D&D Online wants to be digital pen and paper

by Ben Zackheim { Aug 31st 2004 at 4:26PM }

A surprisingly detailed look at the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons Online game is posted on Games Domain. The interview with Ken Troop, Lead Designer, gets into how the team at Turbine is trying to make the MMG a digital translation of the pen and paper game we all know and love. Perhaps the most interesting snippet is this. "All of our dungeons are going to be instant spaces," the Lead Designer said. "There's no wide-open world that we just throw players into. That means that each dungeon will be 'instanced' for each party, and won't be populated by other groups of people trying to accomplish the same goals at the same time." This we have to see.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

TAD @ Dec 18th 2005 8:45PM

This is pretty much exactly what they were saying about Neverwinter Nights back in the day. Before the game came out, I was convinced that it was going to be the "digital version of D&D."

Didn't turn out quite that way. Unless this instance contains an enormous amount of varied pre-rendered artwork and contains easy tools to add in and propagate more, this will not be a digital version of D & D for the masses.

NWN allowed you to create dungeons, but all of the artwork initially available was artwork previously created for the single-player version of the game. I haven't followed the game lately, so I'm not sure what the current status is.

TAD @ Dec 18th 2005 8:45PM

Ok, just read the article. D'oh.

Sam @ Dec 18th 2005 8:45PM

Isn't this exactly what they do in City of Heroes? And the Dungeons of Norrath expansion for EQ? And the upcoming Guild Wars game? And I think quite a few other upcoming MMO games. In fact, I think the prevailing thinking in MMO design is that instancing areas for people to adventure in cuts down dramatically on the customer service nightmares of kill-stealing, camping, ninja-looting, etc.