"Oh my God!  What is the Blood Elf's name?!?!?" - anonymous, overheard at GenCon 2008!

GenCon 2008, Day 1!

Yup, you pretty much know that you aren't taking part in the usual Indianapolis-related convention when you overhear something like the above quote.  I doubt you'd hear such a thing at the Indianapolis 500 or Men's Final Four, either.

Indy is once again in the throws of gaming excellence, and DDO is there!

Turbine has done a really nice job with their booth in the Electronic Gaming Hall (which is in the same area as all of the vendors).  Really, nice work.  Tolero, Kate Paiz, Eldorudo and others are there demonstrating some content that's coming to the game and promoting DDO to the D&D masses.  I'm sure it's tiring to spend much of the day at the booth, but they really have done an excellent job.

There's also a ton of news to talk about!  Besides new footage of as-yet-unreleased content, DDO Senior Producer Kate Paiz has let slip (aka - publicly promoted) some MAJOR exciting news about what's in store.  I'll have more on that in a bit, but first - here's some pics of the Turbine booth:



There's a row of top-notch computers, with monitors below for gamers and above for game-watchers.  Asheron's Call has a computer and Lord of the Rings Online has a few too, but many of them have DDO installed and ready to go!



(Some non-DDO player - yes, I asked - checking out some new content!)



That puzzle is sort of from a Goodblades Quest, which has gotten a major overhaul as part of the New Player Experience.  I think I'll probably write up a separate post with SPOILER WARNINGS all over it to detail more of the NPE and what's in store, but here's a few shots taken from my digital camera of the screen:

(SPOILER ALERT - PICS OF NEW CONTENT)










Note the snow....



The place is called Korthos, and it's where new players (and us rerollers) will explore before entering Stormreach.  I really only got a few minutes with it today as I had a ton to do on my first day (import martial arts DVD's, seminars, friends to meet, t-shirts to buy, games to check out, etc), so I'll have more in a future post.



A boat.  And is that a quest-giver?  FYI - the snow looks awesome.

Also:  DX10 was shown on the monitors.  The water looks excellent!  My pics just can't do it justice, of course.

Now for the news:

Whew!  News I do have for you.  I didn't record Kate Paiz today as I'll get a chance to do that later on (she was quite busy meeting with folks, the booth was hoppin'), but she did pass along quite a few bits of information both to me and to other visitors to the Turbine booth:

Update 7.1

- See those pics above?  The new player experience?  The original plan was to release them with update 7.1, but there's still a bit of tweaking and polishing to do on parts of it, so the New Player Experience is going to be shifted into Mod 8.  I actually think this is probably for the best as Kate explained that they really want to promote Mod 8 and it makes sense to have new players joining us with Mod 8 have the new experience to go along with it.  Basically, and I'm paraphrasing here, they were looking at the tweaks still needed for Update 7.1 and decided that since they were already well underway with development of Mod 8, it would just make sense to get that stuff polished and out at the same time.

(Here's my take as well) - Just releasing the NPE by itself as an update might be kind of underwhelming, despite how cool it is, since it really is just content for low level players.  Rolling it into Mod 8, which will feature high-level content, is fine with me.  And this stuff looks really good!

- The NPE may be headed to Risia within a few weeks.

- Update 7.1 will probably be released within a few weeks and include numerous bug fixes.  

Mod 8

Again, I'm paraphrasing here, and Kate did say some things that I just wasn't able to write down in time enough to remember all the details, but the gist of Mod 8 will be very, very cool to people who liked Reaver's Bane (aka - the Gianthold Tor stuff).

- Mod 8 will "continue the Reaver's Bane storyline."  The Stormreaver disappeared at the end of the raid and is now boosting up his forces for another assault.  This time he's, quote, "amassing an army of undead dragons" to continue the fight. 

- Although Mod 8 continues the Gianthold Tor stuff, Kate says that the new content will take place in a new area.  Sweet.

- Mod 8 is expected to feature the release of henchmen to DDO! 

- Now, don't hold Kate to this as gospel word of an exact release date, but she mentioned to me that Turbine would like to see Mod 8 released "October-ish, give or take about three weeks in either direction".

Mod 9

- Mod 9 will feature the continuation of the Shavarath story line.  I had specifically asked her about this given the confusion about when the Shavarath tale would continue. 

- Kate told me that they would like to see Mod 9 released "New Year's-ish".  Aka - probably around the end of this year, early part of 2009.

More pics:



Turbine's handing out trial cards for both DDO and LOTRO.  DDO 10-day trials on one side, LOTRO 14-day trials on the other side.  Promotion spotted!



Our very own Tolero showing a GenCon attendee some cool new DDO stuff.

Odds and Ends from GenCon 2008:

Keith Baker!  I attended (half, yeah I missed the first part) a seminar where Keith outlined Eberron's 4th Edition plans.  I'm not up on the news totally on this, but here are a few interesting tidbits I was able to piece together:

- Eberron 4th Edition books coming next year.

- Gnomes and Half-Orcs are being added to 4th ed. Eberron books "to fit within the setting".

- They are not adding additional Dragonmarked houses, with "one exception", which wasn't explained.

- Anyone will be able to take a Dragonmark without regard to race restrictions (this statement brought a gasp from the crowd), as long as the player is touched by the Prophecy).

- Wizards of the Coast/Keith and crew are not changing the time of the 4th Edition Eberron setting, it'll stay in the same time as it is now.