "such simple items as health potions, arrows, bolts, etc." from in-game vendors for in-game gold. No Turbine Points necessary--even a free player can get some gold from questing and then buy health potions and arrows.

As someone who never subscribed because it didn't quite hook me in far enough to unsubscribe to my other game, this is a win/win. I was intrigued when Wizard101 used an ala carte approach to buying game content. I could see playing DDO once in a while as a change of pace and buying "modules" as I went along.

Meanwhile, the current subscribers who are happy being subscribers will probably have their monthly rate lowered as a result and also get the benefits of the microtransaction store.

I'm starting to think that the ala carte model might be the wave of the future. It lets players have control over what they want to play when they want to play it, and how much they want to spend on playing it.