22-Mar-2004 Turbine Entertainment responds to burning questions on its PC MMORPG based on the classic licence It was always going to happen, and now it has: Dungeons & Dragons has headed into the massively multiplayer online RPG arena.
Entitled (unimaginatively yet informatively) Dungeons & Dragons Online, the game was announced last year at E3 and is in development at Turbine Entertainment, the studio responsible for the Asheron's Call MMORPG series, also currently working on Middle-earth Online.
Considering the pedigree of the pen and paper role-playing game on which it is based, the lure of Dungeons & Dragons Online is all too apparent. However, the game's not expected till late 2005, so anyone champing at the bit for the experience of questing, adventure and camaraderie in a D&D persistent online world has some serious waiting to do.
Still, despite Dungeons & Dragons Online being some 18 months off many of Turbine's designs, plans and features for the game are already in place, as we discovered when we spoke recently to the developer's lead designer Ken Troop.
How did you score the gig to develop Dungeons & Dragons Online?
Troop: Persistence, good looks, and a high diplomacy skill. How can you not get psyched up about Dungeons & Dragons? Turbine went to Atari with a passion for D&D and a resumé chock-full of talent and experience.
It was very exciting for all of us to get a chance to work with Atari, Hasbro, and Wizards of the Coast on a project like this, and especially exciting to have this be Turbine's first self-funded project.
What valuable lessons have you learned from developing and launching Asheron's Call's one and two, and how will/do these influence your work on Dungeons & Dragons Online?
Troop: Too many to list, but I'll pick a couple of the big ones. One lesson that has shaped our dev philosophy extensively is that we need to provide fun that isn't strictly tied to achievement.
Achievement is fun on its own. But if the means of achievement isn't fun, you've only made half a game. A lot of massively multiplayer games have fallen into that trap.
With D&D Online we're trying to make a game that will be fun to play, even if at the end of the night you didn't score a huge pile of loot or a new level. Just playing needs to be worth it.
The second has more to do with our process of making games. We really pushed ourselves to get a playable version of the game much earlier than we have done in the past, and to iterate on it.
The result is that we've been able to see and assess the changes we make, rather than debating about abstractions on sheets of paper. We've got a long way to go, but the game today is already feeling like a game, and we think it's a fun one.
Do you think, considering the D&D pen and paper RPG's pedigree, that many are expecting D&D Online to be the perfect MMORPG? Does that make developing the title a daunting prospect?
Troop: Sure. It's a big licence, and a big responsibility. But, we're all D&D fans here, and we're working closely with Wizards of the Coast to make sure this is an awesome D&D experience.
As for catch-phrases like "the perfect MMORPG," well, let's talk about what we learned from our earlier development experience: MMORPGs are not one-size-fits-all.
We're going to make a fun, action-packed MMP for people who know D&D, who love fast, tactical combat and who appreciate story-driven content. That's not everyone, but for those who I'm talking about, I think it'll be the defining game in the genre.
Dungeons & Dragons, in terms of available source material, is massive. How have you gone about deciding what to include in the MMOPRG?
Troop: Basically, we want to use as much as possible from the core books, especially as it applies to the characters. Classes, feats, skills, spells - we want people to look at their in-game character sheet, and their pen and paper character sheet, and understand what they're doing.
At the same time, it's never been our goal to make a line-by-line recreation of the pen and paper game.
We can't replace the pen and paper game - there's something special about having dice in one hand and cold pizza in the other at 3am with your gaming buddies, which no computer game can replicate.
How closely are you sticking to the current D&D ruleset then? Will D&D Online be as in-depth, or a little more "arcadey"?
Troop: Just as there is a measure of player skill in manipulating distances, initiative orders and combat actions in the pen and paper game, we want player skill to play a big part in Dungeons & Dragons Online.
The depth is still there, and the game mechanics follow the same rules. But our dungeons will require some significant player skill and party tactics to deal with the traps, challenges, and foes.
Can you give us some (or even a rough) idea of what classes and races to expect at launch?
Troop: We haven't fully nailed down the list, but we're planning to include multi-classing and prestige classes. There will probably be a couple less-popular races or classes that won't make the final cut, but the large majority will be there.
Will there be a strong crafting/trade/economic side to the game, or are you avoiding that?
Troop: You can make an entire game out of crafting and trading, but we're not going to make that game. We're making a game about combat, questing, and co-operative adventure. There will be an economic aspect to the game, but our players are adventurers, not merchants and bakers.
What can we expect from the actual gameworld and playing environment - key locations, world size, that sort of thing
Troop: We're going a different direction with our world model. While it's easy enough to create huge tracts of land, empty or repetitive spaces don't add much to the game.
Our content is based around our urban social spaces and our dungeons, with a bit of DM hand-waving to abstract the travel between.
In pen and paper D&D, you can handle a two-week travel time in just a few minutes, with the chance of a random encounter or two. One person on the team once referred to most massively multiplayer games as "jogging simulators." We prefer the pen and paper way of handling distance.
Are Dungeons & Dragons Online players who only play for maybe two hours a day going to feel as much heroes as those who play for considerably longer periods of time in a day?
Troop: Much noise has been made about the mythical "casual massively multiplayer game player". We're thinking of this a bit differently, as dedicated gamers who have a limited amount of time to play.
We want to make a great game for both the hardcore massively multiplayer gamer, and the massively multiplayer gamer with demands on their time from the rest of their life.
Our dungeon adventures range from the epic to the bite-sized, so no matter what your time availability, you can still rock out in the dungeons.
What's the core playing experience you're aiming to offer with Dungeons & Dragons Online?
Troop: D&D quests, characters, and adventures, using the best combat system in any massively multiplayer game, ever.
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