LOL . . . it's as if DDO was retconned out of existence.

I always thought Eberron was an odd choice of settings for DDO... it wasn't until I was running around the thatched roof buildings out in Eveningstar that I felt "at home".

Ah well, water under the bridge at this point.

WotC was trying to push its crappy Eberron setting and thought a popular MMO based in it would increase sales of that campaign setting.

Fucking stupid robots in my D&D.

i didnt know atari had anything to do with ddo. and i agree forgotten  realms would have been a better place to start

The whole issue is that for ADD 3 ( and 3.5 ) the support setting was to be Eberron, and just Eberron... FR and the rest were to be scrapped ( or at least left to rot in ADD2 )...

But the outcry of all the PnP people was so heavy that they had to show bring some FR ( and a few Greyhawk ) stuff...while making sure all the other setting stayed in the graveyard by muddling up the IPs a bit more ( which allowed to Wiess and Hickman to do some Dragonlance Stuff, Blackmoor to be edited under D20 and so on ).

Then Hasbro tookover, and the suits there wanted a game easy to transform into an MMO or a console game with easy stuff...Thus came the Bastard Child called 4th Ed.
With Hasbro came money, that secured having Salvatore around, and thus the setting shifted again and was put back on Faerun.
To help secure more revenue, this new set of rules had to have a computer game as well, and lo behold there's that nice NWN IP that made lots of money...
Lets do a 4th Edition computer game... If you remember originally 4th Ed wasn't meant to be a MMO... People would meet in a lobby, form parties there and go adventuring in potentially player made dungeons.

Then the Atari debacle comes in... Atari buys Cryptic, then sell it to PWE when they gets nailed by all their stupid management choices...
Along the way they make the move to sell the Distribution Branch in Europe to Namco... basically asking for Hasbro licenced games to be sold by Namco...
that's a big No No for Hasbro... Said games not being advertized as they should ( really the DDO communication campaign at launch in Europe was pathetic ).

In the end Atari lost the license, Turbine had to settle an agreement with Wizards to keep DDO going, Atari sold Cryptic and NWO to PWE that promptly rebuilt the game using their in house MMO system changing it to a multiplay cooperative game into a full fledged MMO, while dropping everything D&D except the name and the setting. ( and some fluff in char development )

When the dust settle you have
- DDO, that's based on ADD 3.5 and Eberron... A game full of could have been, but that's 9 years old.
- NWO, that's based on D&D 4 and Neverwinter... 4th Ed is not really D&D and the bad sales proves it... ( as long as the fact that it took them quite a while to bring 5th Ed to actually fix the issue )... A game that has been completely rebuilt by PWE when they bought Cryptic, that missed the joint release date of the PnP version due to all legal tangle, and that doesn't really have any appeal to D&D players... And with a Forgotten Realms broken ( once again... remember Times of trouble ) to fit yet another system change....

HiWelcome wrote on Mar 3^rd, 2015 at 2:49pm:



It did sound awesome... but well Atari, and especially 4th Editions are killers...

Sword Coast Legends seems to be based maybe on a similar concept... But it's too early to know...

Two words to you all: Planescape and Sigil

Arkat wrote on Mar 4^th, 2015 at 10:28am:


Yeah, but it's one concept, and 3-1=2

Revaulting wrote on Mar 4^th, 2015 at 2:07am:


For once I agree with you... Obsidian proved that with NWN2 they just steamrolled their plan and fuck what the people wanted.

Revaulting wrote on Mar 4^th, 2015 at 2:24pm:


No, he sobered up briefly and had flashes of coherence, I guess you missed it.   

I'm pretty sure the monkey drinks too.   

Ah Pook wrote on Mar 5^th, 2015 at 4:17pm:


Depends which play.

Titus, faster.  The Tempest, slower.