DDOcast: Update 3 Release Date! Skating on Risia Ice...

DDOcast - a weekly podcast about the world of Dungeons and Dragons Online!

Update 3 Release Date! Skating on Risia Ice...

Hi everyone! Some interesting things to pass along...

Update 3 on Wednesday!February 3rd

Looks like Wednesday, February 3rd will be the release date for Update 3. Very cool! Word comes from Tolero on Friday with a "puzzle" of sorts that was easily translated to being 2/3/2010, confirmed shortly therafter by her. Look at the Release Notes here on DDOcast, posted in an earlier post.

Quick note as well that we heard word this week from Turbine's MadFloyd that they would be removing Heroic Surges for now. The change had been planned for Update 3, but was brought back for further development following comments by the Lammania folks. Probably a good thing. The idea with heroic surges is to prevent the repeat-knockdown issue with air elementals, worgs and their ilk, but the Update 3 build of it received some criticism that the change impacts crowd control-focused players in a way that makes playing them far less desirable. So, more work being done on it for now.

I will of course have the downtime notice when it's announced.

Turbine Responding to TDM Issue?

Folks who listened to DDOcast's 2009 Year in Review episode will know that we were pretty critical of Turbine for having a poor Turbine Download Manager, with the advice by us being to delete the program and find alternative routes to download DDO if you are among the many who experience problems while trying to play the game.

Maybe it's because I haven't looked at the main DDO.com page in a while, but I noticed today that Turbine at some point recently changed the way it brings people into DDO.

Here's a screen to explain what I mean:

See the "Additional Download Options" below the tab? I haven't seen that before. If it's old, I guess I'll have to admit to making a mistake, but I'm pretty sure that's a new change...

When you click on it:

The links to the older "traditional" install files are unchanged, but it appears that Turbine is finally willing to admit that it's important to highlight alternative methods of download. This is my opinion, of course, but the TDM remains an unnecessary barrier to getting people into DDO (and Lotro, from what I've heard.) My suggestion - use the alternatives for now at least.

Skating on Risia Ice!

All right, in the effort to prevent spoiling the upcoming live event, I am not going to embed the pics of the Risia ice skating on the site. Rather, I will link to the images. SPOILER ALERT! Don't click the links unless you want to take a look at what's coming in Update 3's event...

(LINK 1)
(LINK 2)
(LINK 3)

Jerry