DDOcast

Episode 159!

DDOcast — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 00:29:00 GMT

Hi everyone! Episode 159 of DDOcast is now ready to go. Here's a LINK to the episode - just left-click to play, right-click and 'save as' to download as an mp3. You can also find DDOcast on Cyberears.com, iTunes, the Zune Marketplace and many other podcast aggregators.

This week's show is a two hour live-streamed chat! Alex Haddox and Rowanheal join me to talk DDO. Mical has a look at "The Caster Corner" and I chat with Walt from the new DDOSource.com. Callers, a chat room and more! Thanks everyone who joined us live.

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DDOcast Episode 159 (3-13-10)

:15 Intro

4:00 The Caster Corner

9:45 Massively.com article - new class/race & Europe

15:53 Europe talk
20:00 Rowanheal uses the DDO Store!

21:45 First Call! (voice mail) - Ranged and Pale Master talk

33:27 Monks@PAX?

35:30 Connectivity

35:55 Escapist's March Mayhem

37:50 Wizards have the cure

41:40 Ranged tip from Eladrin
43:00 Press chat, YouTube and more
47:50 Store chat
50:50 DDO Source interview
1:14:25 Auction House talk
1:30:38 Top Five Spells in DDO
1:42:55 Community Notes

1:47:10 Email - F2P talk

1:55:15 Second Voice Mail - Nat Gann

End

TOTAL TIME: 1:58:50

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LINK to DDOcast's UStream channel.

LINK to DDOcast's Snapvine voice mail system.

LINK to the Massively.com interview with Fernando Paiz.

LINK to the SVGNR web site about monks at PAX.

LINK to the Escapist's March Mayhem tournament.

LINK to Household Hacker's look at DDO on YouTube.

LINK to XPlay's DDO mention in The MMO Report.

LINK to Beckett's Massive Online Gamer 2009 Reader's Choice Awards.

LINK to the transcript for the 11th edition of Ask the Devs.

LINK to DDOSource.com and thanks Walt for chatting with me!

LINK to HolyAlliance's DDO Mythbusters YouTube channel.

LINK to Yak's 16th Cast.

LINK to DDO Cocktail Hour Episode 4

LINK to the Sublime's quest through The Dreaming Dark.

LINK to Robi 3.0's F2P Game Guide.

Jerry

Live Call-In Show set for FRIDAY!

DDOcast — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 22:00:00 GMT

Yes, it’s time for part 2 of my pre-PAX East test of DDOcast’s live capabilities. Last week was a basic test to see if I could get a Skype call streamed easily and deal with production. Yes!

This week: Add live calls!

So, here’s how it will work. I will be broadcasting over my Ustream account (http://www.ustream.tv/channel/ddocast) on Friday, March 12th from 8pm until 10pm Eastern! Besides the regular DDOcast craziness, we’ll be taking your calls one of a few ways:

1. Google Voice: I’ve set up a Google Voice number for the show - (507) 295-1847 - that you can call on Friday night to be live on the air. You can call it before then, but I won’t answer and it’ll go straight into voice mail.

2. Snapvine - I’ve had an account on Snapvine for people to leave voice messages for a few months now. If you’d like to pre-record your message to us for broadcast on Friday, visit Snapvine.com/DDOcast.

That’s it! Pretty easy. The show will also be recorded for regular release, probably on Saturday. I’d love to have you give me a call on Friday night! Say what you want.

Jerry

Ask the Devs #11 Transcript!

DDOcast — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 07:07:00 GMT

Hi everyone! The transcript for the 11th edition of Ask the Devs is now ready. Here's a LINK to the file in .pdf and here's the transcript:

DDOcast's Ask the Devs #11 Transcript

as heard on DDOcast Episode 158, released March 5th, 2010 and available HERE.

Host: Jerry Snook

Guests: Tolero, Genasi, Glin, Tarrant

Transcript by Chubbs, additional transcript work by Jerry

If you have a question for Turbine's DDO team, please send an email to DDOcast at ddocast@gmail.com.

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Jerry: Hello and welcome to what I think is the 11th edition of Ask the Devs here on DDO cast. This is your chance to send in some questions and get them answered by the Turbine DDO development community, work, and just about anyone else related to working on DDO here. At the start, just a quick mention, if you have a question for Ask the Dev’s that you would like to get asked, send it to ddocast@gmail.com. That’s ddocast@gmail.com.

Let’s get to our introductions; First one up is producer Glin, how you doing?

Glin: Yeah I’m going good Jerry, I’m hoping you’re going to come out and visit us at Pax East…

Jerry: …Yes

Glin: You making plans to come out at the end of the month?

Jerry: Oh heck yeah. I’m really looking forward to not only Pax East because of, you know, the fun it will contain, but I’ve also not been to Boston since I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, so my memory is a little fuzzy and I have a feeling some things have changed between now and then. So I’m really looking forward to checking it out. And then of course then you know, while I’m there I’m certainly hoping, you know even if you guys are too busy for any kind of formal tour or whatever, maybe I could at least pop on by and say hi quick.

Glin: Yeah absolutely. In fact you can’t come to town and not drop by and visit us. We should try to organize a little live chat session at that time too, that would be great.

Jerry: Yeah absolutely. I haven’t really quiet formally announced my plans for Pax East, but what you mentioned is something I’ve been considering. I don’t know, how much involvement you guys might or might not be able to have, obviously it depends on numerous unanswered factors at this point, but we are kinda thinking. Thinking about that live stream from Pax East here, I really hope we can make it happen.

Glin: Great.

Jerry: Also with us is Genasi, how you doing?

Genasi: Pretty good Jerry, you?

Jerry: Good. I’m going off the top of my head here, systems designer, that’s correct right?

Genasi: That’s right, yes.

Jerry: Designing any systems lately?

Genasi: Yeah, quite a few, quite a few. My duties have been expanding since I came to work here a few months ago, and it’s all fun.

Jerry: Excellent. Also with us here is Tarrant, how you doing Tarrant?

Tarrant: Hey I’m good Jerry. Pretty excited to make my DDOcast debut today.

Jerry: Yeah we were kinda talking about that earlier, it think this is the first time I’ve heard your voice.

Tarrant: Yeah, this is Tarrant’s first time on the audio waves, so hi everybody!

Jerry: Nice. Are you in costume?

Tarrant: Uh, not right now. The wig is kind of hot actually.

Jerry: Alright.

Tarrant: Now that its spring time, I’m trying to keep myself cooler.

Jerry: Alright, finally with us is Tolero. How you doing Tolero?

Tolero: Hey Jerry, doing good.

Jerry: Excellent, Excellent. Let’s get right to our list of questions here. I know you guys are pretty actually let me stop really quick though, and wish you guys a belated 4^th anniversary. It was a lot of fun, lots going on in the game the last couple of weeks. I just wanted to congratulate you on 4 years of excellent gaming.

*Everyone does their own cheer*

Jerry: Alright, now that you guys have been properly congratulated, maybe we can get to these questions, and get some good answers out of you huh? First question comes from Edward, and this is one that we have seen a lot of activity on in recent months and excited to be able to ask you guy’s this question.

Edward writes, “Will the auction house ever get a text search ability, and the ability to sort by all items in the auction house, not page by page. If I want to find all items that have a certain attribute I have to look through every possible item, which is a bit tedious. Additionally, if I want to search items by buyout price, the auction house only sorts by page, not total number of items. If the text search and sort were added it would greatly increase the use ability of the auction house.”

Text searching on the auction house has been one that’s been long called for what do you think?

Glin: Yeah, I think we’ve probably talked about it saying oh yeah we really want to get around to it and there’s all these sorta back end issues, and then there is the UI, and kinda him-hawed about how we’d ever find the time.

But I will say we have made progress! We do have the backend search functionality enabled, or should I say available. It needs the front end portion of it to be hooked so that we can actually start using it. Not exactly a plug and play task there, but its higher on our list then it has. I can’t say how soon of a release it will be in, it’s one of those tasks that we are going to keep bring up every time we say, “who needs more work? There is this one available.”

We all feel the pain, I’ll tell you that, we use the auction house as much as any other player, and these events, live events, with all the ingredients and the components and wow, we’ve really…you know 45 pages on just the ingredients to find your stuff is…really calls that to attention.

Jerry: Yeah, it’s one of those things where just being able to type in something like say, “winter mote of whatever,” hitting a button and getting those results back. Maybe being able to sort it by buyout price or whatever functionality might be involved would be quiet excellent.

Glin: Yeah, I think we’ll still have to explore how the integration is going to go in order to say that it’s a global search or a item/category search, but we’ll definitely be able to narrow down the page views and get you to things that actually match a keyword so you can zone in on just what you need.

As soon as we can get some of the other big features that we haven’t announced yet, that’s a teaser, we’ll be putting in the more subtle polish features and maybe as early as this year. I’ll commit to that much.

Jerry: Alright, well that sounds great. That’s excellent. Uh, next question comes from Shasha.

Writes, “ If you have another ask the Dev’s, can you ask them to consider notating quests at the difficulty selection screen that are impossible to solo through normal means, usually because of switches or something like that.” She also writes, “I’m new and I do solo and it’s frustrating when the component that needs multiple players is at the end like say ‘Fleshmakers Laboratory.‘ I don’t think it would be a bad thing to just give a heads up to people, like, 'Hey there some tricks to get by multiple switches in The Pit, Xolian Cipher, Burning Heart, etc., but it requires spoilers, superior twitch game play, and/or specialized gear. So the same warning should still apply."

Genasi: I can take this one, basically this is something we already addressed. If you go into the game and select a quest that is like this, you will notice that on your difficulty selection window, if there is something in there that is going to prevent you from easily completing it by yourself you’ll have a warning that says something along the lines of, “party based challenge, hirelings might not suffice.” So keep an eye out for that when you’re going to do a quest, and hopefully you should be able to save yourself some of that frustration soloing.

Jerry: Fortunately we really only have a hand full of quests that have this situation in DDO. I know there’s that one kind of long sitting one in the Necropolis where you've got people needing to be on switch plates and that kind of thing.

Tolero: There’s a couple in the whole Necropolis chain, ‘cause I run that quite a bit with my characters. There’s more of them in there then you might think. I run with Hirelings a lot and sometimes I have to grab a buddy pass for my husband and I’m like, “You. You’re my hireling now.”

Jerry: Sure.

Glin: It also comes up in …as optionals that your gated out of. I know there is one in Delara’s, I think it’s the first one in Delara’s, that you can’t do the underwater gate chain without someone out there, and you can’t get a hireling to dance on the on/off switch for the gate so there is really nothing you can do solo. There is also that looking at maybe hirelings can do it in the description, saying that you could do it solo, but you’ll need a hireling to command around.

Jerry: Huh, that’s cool. Alright next question comes from Straytext. Writes, “Poke a dev (can’t poke you over Skype but I guess I can poke you verbally?…That sounds kind of terrible but uh, “Poke a dev and see if they’ll poke the hamster that is responsible for checking Orion characters and guilds into My DDO.com.”

Tarrant: Uh yeah, so we actually don’t believe in animal cruelty over here at turbine, so we’ve just gently prodded the Orion hamster.

Jerry: Oh, that’s good.

Tarrant: Yeah, we’re good people. But you should see most of the Orion character and guild logs working shortly if not already. I guess by the time this is posted it will be working now. But just for the rest of you guys, My.DDO is still in beta and there are a few reasons that characters, or guilds might not function properly.

Some of the more common reasons are: Character name changes or transfers, and you crazy permadeather’s can confuse My.DDO by constantly creating and deleting characters with the same name. We can’t fix all of the issues we do come across, but if you guys do have a problem with your character or guild, just submit your error to the forum support page*, which Jerry should have a link for, and we can forward them onto the Web-Dev team and hopefully fix you guys from there.

*http://www.ddo.com/ddosupport/forums-issues

Jerry: Yeah, we do have a link that I’m going to post in the show notes on ddocast.com, and all the other places I post, like my episode notes. And if, well presumably we’ll get a transcript up at some point here, I’ll make sure to throw that link in the transcript as well.

Tarrant: Thank you Jerry.

Jerry: My.DDO has been pretty fun, I’ve been actually getting a lot of use out of it lately. Using Mockduck, DDOcast build guild and all that. I really think the guilds are one of the overlooked things on My.DDO.com, certainly lots of guilds use it but having that calendar functionality and everything, has actually been pretty handy.

Tolero: Yeah, it’s really handy now too since that it’s physically actually in the game. You know you just push one button, and boom there it is, whereas before it’s like, “okay, I gotta tab out, open a window...,” and not everyone wants to tab out and stuff. And not everyone wants this huge long URL for their guild page, and now it’s just look up the thing in the My DDO, in the game, and boom there it is.

Jerry: Absolutely.

Glin: Also we’re still pitching the iPhone app. That you can carry around your entire guild’s character sheet and My.DDO page, keeping stats on people.

Jerry: Yeah, Absolutely. I don’t have an iPhone so I don’t use it, but we’ve, this week, on non Ask the Devs-related talk on this show, talked about Cedwin’s work to put some various things like that together as well. So you guys are expanding out technology wise.

Glin: Reaching you when you’re not in game, that’s the goal.

Jerry: Just to clarify, for those maybe just hearing Ask the Devs here, this is not something that was done by Turbine, but by a player put together some stuff this week that we talked about, or that we will talk about probably later on in the show.

Next question comes from Aerghal. Writes, “I’m relatively new to the game, been playing about three months, so maybe this has been asked or answered in the past, but I’ve been wondering why do they not have a separate bar area for buffs and debuffs.”

I think what he’s getting at is when you get say a bane cast on you or something, it shows up in that same upper right hand corner of the screen that your buffs do. I guess what he’s asking is maybe is there way to potentially separate that out.

Glin: Uh yeah, we’ve explored some different UI changes. We’ve done a few mock ups in this last year of maybe using the party panel to maybe show de.. not debuffs, but like curses and things that your cleric may need to know, or your caster may need to know to heal you. We’ve talked about a few different ways to play with it. We try not to do to many rows on the screen, where the spells show up on the top of the screen. We already are in too deep at any given time. It just wasn’t a high priority for splitting them up on the top, but we do want to explore some different ways that we can show you that the things that are wrong with your party that you might need some help on, so that you can at least get some assistance.

Jerry: I don’t know how the inspect element technology works in DDO, you know when you highlight a character and you hit Z, maybe you can have a, just a couple little titles saying, “buffs” then have that list, then “debuffs” and have that list, or something of that nature.

Glin: Yeah, that’s definitely a potential for doing kind of a sort order. You could actually sort them at the top, it’s not as useful unless you’re mousing over it anyways, but we try to denote it with good icon usage. And you do kinda get use to the ones that bring you down at very levels. But, the disadvantage to putting it in the examination panel is that probably in action, you can’t really use it that well and that’s kind of more what we are trying to address with it. I can see that you want to examine your character, and just kind of have a glance in-between combat of wanting to know if you’ve got curse’s versus buffs on your character. Definitely worth considering as just a convenience item for sure.

Jerry: Sure. And just to take a very strict look at the last sentence there, why do they not have a second bar area for buffs and debuffs? They do! The debuff bar is in Delerium and the other bars provide your buffs.

*lots of chuckling*

Glin: I’m glad you took it there Jerry.

*more chuckling*

Jerry: Next question comes from Razcar. Writes, “Do you plan to introduce any new D&D skills and/or revise and make the existing ones more useful? In other words give the Skill system some to the tender love and care you’ve given the combat system and magic?”

You know I talked about that kind of in a forum post this past week, and maybe even a little bit last week on the show, comparing the 3.5 skills available to what we have in DDO. Any thought about some changes, or bringing things over?

*slight pause…*

Genasi: Sure. I’ll say definitely on the behalf of the systems team that we do know that some skills are a good deal more useful than others. Something that we would like to do, especially now that we have a re-spec option available for players, is go back and improve a lot of the ones that are currently not as effective as the ones that people tend to invest their skill points in. In terms of adding new skills, this isn’t something that is currently planned. We are always considering new options for the systems in our game.

Jerry: As someone who started DDO in 2006, with the words “Oh I’m going to need a high repair skill cause my fighter cause my fighter is going to need to repair his gear..”

Glin: Followed shortly by, “…I’m going to need a respect”

Jerry: Yeah, sure, cause I think I’m going to greater reincarnate him to take care of that little situation.

Genasi: I have some plans for that as well.

Glin: I’m definitely going though the reincarnation thing now. I’m actually trying out some different flavors before I do the Greater Reincarnate, just to go though the whole thing of trying some different game styles with my fighter.

Jerry: Nice, nice. Alright, next question comes from Steiner-Davion. Writes, “Intermittent bug with the adventure compendium being blank. Some people, myself included, have had issues with the adventure compendium being blank. In particular, no quests listed. In one of the threads on the topic, one of your developers by the name of Phax says that logging out then back in seems to fix the problem, but it doesn’t always work. Has a cause been identified? The bug seems to be completely random, at least in his case. And it seems to fix itself randomly as well.

Tolero: Yeah, I’ve actually had this bug on my own character and for the life of me; you know being aware that the situation is there, and having it happen to myself it’s been like “OH!! Let me see if I can figure out how this is happening,” and so you know were looking. But for my character it was like, “Oh hello Mr. Bug, that I know about, but what are you doing here?!?!”

Glin: We kind of speculate a little bit to share some of the process, but we think this is something that is only happening on a live environment, so it probably has to do with population of the server at the time, or maybe the load on the server. Um ahh I’m guessing it has to do with how the data’s coming in on the client side and what other information it’s dealing with. The compendium is possibly losing the battle every once in a while, that’s why the log out fix, it basically says give it another try to ask for that data. But we just don’t have a way to reproduce the problem internally for bug fixing, so take a shot at it once in a while and see maybe this will do it, maybe this will fine tune, maybe this will optimize it, that’s something that we’ve been doing ongoing over the years. Optimize the code, make it run a little better, a little smoother, a little friendlier on peoples computers, things like that. Um, so we just don’t have the solution for this yet.

Jerry: Yeah, okay.

Tolero: It does seem to clear itself up too. Like the character I had that had the problem; he would have it for a little while, and then the problem clears up. And then I keep looking for the problem to come back, but it hasn’t come back for me.

Jerry: Yeah, I’ve never had that happen to me with the adventure compendium. A couple of times, say over the past year or so, I’ve had a situation where you log in and maybe the quest don’t show up in the Looking for More panel. But, that’s the only bug I can imagine is somewhat similar that I’ve actually come across...and that’s not even all that often. Like I said, only a couple of times.

Uh, next question comes from Phlor Ironwood. Writes, “A friend of mine came over from ‘the other game,” I assume he means LoTRO, although could be Asheron’s Call, “Liked the ability to create combinations and place it in a hot key, which would automatically switch out clothing and jewelry items. I know we can do it with weapon combinations hotkey/bar. Will this type of enhancement be implemented?”

Trying to figure out what he’s writing there... So basically he’s saying we have weapon sets, could we have clothing and jewelry sets?

Glin: Yeah we’ve talked about doing things like; you know we don’t have a weapon set for a combination of a bow and arrow or bolt and crossbow. So there is a lot of room to expand that, we’ve got some improvements coming in, on weapon sets in general. We’ve kind of opened that up again, and having someone looking at that system, that might be a potential area we can explore. We haven’t had of big a request for it as I would have imagined, I personally would have liked that one on the list of things to do. So I think, player feedback saying we want more of that is definitely good to hear.

Jerry: What I’ve kind of do for rings in particular is I have that one, you know there’s that one slot where you just click a ring on say your hot bar, all of a sudden it will equip to either the right or the left side, I think it’s the right side of your character sheet? I can’t remember off the top of my head now, and so when I’m doing ring switching I always make sure that that one slot remains my floating slot, so to speak, that’s kind of how I get around the situation. But yeah being able to equip those things as a set would be pretty cool.

I think last formal question we have here comes from Envinyatar from Cannith. Writes, “Any plans to enhance the AI of hirelings, anyone who uses Hirelings probably is aware that frequently a hireling will stand in the center of a lava pool, or get themselves perished by stopping right in the middle of an acid spray trap. It adds a level of technical difficulty remembering to halt and call your bot in order to negotiate active traps. And my other question would be about hirelings following you into instances like caves and such, but that’s for another day.”

Glin: You know, we only have hireling school on Saturdays right now, so we are planning to expand that a little bit but, I’ll actually throw that over to the system side ‘cause they are definitely always working on it on their end

Genasi: Yeah um, this is actually something we’ve done some work on so far. I’m not sure if any of you have used cleric hirelings yet since update 3, but I myself made some changes to them that made them behave a bit more effectively in defensive combat especially though. They’ll actually be smart enough now to not run into melee combat and get themselves killed when you tell them please stand back and heal me. And I’ve seen some positive feedback about this which makes me happy, but I know there are still a lot of things that can be done to make the hirelings even better, so I’m pretty much constantly...I use them in the game a lot, and I’m looking at the forums all the time to see what you guys have to say about them. The way they interact with traps particularly is something I want to take on soon, so you can expect some changes in that regard.

Jerry: You know I’ve noticed actually cleric hirelings have been working pretty well there in the game. I’ve been using them a little bit myself and uh, pretty neat. Now see, I thought with this whole trap thing, I just assumed you guys were just trying to equate the player experience, right? Stand in a trap to find it!

*lots of laughing*

Tolero: There’s a trap right here. Boom!

Glin: Yes, we did talk about how hirelings are behaving just like a pug so why change it? It’s the same experience. I think the worst thing for me with the traps that I’m surprised it wasn’t listed there, is that they’ll run through a trap, and then when they get hit they immediately stop and drink a potion, and then they get hit again, and they drink a potion, and then they’ll run out of potions, and by then they can’t make it out of the traps. That’s just so frustrating.

Jerry: One of those little things I guess.

Tolero: A lot of that behavior cleared up, cause I play pretty much expressly with them and in the old days they use to be like, “Oh God I’m hurt! I need to drink a potion. Oh God! I’m still hurt, and it would just that over and over and now they kinda go, “Oh God I’m hurt! I need to run to my master."

Once in a while, if you’re not far enough away from the trap, they run to you, and they run as close as they think they need to be, which might still be in radius of the trap and they’re like, “Hey Boss, I’m here,” So you’ll sometimes you’ll have to step a little bit further back from the trap.

Glin: Yeah they definitely improved and the Update 3was huge. I start running with them a lot more frequently then I use to, I would say more hirelings as well, cause I use to just grab that one that I needed at the time for a support role, but now I’ll run with two or three and actually keep them alive, they’re not constantly in combat, much improved. And more to come, cause I’ve seen what the guys have planned for some of their AI work, it’s very promising.

Genasi: Can I say this really quick?

Jerry: Yeah go ahead

Genasi: For those who are interested, I’ve actually written up sort of a Dev Diary on my experiences on working with hirelings so far, and that should be airing pretty soon on the official website, so keep an eye out and you might be able to see some interesting stuff about that.

Jerry: Oh very cool. Yeah I love the Dev Diary’s. Keeper’s been really active on, it’s probably not an official formal Dev Diary, but she’s been keeping a nice little journal on My.DDO.com kinda giving us…

Glin: Blogger, she’s a blogger.

Jerry: I guess that will pretty much do it with our list of questions for Ask the Devs. Just a reminder, if you want to send one to me, you can send it through DDOCast@gmail.com, that’s DDOCast@gmail.com. Ideally, it would be great if you would put in the title, “Ask the Devs, “ or some kind of indication, so it helps me keep it organized you know, with my big Gmail account there. So just type in, “Ask the Devs,” in the title, and send it to DDOcast@gmail.com. We get to as many of them as we can cram in, we do have a growing list. We actually have quite a few questions that we’re trying to work through here, but there is always room for more and good questions, so feel free to send them in.

Tolero: And don’t be shy new players too. A lot of the questions I see, I can almost recognize how long the player has been a part of the game. So if you’re like a new player, don’t feel like just because your new you’re not allowed to ask questions.

Jerry: Yeah, Absolutely. I guess in general you guys got done with the fourth, or mostly done at this point with the fourth anniversary. And all the Risia Ice Sames are now done, Update 3 is out...any hints as to what we might be able to see you guys expecting in the future here?

Tolero: We still got another 20% exp weekend coming here, so by the time this show airs, I think they’ll be in the second birthday weekend. And we’ll have Pax, news from Pax. Fernando’s State of the Game address should be coming out soon, but I’m not sure if it will be out before or after this cast airs, but Fernando will have lots of cool stuff to talk about there, so be on the lookout for that.

Jerry: You guys going to have a lot of work ahead of ya getting ready for Pax? Could you give us at all what to expect here, like presumably a booth, like that kind of thing?

Tolero: So I’m not sure how much I’m able to talk about on Pax, but we’re definitely going to be announcing really soon what all you can anticipate, but we will have a presence, so if you’re going to be out in this neck of the woods for Pax, drop by and come say hi. Just keep an eye out for any “activities” that we will have happening. You know, like maybe such as Live DDOcast.

Jerry: Yeah indeed, and otherwise I guess to answer my own question. Up next - Update 4, generally follows Update 3.

Tolero: Yup. Update 4.

Glin: Yeah, and the only hint on that one is it’s like the Update 2. The even number pattern is, it will be a content pack primarily, the feature changes and new systems won’t be as significant (as in) in large ones. That’s because it gives us lots of time to work on an even bigger one for the next odd number release.

Jerry: Yeah it seems like you guys have fallen into a really nice pattern that I know Fernando had said, what last year even? That you guys were hoping to get into a regular pattern of releases, and it looks like the system you’ve got in place to do that development is rolling along pretty smoothly at this point.

Glin: Yeah well their saying it’s been 4 years, but it feels like 4 minutes, underwater.

Jerry: Indeed. Well that’s great. I really do appreciate you guys being on the show, and uh gal. I want to say goodbye here to Glin, Genasi, Tarrant, and Tolero, Thanks very much.

Everyone: Thanks Jerry.

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trying to sell this stuff on CD or make an unethical buck off of it, don’t worry about it and

distribute this transcript as much as you would like.

– Jerry Snook, host DDOcast

For everything about DDO, please visit DDOcast.com.

Published March 10th, 2010

Episode 158!

DDOcast — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 02:32:00 GMT

Hi everyone! Episode 158 of DDOcast is now ready to go. Here'a a LINKto the episode - just left-click to play, right-click and 'save as' todownload as an mp3.

This week's show features the 11thEdition of Ask the Devs, a listener-submitted Q-and-A session with someof the fine folks who make DDO! Rowanheal and Samius join me this weekfor an experimental test of a live streamed show as well. Babale talksarea of effect spells in "Surviving DDO!" Music provided by a chorusof warforged, courtesy of Envinyatar.

###

DDOcast Episode 158 (3-5-10)

:30 Intro and music by Envinyatar

3:05 Ask the Devs 11

30:50 ATD post-chat w/group

35:18 Maintenance

35:33 Cedwin's awesome work!

39:30 DDO Store stuff and Greater Reincarnation
47:00 Scavenger Hunt/Ice Games
49:20 Lawsuit update

52:30 Europe Update!

53:55 Mournlands update

55:11 Team Turbine

56:14 Surviving DDO - Area of Effect
1:03:10 Stacking Planner

1:03:50 Featured Player - Jaggie!

1:04:30 Cocktail Hour

1:05:55 Top five sources of drama while gaming in DDO

END

Total Time: 1:27:06

###

LINK referenced in Ask the Devs chat re:support.

LINK to Cedwin's MyDDOLite. LINK to Server web site widget. LINK to Sidebar server widget.

LINK to server RSS feed. LINK to DDO Forums Search provider.

LINK to DDO Store Release Notes, reference for Greater Reincarnation.

LINK to new DDO Store items.

LINK to the latest filing in the Turbine vs. Atari lawsuit.

LINK to info on Team Turbine's work to raise money in a walk for a local hunger cause.

LINK to Bruntash's Stacking Planner.

LINK to the 5th Eberron Community Chronicle.

LINK to the latest Featured Player on My.DDO.com - Jaggie!

LINK to Episode 3 of the DDO Cocktail Hour. LINK to the 15th Yak Cast.

(pic is one of Samius' characters)

Jerry

Friday Update

DDOcast — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:25:00 GMT

Hi everyone! Work's been keeping me away from the web site this week, but there's a couple of things I wanted to pass along:

Ask the Devs!

Yup - the 11th edition of Ask the Devs will be on this weekend's show! I get together with some Turbine folks to answer your questions. One of the things asked and answered this week is about the long-asked-for ability to search the Auction House!

DDO Cocktail Hour - Episode 3:

Lessah and Samius have posted their third episode of their excellent mid-week podcast talking DDO and having fun (and drinks!) Here's a LINK to the episode, but I'd also highly encourage you to check their web site out HERE. They even brought little 'ol me on this week for some fun.

Scavenger Hunt Ending Soon (For Now):

DDO's Tarrant has given us word of when the Traveler's Scavenger Hunt will be coming to an end in a post on DDO.com today:

The hunt runs through Sunday, although that certainly won't be its last appearance in the Marketplace.

Coming back, huh? Guess maybe we should save some of those tokens!

Risia Ice Games!

The Risia Ice Games will be around even after the end of the Winter Olympics! Word comes today from DDO's Tarrant:

Those other winter games might be over, but the Risia Ice Games go on! Take part in the events for an additional four weekends as we extend the festival through the month of March! For more information on the games, click here!

Latest on the Mournlands Applications:

Turbine's Couatl has an update on their effort to find new folks for the "secret" preview server called Mournlands, discussed in recent weeks here on the show and site:

Greetings!

When the invitation phase of the Mournlands program is no longer accepting applicants, we will close the thread until a later invitation period. The heavy volume of applications prevents us from responding individually, but until the thread is closed anyone who has applied should consider themselves to still be in the running and being reviewed.

Okie-dokie!

Jaggie Chats:

This week's player spotlight on my.ddo.com features Jaggie Jutebox! She's an awesome DDO player who has supplied us Gen Con goers with very neat handcrafted things in recent years. I'm really happy to see her get the spotlight this week! Here's a LINK to it.

Cedwin Rules!

DDO player (and DDOcast musical contributor) Cedwin has done simply amazing work this week on some tech that could very well be a revolutionary thing in DDO. He's got programming skills, for sure, and has released a whole series of my.DDO.com-related things this week.

First up, MyDDOLite! It's a web-based way to look at DDO characters. It uses the same stuff from My.DDO, but the "Lite" comes from how incredibly speedy and streamlined it is! Rules. Here's a LINK to it on his web site DDOStuff.com.

It also works on the iPhone. Yeah, very awesome.

That's not all he's been up to, though - he also released this week a widget that lets people see DDO's server status! You can see this on DDOcast.com right now - it's in the sidebar to the right. It's available as a widget, a sidebar gadget and an RSS feed:

Web Site Widget
Sidebar Gadget
RSS Feed

AND - he's done a DDO Search Provider program that lets you search DDO.com in your browser's search bar. HERE.

Yeah, so pretty much in one week a DDO player has put together an entire array of incredibly and permanently useful tools for DDO. One of the coolest things ever.

Big show this weekend! I think I'm going to test out a bit of a live stream tomorrow, so check my Twitter feed if you'd like to maybe see us record. No idea when I'll be taping, though, but I'll announce it on Twitter before we get started.

Jerry

Episode 157!

DDOcast — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 23:03:00 GMT

Hi everyone! This week's episode of DDOcast is now ready to go. Here's a LINK to the episode - just left-click to play, right click and 'save as' to download as an mp3. You can also find DDOcast on iTunes, the Zune Marketplace and many other podcast aggregators. If you'd like to leave a voice message for DDOcast you can do so HERE.

This week's show features a celebration of DDO's 4th anniversary, big news from Turbine, the latest news and more! I also chat with Chris from the Raiders of Eden about playing DDO.

###

DDOcast Episode 157 (2-27-10)

:24 Intro
2:25 Turbine announces numbers!

6:19 XP weekend!

7:35 Repair Shop here

10:20 Data Center move

11:45 Greater Reincarnation almost here!

15:00 Log-in data!

20:50 Survey over

21:10 Chris with Raiders of Eden

48:34 Valentine's Day Screenshot winners
29:25 Lessah and Samius' Traveler's Hunt Video

50:15 other podcast news

51:48 Featured player
53:10 St. Pat's Day Parade - Thelanis
54:20 Emails and Errata

END

TOTAL TIME: 58:34

###

LINK to Turbine's press release describing the business boost with the release of DDO:U and the "million-plus" announcement.

Here's the rundown from the DDO Store about the Summoned Repair Shop:

ALL NEW! Summoned Repair Shop (Forgemaster's Anvil)

The Anvil of the Forgemaster summons an Efreeti Blacksmith into your quest who will expertly repair any items you have for a price. After three minutes, he will leave the area and can only be resummoned by another anvil. Cannot be used in Raids. 1 use.

Level Usable: All
Classes Usable: All
Store Location: Gear & Equipment > Questing Tools
Price: 95 Points

LINK to the 4th Edition of the Eberron Chronicle.

LINK to Tolero's my.DDO.com post about Greater Reincarnation in which the release date is mentioned.

LINK to Cedwin's amazing work to number-crunch log-ins in DDO and get us some of our best data yet on server populations and trends.

LINK to Chris' A.T. Tips podcast on Cyberears!

LINK to the Valentine's Day Screenshot Contest Winners on DDO.com.

LINK to Lessah's Traveler's Scavenger Hunt video.

LINK to the new DDO Cocktail Hour with Lessah and Samius web site! LINK to Episode 2 of their cast.

LINK to the DDO Player Spotlight featuring some Minnesotan by the name of Mockduck...

LINK to info on the upcoming 4th St. Patrick's Day Parade on Thelanis!

LINK to TheDDOTube on YouTube.com.

LINK to DDOcast's page on the Zune Marketplace.

Jerry

Subscriber Information, 4th Anniversary, DDO Store and More!

DDOcast — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 01:51:00 GMT

Hi everyone! Some very big news from Turbine, including the latest information being released on the current DDO population. Quite a significant announcement. Although it's important to take all of this kind of stuff with a little grain of salt (the figures tend to be as much promotional as informational), it's quite obvious even without looking at these figures that DDO has been an outstanding success! Especially since the release of Eberron Unlimited, it's been a real game-changer and largely an example of how to do things right.

Without further ado, here's a LINK to the press release from Turbine and here's the release:

Dungeons & Dragons Online®: Eberron Unlimited™ Surpasses One Million New Players

Best Free-to-Play MMO Marks Four Years of Operation with Sharp Growth

WESTWOOD, MA – February 26, 2010 –Turbine, Inc. announced today that Dungeons & Dragons Online®: Eberron Unlimited™ (DDO Unlimited), the world’s best free-to-play massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) has already attracted over one million new players since its September 2009 launch. The massive influx of new players has been across all of the various consumer plans available. DDO Unlimited’s paid subscriber base has more than doubled, while at the same time players are transacting in the new DDO store at three times the industry average, growing the franchise’s revenue over 500% since its launch in September.

DDO Unlimited is a free-to-play MMORPG which delivers heart-pounding gameplay featuring the industry’s best combat system, a massive world with state-of-the-art graphics and gameplay, and a rich set of features that until now could only be found in premium subscription-based MMOs. DDO Unlimited offers an innovative new pricing model that allows players to download and play for free, purchasing adventure packs, items, and account services a la carte from the new DDO Store, or to subscribe to get unlimited access to all of the game’s content. Players can download and play DDO Unlimited for free by visiting www.ddo.com.

“The response from players to DDO Unlimited has been nothing short of phenomenal,” said Jim Crowley, president and CEO of Turbine, Inc. “We’ve known all along how great this game is and by implementing an innovative new model that put the players in charge of how they pay and play DDO Unlimited, we’ve successfully expanded our reach and injected new energy into the game. Without a doubt, DDO Unlimited is a hit!”

“The launch of DDO Unlimited has been a huge success and has really taken the game to a new level,” said Fernando Paiz, Executive Producer of DDO Unlimited. “As we celebrate our 4th birthday, the game has never been better and we’re just getting started with more adventure packs, more store items, and other innovative features coming in the major updates we have planned throughout 2010.”

DDO Unlimited is based on the world-renowned DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® franchise of Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc.® (NYSE: HAS), under license to Atari, SA. DDO has been enthusiastically received by many gaming critics, including The New York Times, PC Gamer, Game Informer and many more. For the latest information, please visit www.ddo.com.

About Turbine
Turbine, Inc. is the premier creator and operator of massive, persistent online worlds that foster powerful social gaming communities. Turbine is the largest privately-held online gaming studio in North America and has created some of the world’s most popular and award-winning online games, including The Lord of the Rings Online™, Dungeons & Dragons Online®: Eberron Unlimited™, and Asheron's Call®. For more information on Turbine, its products and services please visit www.turbine.com.

About ATARI, SA
Atari group is a global creator, producer and publisher of interactive entertainment for interactive game platforms that include PC, online, consoles from Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony and advanced smart phones (i.e. iPhone). Divisions of Atari, SA include Cryptic Studios, Eden Studios, Atari Interactive, Inc. and Atari, Inc.

Atari benefits from its global brand and an extensive catalogue of popular games based on classic owned game franchises (Asteroids®, Centipede®, Missile Command®, Lunar Lander®, original owned franchises (Test Drive®, Backyard Sports™, Deer Hunter®, MMO games from Cryptic Studios (Star Trek Online, Champions Online) and third party franchises (Ghostbusters®, Project Runway™, Dungeons and Dragons®.

For more information please visit www.atari.com

© 2010 Atari Europe SASU. All rights reserved.
Atari word mark and logo are trademarks owned by Atari Interactive, Inc.

About Hasbro
Hasbro (NYSE: HAS) is a worldwide leader in children's and family leisure time entertainment products and services, including the design, manufacture and marketing of games and toys ranging from traditional to high-tech. Both internationally and in the U.S., its PLAYSKOOL, TONKA, MILTON BRADLEY, PARKER BROTHERS, TIGER and WIZARDS OF THE COAST brands and products provide the highest quality and most recognizable play experiences in the world.

About Wizards of the Coast
Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. (NYSE:HAS), is the worldwide leader in entertaining the lifestyle gamer. The company holds an exclusive patent on trading card games (TCGs) and their method of play and produces the premier trading card game, Magic: The Gathering®, among many other trading card games and family card and board games. Wizards is also a leading publisher of role-playing games, such as Dungeons & Dragons, and publisher of fantasy series fiction with numerous New York Times best-sellers. For more information, visit the Wizards of the Coast website at www.wizards.com.

# # #

Dungeons & Dragons Online, Eberron Unlimited, Stormreach, Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering and Wizards of the Coast and related logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the U.S. and/or other jurisdictions, and are used with permission. Hasbro and its logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Hasbro, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other jurisdictions, and are used with permission. Atari and the Atari logo are trademarks owned by Atari Interactive, Inc. Turbine and the Turbine logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Turbine, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other jurisdictions. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Note that Turbine is not saying that there are currently one million or more subscribers, but at least one million people have checked the game out since DDO:U's release. Fantastic! That's very impressive numbers, backed up by very excellent business figures for the company. This can be nothing but good for DDO and it's future! On behalf of everyone at DDOcast I'd like to wish Turbine and it's hard-working DDO folks congratulations on this wonderful game's 4th Anniversary!

XP Weekend!

Yup, another xp weekend is upon us. The official word from Tolero:

Bonus XP Weekend!

Starting this Friday, February 26th, and running through Sunday February 28th, all DDO Players will gain a 20% XP bonus in quests! This bonus stacks with Experience Elixirs (don't forget about Super Stacks in the DDO Store)! Happy Birthday DDO!

This is good! I will be getting some leveling done for sure.

Repair Shop is here!

Turbine has officially released it's repair shop item into the DDO Store. I must say, the pricing is much lower than I expected! 95 points isn't bad at all. Here's the description from the DDO Store:

ALL NEW! Summoned Repair Shop (Forgemaster's Anvil)
The Anvil of the Forgemaster summons an Efreeti Blacksmith into your quest who will expertly repair any items you have for a price. After three minutes, he will leave the area and can only be resummoned by another anvil. Cannot be used in Raids. 1 use.
Level Usable: All
Classes Usable: All
Store Location: Gear & Equipment > Questing Tools
Price: 95 Points

You can find a bunch of other temporary and newish items in the DDO Store catalog HERE.

Eberron Chronicle:

This week's Eberron Chronicle is a nice one celebrating the 4th anniversary as well. Here's a LINK to it.

Don't forget the DDOcast Build Guild is getting together on Sunday starting at Noon Eastern! Sunday is officially the 4th anniversary of the game, should be an excellent time to get together. The past four years have been excellent, thank you Turbine and everyone for making it all so much fun.

Jerry

Data Center Move Issues, Greater Reincarnation Coming Soon, Valentine's Day Screenshot Winners, Podcasts, Videos and More!

DDOcast — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 05:31:00 GMT

Hi everyone! Been busy this week, but a lot going on!

Data Center Move:

Ouch. Wednesday was a pretty rough day in DDO. Turbine had originally planned to wrap up its data center move with a 4 a.m. to 4 p.m. downtime. Got extended by a few hours and then some players had all sorts of problems logging in. The issue was some kind of complex DNS settings issue that is a bit above my head. If you want to read all sorts of tech talk on it, visit DDO.com!

I did get to log in last night to run some favor quests on Mockduck with no problems, although it was pretty late by the time I signed in. At least the data center move is supposed to now be complete!

Here's Turbine's Marketroid on what they were up to:

As was noted above, we did move game servers to our new datacenter last year.

It takes a lot more than game servers to keep DDO up and running. Over the past several months we've been moving and preparing to move many of our non-game server support components to the new location. Most of those moves happened behind the scenes and were seamless with no visible impact. This is a complex and difficult process - like trying to change the oil in your car while driving - but we've made great progress and are nearly done.

The final steps of the project include moving some of the underlying systems such as billing and authentication which are causing today's downtime. While those services are down for the move it's impossible to log into the games, but today's effort has very little to do with the game servers and should not in any way impact real or perceived performance of the games.

All of this is a long way of saying that no hamsters, gerbils, ferrets, or space pixies have been harmed in the making of today's downtime. Thanks for your patience as we complete the migration.

Greater Reincarnation Coming Soon!

Tolero sneaked out word this week about when exactly Greater Reincarnation would be coming to DDO! From her my.DDO.com post this week HERE:

With Greater Reincarnation slated to appear in the Store the first weekend of March, I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not I want to take the plunge with my original character.
Post Script Edit: One other thing I should definitely mention is before you Greater Reincarnate, you need to have access to 32 point builds. If you haven’t unlocked the favor already, there is a sale on 32 point builds going on in the Store this week.
With his one level of multiclassing amid his levels of bard, I can’t decide if I should just upgrade him to 32, or scrub out that level of fighter while I’m at it with the Greater +1. There are some considerations before you just let Kruz burn your body to ash to feed to his tree, so to speak.
Going Greater
The main reason to go “Greater” with a reincarnation is upgrading him from the old 28 point character to a 32 point character. Back when I was a player, this is a day I never imagined would actually come! I always had a note of sadness thinking that my poor faithful little bard, the first character I ever made, would always be sub-par compared to those characters that would come after him. Now it’s like a reunion in a way. I’m not sure that I’ll change much about him… except that one level of fighter that still haunts me.
Scrubbing Out Mistakes
Back when the level cap was only 10, I remember being vexed by that level of fighter I took. I would forever always be out of reach of the final level of bardicness. With the Greater +1 I’ll be able to kill two birds with one stone it seems: upgrading to 32 point build, and removing that level of fighter. I need to be careful though, because the level swap provided by the +1 in theory could be used to multiclass another level of my choosing… but my intent would be to convert the level of fighter into just bard to be straight bard. I was tempted to replace it with a level of Sorc, but I think I’ll dabble with that on an alt some time.
Careful Planning
I’m pretty happy with my bard, but in the event I felt like changing some stuff around while I was at it - besides just getting the extra ability points - it’s a good idea to think ahead. I mean effectively this lets me completely and utterly redo him, and without fear of changing something that was handy at mid level, but grew less so at high level. I can completely spec him around my current game play style. I should probably be careful because since there is always new stuff being introduced, something that seemed “useless” to me at this level may come back around and I might regret getting rid of it… but I guess that’s what re-reincarnating is for heh. At least now I won’t feel “stuck” no matter what happens in the future.
There are many great resources for such purposes, but there’s no better resource than your fellow players. Talk to other players who have characters in the style you’re thinking of is an excellent way to find out if that aspect of a character will be something you’ll like. But there’s nothing that says you can’t just experiment and do something because you “feel” like it. Customizing a character can be challenging but also rewarding, so do what works for you! For me, I continue to banter with the other Bards seeing what they like (and dislike) about the way they play theirs vs the choices they made to end up that way. I’m particularly interested in talking with other Bardic friends who plan on reincarnating to hear what they plan on “fixing” (or “changing”) about themselves.
It’s funny, but a long time ago Reincarnation was foretold by an unusual community prophet. Though it’s not 100% the same, I can’t help but think back to this very interestingly worded suggestion. I’m glad to see we now have something that is a shade of this old idea, to not let an old character go to waste! I’m interested in hearing about how you plan on preparing for your greater reincarnations!

Nice work, Tolero, as always.

Server Population?

DDO player Cedwin has done some pretty interesting work to try to get an idea of just how many people are playing DDO. We'll discuss this on the show this weekend, but I wanted you to take a look at his work first if you'd like to HERE.

Valentine's Day Screenshot Contest Winners!

Turbine has announced the winners of this year's Valentine's Day Screenshot Contest HERE. Here's the winners:

Congratulations to the winners of our Valentines Day Screenshot Contest! There were many great entries and many wonderful stories of in-game couples (both real and fictional)! We'd like to thank all participants for their entries, they were fantastic! Alas not everyone could win however, so it's time to reveal the winners!

In the Cupid's Arrow category, we're pleased to announce the winner: Grimmsie!

In this image, rather than the traditional bow and arrow, Grimmsie explains that "Cupid decided to bring out the big guns!" We have a feeling that if you're smitten by Cupid's balista, there can be no saving you from the urges of love!

The Perfect Pair category always brings many entries from couples throughout DDO! The winning entry for this category was submitted by: Rachel and Cody!

In this scene, Golgathoth the halfling cuddles with human CVW beneath the shade of a tree on Korthos Isle. Rachel explained in more detail about their shared enjoyment of DDO: "We have always played together - if one of us is not online, the other will not quest. The reason for this is that we are engaged in the real world, and the game is not nearly as enjoyable if we are not fighting at each other's side."

The Romantic Individual category had many interesting entries. Our winner is: Borut!

Borut had an interesting description of how one is bitten by the love bug: "It's that time of the year when there is something in the air, and that is the feeling of love. Even in the gaming world of Eberron love spreads its message, and a particular drow elf, known to the world as Shikage gets so affected by it she starts dancing by the moonlight, enchanting all of the nearby commoners with her power of love."

Everyone expresses their love differently in the I <3 DDO category! The winning entry comes from: Roger!

Is there really anything better than finding loot? Finding treasure chests is a big part (no pun intended) of DDO. After finding this one, Roger does a happy dance, professing"Nothing is more lovely than a dragon's treasure chest so large that you can fit inside it."

In our final category, Most Romantic Guild, Kirra and the Storm Lords guild sent us this fun scene:

Dusting off the snows of winter and basking in the tropical climate that Xen'drik is known for, the men of Storm Lords took the girls out for a day trip... but little did the girls know what was in store for them: "The men took the women to the beach on Valentine's Day... we wondered why. Triple marriage proposal!!!" In this scene, the men admire the ladies from afar before springing the big question!

Congratulations to all our winners, you'll be receiving 500 Turbine Points, and will be contacted shortly for your choice of forum title "Hopeless Romantic" or "I <3 DDO"! Great job to all participants! As always, your entries are so wonderful that you make it hard for us to pick just one favorite! Thanks to everyone who participated!

Congrats, everyone! Nice screenshots and all the winners are well-deserved.

Cocktail Hour with Lessah and Samius - Episode 2/Yak Cast 14

Lessah, Samius and really great guest Phlor have put together Episode 2 of their fantastic, funny and amazing mid-week DDO podcast! Here's a LINK to it on the NEW DDOCocktailHour.com!!!! You must listen.

Speaking of podcasts, Yak has released Episode 14 of his most excellent DDO podcast called Yak's Cast! Here's a LINK to it.

Self-promotion or just a really bad idea?

Little 'ol me got featured as this week's DDO Featured Player! It's a lot harder to determine your favorite movies, music and books than you might think....at least this time I didn't mention how awesome it was to get two Muckbanes in Durk's...

It was a lot of fun, actually, and I'm really honored to have been selected by Turbine for the showcase. Here's a LINK to it.

Lessah and Samius' Traveler's Video!

Want to see Lessah rocking out on the egg collections for the Traveler's Scavenger Hunt? Of course you do. I'm really impressed. She's told me that Samius put together the route for success!

Jerry

Episode 156!

DDOcast — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:54:00 GMT

Hi everyone! Episode 156 of DDOcast is now ready to go. Here's a LINK to the episode - just left-click to play, right-click and 'save as' to download as an mp3. You can also find DDOcast on iTunes and many other podcast aggregators.

This week's show features the latest news, a look at skills, a sketch with "Stormreach Action News" written by Lessah, a look at Greensteel items with "Sound Concepts" and more! Thanks so much for listening.

###

DDOcast Episode 156 (2-21-10)

:10 Intro
1:37 Maintenance downtime

3:00 Fernando Paiz letter - 4th Anniversary

7:15 Traveler's Scavenger Hunt
14:39 Patch 1
15:44 Cocktail Hour!
16:44 Turbine Survey
18:55 State of Europe
25:06 Desert Tomes

26:50 Eardweller talk

28:37 Memnir spotlight

28:55 Forum Avatars

29:54 Stormreach Action News

35:30 Sound Concepts - Greensteel

44:50 Community News

47:37 Skills Talk

56:30 Welcome back and DDOcast Build Guild talk
57:45 More Community News

1:02:18 Email

END

TOTAL TIME: 1:10:27

###

LINK to Fernando Paiz' letter celebrating DDO's 4th Anniversary on DDO.com.

LINK to info on the RIsia Ice Games.

LINK to info on the Traveler's Scavenger Hunt.

Couple of good links for info on the hunt. (LINK 1) (LINK 2)

LINK to the Update 3, Patch 1 Release Notes.

LINK to more on Lessah and Samius' podcast "Cocktail Hour with Lessah and Samius."

LINK to the announcement about a new Turbine survey for DDO.

LINK to the DDO Player Spotlight on my.ddo.com.

LINK to new forum avatars for DDO.com.

LINK to the Salty Cube's bio.

LINK to Hydra Ex's notice about the Lammania cake and what it looks like.

LINK to Alter's discovery of a secret Risia Ice Games recipe.

LINK to the latest Magnificent Misadventures of Mustardo strip.

LINK to the 4th Eberron Chronicle.

LINK to Yak's part 2 of 2 chat with Seneca Windforge over on his DDO podcast.

LINK to the new Rowanheal.com!

Here's the long-awaited Green DDO.com Broccoli pic:

LINK to the 3.5 D&D Wikia entry on Skills.

LINK to LA Mike's DDO Store Sale Tracker on DDO.com.

LINK to Sarr's Tempest Spine video on YouTube.

Jerry