Who created the Warforged? 83
d.3.l.t.r.3.3 writes "James Jones (Turbine), declared on an interview at MMORPG.COM that D&D Online and Turbine basically built the world of Eberron introducing and inventing many elements that, in reality, were already present in the Campaign Settings since early design, like the Warforged race. Since MMORPG dodged the bullet when a well informed Eberron fan pointed out the glaring errors, I asked Keith Baker (Eberron Game Designer) to clarify the matter. He promptly gave his own opinion, confirming that Warforged were his own original creation and that the words of James Jones were a poor choice. He also doctored the Turbine staff about what a Campaign Setting really is.
The inevitable conclusion of the article is: how much can online gaming sites be trusted, when they are protecting their
own sponsor's image?"
Editors (Score:4, Insightful)
Grammer/Information? (Score:1)
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This is painful to read (Score:5, Insightful)
If the editors won't actually edit articles (to keep Slashdot "more real", apparently), how about just not posting articles that are incomprehensible gibberish?
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Oh good, I'm not the only one who has trouble with this summary. Really, about all I can make out is that someone is PO'd about someone else stealing some other person's idea, and that it all relates to D&D. Next you'll be trying to tell me that Gary Gygax didn't invent the hobbits^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hhalflings or something.
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You must be new here...
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-Eric
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I speak the language fluently. I don't know all appropriate idioms for every situation, but I have a pretty good idea of when I am using one, and care enough about what I write to look up words and phrases so I don't look like a complete idiot (like the use of the word 'idiom' here). If someone else does not take the time to do the same, then why
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Here's a new version of the summary which I think is easier to read...
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I really hope you were trying to be funny.
Dan East
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BabbleFish to the rescue (Score:5, Funny)
This is a common problem with text that has been hand translated from another language (in this case, I would suspect either Java or Telugu). I have found that running it through BabbleFish (say, into German and back again) cleans up most the problems. What the article summary was trying to say was:
Hope that clarifies things. Feel free to use this trick on your own whenever you run accross text like this in the future.
--MarkusQ
Why is this even a question? (Score:5, Informative)
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Fantasy games are so effective because they are based on symbols we already know and are far enough from reality that we can just deal with the symbols.
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Except that, clicking through to the blogpost and reading the quote, it doesn't seem to say that at all - the quote reads:
"The continent of Xen'drik had yet to have lore fleshed out and Turbine was basically given the ability to build their own world, including a new playable race - the Warforged. Currently, the world that Turbine has built has been in
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That implies to me that they "built" the new playable race themselves.
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I think the sentance clearly states that Xen'drik was a blank slate given to Turbine, they created their own world within this continent, and that the Warforged were part of that creation.
Now, I'm hearing this last part is untrue, so we're le
Who/what are the Warforged? (Score:2)
Jonah HEX
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You mean... they're Zodar?
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Dungeon & Dragons Online very brief review (Score:4, Interesting)
The simple problem? Health. As you no doubt know not all classes are equal in D&D especially at the first few levels. D&D makes up for the weakness of some classes in combat by being by nature a multiplayer game. The warrior, the mage and the healer, one player to take the hits, one player to do the damage and one player to rule^H^H^H^Hheal them all.
CRPG's typically are one-player affairs, so they have to adjust themselves to allow this single player to survive even if they have choosen a class that isn't survivable. One way is too be liberal with health potions. Just keep chucking them back and hope that eventually your pathetic rogue will actually kill the enemy.
So what does DDO do? Put all the health potion vendors BEYOND the beginner area. This lead to a lot of players choosing the lesser combat/healing classes getting stuck. If you used the 2/3 potions you got at the start to early you just couldn't survive later dungeons.
No you couldn't group with a healer or tank either, a D&D MMORPG game with NO early grouping. Says it all really.
I was in the late beta and for this design decision to be implemented still tells me everytbing about the game I need to know. Neither am I alone. DDO commercial success is severely lacking. There is a reason WoW sells so well. Not because it is so good or so original, in many ways it is just a cheap Everquest 2 clone but with a shit load of style and class added. WoW is if you like an iPod, not a better music player, not a more capable one but one that looks good and just fucking works.
DDO is not. Play it, but be sure you know you are playing a D&D game designed by people who forbid low levels to group. A MMORPG, with no grouping.
A MMORPG where I had more cash at level 3 then at level 30 in WoW but nothing to spend it on.
Oh and the warforged are a created race that is very very ugly so I didn't play one since I only play pretty girls. Basically they are a strong warrior race that is healed by mages instead of priests.
But no, an old D&D fan probably won't like DDO. It just ain't anything like it. Neverwinter Nights might be more up your ally. D&D Pen&Paper is to me all about the dungeon master who is a human and who can improvise on the spot. No good dungeon master is going to allow the party to be wiped out in the first dungeon or force all the players to play the first few levels all alone.
A human dungeon master is like a writer, he puts the actors of his play in constant peril but also makes sure the cavalery arrives just in the nick of time. A great dungeon master makes you feel like you escaped by the skin of your nose but not actually get killed. That is the difference between computer and human controlled RPG's. Humans care.
Re:Dungeon & Dragons Online very brief review (Score:3, Insightful)
THere were 3 quests you couldn't group for. One was a learn the interface quest with 3 CR .1 spiders. THe second was a quest
Re:Dungeon & Dragons Online very brief review (Score:2, Informative)
Everything I despise about EQ and WoW is missing in DDO. I don't need to learn to fish, or brew or basket weave. All that inane crap is gone in DDO, it is stripped down to the purity of quests that require varying degrees of communication and teamwork. For the majority of antisocial loner MMO fanboys that must be unbearable. The built in voice chat even gets rid of most of the insipid l33tsp34k, you have to decipher in other games.
I am a very "astro
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I also quit playing back in the AD&D days, and have just recently started in a 3.5 campaign. The ruleset and gameplay are much improved, in all aspects, IMO. Much more flexable. And a lot of the "rules just to have rules" have b
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First, if you're an old AD&D guy, the new 3.5 rules may be somewhat rough to get past your craw: No more THAC0, no more race-specific classes, all new classes of spellcasters, bizzare new combat rules. 3rd Edition was built with miniature play in mind, and it really shows in the combat rules.
If you can get past the rules
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A race of sentient golems might be close. Manufactured mobile semi-autonomous weapons for a nasty war, created in massive "Creation Forges" from complex arcane patterns called "Creation Patterns". At some point, they developed full autonomy and sentience (or is that sapience?... ). The war, which raged for a long, long time (tens or hundreds of years?) is now over (2 years ago or so). So we have all these sentient warriors (specialized in some cases as juggernauts, scouts, wizards, etc) of metal a
Undetered by my own ignorance.... (Score:2, Redundant)
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This already happened.. (Score:1)
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Leela: You know, like pirates... but in space!
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Leela: You went there this morning. For donuts.
College interns for teh win! (Score:3, Insightful)
-Rick
PS: Hiring an editor, even an intern editor, WOULD be news.
Wow! (Score:3, Funny)
It's only 0818h EDT here, and there's already a completely incomprehensible write-up on Slashdot.
I mean, I played AD&D (2nd Ed w/ liberal additions from whatever 1st Ed source materials we had on hand) for a good solid 10 years plus some play-by-email campaigns afterwards, and I try to keep up with goings-on at WotC and the D&D universe in general, but
Puts a whole new meaning into "WTF".
Unreadable (Score:1)
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Sorry for the horrible summary (Score:5, Informative)
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Uh, could you please rephrase that?
(heheh, couldn't resist) :-)
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This not what DDO staff said at PAX and it's irritating that to make users believe they did some serious work for their pretty shallow and superficial (at least at start) D&D licensed game they have to steal another designer's work that should have to be the base for their own game setting (like Baker pointed out).
I'll grant you that this was an unsightly boast on behalf of Turbine. Not giving proper credit, even.
But stealing someone's work? They didn't steal anything. They have been tasked with cr
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Jackon never took credit saying he created Aragorn or he highly contributed to the official development of the Tolkien's setting. There's a difference, since neither Tolkien Foundation or WOTC licensing programs allows content to flow upwards and strictly assure that products will respect a very specific canon.
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Believe me, Baker has gotten plenty of the credit for the creation of Eberron. In fact, he's credited on the front page of Turbine's DDO Website [ddo.com].
I'm not sure what you have against DDO, but you're making a far bigger deal out of this than it deserves. Sorry, but that's my opinion.
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Anyway, this kind of misrepresentation can't be all that uncommon. You cannot create a game and say "Well, we really made a shallow shell of a game around a solid imaginative core made by someone only related to us by our checkbook. Go us!".
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"I questioned James also about the choice of Eberron and was told that it was recommended by Wizards of the Coast. The continent of Xen'drik had yet to have lore fleshed out and Turbine was basically given the ability to build their own world, including a new playable race - the Warforged." is the quote from the article. I wouldn't
wtf? (Score:1)
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MMORPG.COM is a good site (Score:3, Interesting)
(Indeed, the suckups called "Galactic Senators" on the SOE boards get so pissed that we can talk freely there that they come over and troll us).
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Nobody's saying they are bad (they are pointed as good in a wide number of my posts), just saying that there's always something that cannot assure you gaming sites are super partes in an absolute way.
Also, SOE doesn't run massive advertising on the site. My point is not against the sites but against the political choices you are more or less obliged to take when you are under such circumstances.
I really respected the choice of The Escapist to seek advertising outside the gamedom (mostly) to avoid possible
S.O.P. (Score:2)
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Question: Why should we care about DDO? (Score:1)
I played DDO in the beta, I was part of the head start, and played through til almost module 2. My subscription was paid up til August, I quit playing the first week of June. The game is just bad, and the more Turbine does the more they shy away from Keith Baker's vision of what Eberron is to be like(read the intro to the campaign setting and you'll get the idea) and the more it isn't DnD. About the only good thing t
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Even when Turbine has a decent game at release they WILL screw it up in future patches. They will cater to the power gamers and the cheaters more than any group of folks you have ever seen. The stuff that was going on in AC1 was absolutely ridiculous by the time I quit and it has gotten worse since them. Inflation of item
Enquiring minds want to know... (Score:2)
Seriously, if I was the world designer, I'd be distancing myself from that smoking bombshell as far and as fast as possible. Turbine somehow managed to take what should have been the #1 slam dunk MMORPG franchise, the potential World of Warcraft killer, and turn it into a laughingstock that will quietly fall back into the shadows and be even smaller and less relevant than Puzzle Pirates
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D&D definitely isn't slam-dunk though. It and its licensed game are much less relevant to newer generations of gamers. The people who'd be likely to get into it are instead using fantasy MMOs or MUDs as an outlet, whether they're poor substitutes or not. When guilds I've in have had discussions about who plays D&D, usually it's only maybe 10% of th
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Oddly enough, almost all the WoW players I know in RL have played tabletop games at some stage, many of them still play in D&D campaigns. But that could be that I have a skewed sample. My WoW guild thinks it odd when my husband and I skip a raid to play D&D.
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Anyway, I think the point still stands that D&D isn't a hot MMO commodity. The basic settings and races of D&D are pretty much a page from the generic fantasy handbook. No one's going
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Y Axis? (Score:1)
First of all, I would argue that this is the use of the Z axis, not the Y.
Secondly, I would point out that City of Heroes has had this, including in-flight combat, for 2.5 years.
But kudos to Turbine for implementing this functionality, which was sorely lacking in Neverwinter Nights.
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And now a word from our sponsor (Score:1)
Spoiler alert (Score:2)
What?
lovely... (Score:1)