A Look Ahead: Producer's Letter from Tolero!

[Baddie]

How old I am? Old enough to have this pull from Phiarlan Theatre turned into fighting arena. Each group got random swarms of monsters, and the other players were cheering and making fun of every group while waiting for their fight. Used this robe for many years when sneaking was a thing, as it is +15 hide with no minimum level. I think the event was early in the game, somewhere in 2007.

 

[Baddie]

So many memories! When I first started playing, "I fell" was my catchphrase and my poor guildies would just quietly jump down to whatever part of Korthos I had gotten myself into so they could save me from the hoards of Sahuagin and rats.

How about the first Risia Ice Games, when you could get on top of the pillar in the Bogwater (Bracelet of Friends, anyone?) and cheese the half-pipe for all the coins. I still have Icy Burst kits in my bank, haha.

And the first Crystal Cove event, back when rangers could do some major damage with a longbow. I remember someone joined our party and it was their first time playing w/ a kiter! Poor guy couldn't pull aggro - I would hit the Many Shot and then hop around like a crazy person. I also loved that event for the trash-talking kobolds (kobold remember waterworks).

And then the level caps - I was the first person in my tiny guild to level a toon to 25 and we all thought it was such a big deal.

I also remember my first hardcore, which was season 4. It was like playing DDO for the first time all over again and I loved it. The favor rewards had me playing quests I didn't normally play and wasn't as familiar with - for me, it was like getting tons of new content in my favorite game.

I've been playing DDO for what seems like forever! It's the only game I play, and even though I still fall ALL the time (feather fall is the best!), I've never done a raid, I've only reincarnated a handful of times, and I've collected very few reaper points, I still love everything about it. Well, maybe not all the doomscrolling in the forums, but everything else is the bomb diggity in my book! Kudos to the devs, and thanks to Tolero for giving us a peek at what's to come.

I've been playing DDO for forever, too! In harbor part of Risia event, I was usually swapping instances mid-air for coins!

And Cove, lol! In the first couple of events until it was fixed, I used to pull the horde of island mobs, bring them to ship and hit diplomacy in the middle of the bunch of afk folks waiting for doors. You can imagine general chat...

Level cap was 16 and you couldn't get cleric for love or money to go to VoD and burn his whole stack of pots in one run.

We also had challenges of our own. Like doing Crucible at insanely low level. It was possible at that time, as there were no level restrictions. XP was sick! Pit and Coal Chamber races without ff, and Tempest Spine naked runs

 

[parttimewarrior]

A huge no to the Drow visual update. The latest elven models look much worse than the old elves, please keep them as they are.

 

[Cordovan]

It's been great to read all these memories! I myself was living in Indianapolis when I first started playing, and because I was using my computer for band practice recordings and related purposes I had it in the basement practice space of the home I was renting. So I started playing DDO in essentially a tiny cement room on a 12" 4:3 monitor.

 

[Leesun]

I remember when I first started playing DDO. It was 2011? 2012? The monk class and The Vaults of the Artificer still had leading screens. It was before update 13, before the LoD chain. Vorpal had kill effect. I was playing on a 12" laptop without a mouse. Playing the game over 40% of my life.

 

[Celestrata Bloodsong]

I was working a summer job at GameStop and just entering college when I first started playing. We were stocking the game on the shelves and our associate manager, who was a huge MMO lover like me, prodded me to join his static party because he pre-ordered it. I almost put it off, but he finally got me with "don't you want to play a game that doesn't rely on tab target?"

I remember coming back for the free-to-play conversion because it was big news. In fact, I was trying to remember what date it was when that went down, so I went to look up the information on Wikipedia. Apparently, at the time, someone wrote a "pros and cons of DDO free to play" article for Massively.com, which was later transferred to Engadget, that went over their opinions of the state of the game...

...wait a minute. ...that byline looks familiar...
<*squints*>
....aw heck....

 

[Torm]

I'm excited for the Mysterious Remnant Rewards

 

[Torm]

I've been playing since February 2006 . I still wish I had purchased the beta lifetime VP back then.

 

[Chacka]

I played DDO during a 7-day trial offered in 2006, while my main game was still EverQuest. After those seven days, my character reached Level 10, and I thought I had played more or less through the game. I continued with EverQuest until I left my guild for personal reasons. Then, for some reason, I bought the Collector's Edition of DDO and shortly after the D&D 3.5 Player's Handbook to learn how the system works. Since then, DDO has been my main MMO for almost 20 years.

 

[droid327]

I'm excited for the Mysterious Remnant Rewards

I really like the idea of a Remnant Sink Event, from a game-econ POV

I hope they can do a similar Plat Sink Event soon too

 

[Pilbie]

"In the fall we expect to debut another live event similar to 2025’s Symphony of the Fey, including a “Hardcore” mode with leaderboards!"

The quotation marks around Hardcore there tells me they know exactly how un-hardcore like those events are. I was hoping there would be an actual hardcore event this year. Even just one. I honestly do not care what else they are doing.

 

[mikarddo]

"In the fall we expect to debut another live event similar to 2025’s Symphony of the Fey, including a “Hardcore” mode with leaderboards!"

The quotation marks around Hardcore there tells me they know exactly how un-hardcore like those events are. I was hoping there would be an actual hardcore event this year. Even just one. I honestly do not care what else they are doing.

Indeed. The Fey event is boring, softcore and quite frankly annoying for non-participants. A real HC event with a seperate server is much better.
Having the next similar event on the plan for the year does not add value it detracts.

 

[The_Human_Cypher]

I began playing DDO in the summer of 2010, about three years after I started my first business. I launched a B2B IT services company in the spring of 2007 and did almost nothing but work until summer 2010. After three years, the company was experiencing consistent monthly revenue and I (finally) had some free time to relax.

I had seen DDO advertised somewhere online, probably on Facebook. I downloaded the client onto my office workstation and created my first character who I still play today. I became an Officer for a guild that remains active in 2026, but under a new guild name. I'm now the Guild Leader and we're one of the largest guilds on Shadowdale.

As my first MMORPG, my early game play experience with DDO was literally magical. The monsters and settings from my old D&D books had come to digital life, something that was only a dream when I was very young! I made friends (one whom I met in person), received a gift DDO campaign book mailed all the way from Scotland (for running the blog DDOCentral.com), and had great fun overall.

DDO has persisted for twenty years not only because it's a good game with a beloved IP but because a genuine community formed here. Players come and go but they mostly come back, as DDO has become an important part of our lives, for the better.

 

[Mornyngstar]

While there are quite a few people complaining about the live event scheduled and no Hardcore season I do have to point out what I think is the flaw in their complaint. Currently there is no 64-bit to 64-bit transfers which is a foundational aspect of Hardcore season. If people agreed that instead of moving toons of the Hardcore server that instead they are lost at the end of the season then I could see SSG bringing the Hardcore season back sooner. As I can't see people agreeing to that since they would complain even more then it will just have to be a wait until they complete all the upgrades needed.

 

[l_remmie]

Could you slot in fixing rubies (Metoric, erosion, etc).

Some of these were hard won by grinding, some were bought with AS, would be nice for them to work again.

Thats already done they said. It should be going life next update i assume.

 

[l_remmie]

My guess its because the model is already ingame, so they just need to make a skill tree.
Easy work for easy $

Topics about playable duergar pop up regularly along with kobolds and insectpeople.
It's as you say, the easiest and most logical choice.
Give it con to hit/dmg and people will like it well enough.

 

[Maetrim of Cannith]

I started playing DDO very close to its initial release. I kept seeing the game box on store shelves while I was out shopping and thought I should finally give it a go. It had probably been going for no more than a month when I first logged in to the Lyrander European server and got through the first solo quest and made it to the tavern where I encountered my first other real player, who I swung my weapon at just at his 1 minute tavern reset timer went off and I though I had hit and hurt him. I almost fell out of my chair feeling really guilty that I might have hurt another player.

I migrated from Lyrander to Devourer when the EU servers merged and started on Cannith when it first opened as F2P. All my EU toons went to Ghallanda and went on hold. I have only recently started adding them back into my roster since I could move them all to Moonsea.

 

[Helloween]

Indeed. The Fey event is boring, softcore and quite frankly annoying for non-participants. A real HC event with a seperate server is much better.
Having the next similar event on the plan for the year does not add value it detracts.

I really expect SSG to reconsider and bring back a real hardcore server again, and not a "like Hardcore " event as announced.

 

[gnat]

I just came back to the game a few years ago, but I started in 2006 playing, my newborn on my lap or next to me. It was great coming back to the game and running the old quest and exploring the new ones.

 

[spoonyrey]

But I think THE best part about DDO is its players! They mean everything to us.

Hey thats us!

I love how kind & understanding we are with each other, even in stressful situations or after crushing losses. Our playstyles, baselines, & personalities may vastly differ, but as a party, we become something far greater than the sum of our parts.