Manic Razor
And there is a D&D MMORPG, it's called Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited. It's pretty good, though the aforementioned Atari has been doing its best to hold the game back so they can screw the developer (Turbine), make the game tank, then release their own in-house D&D MMORPG.
FR was first published in 1987 ... that's not 40 years.
What's 7 years or so?
That said, I'm not sure this belongs in the Future Releases forum. You could send your input directly to WotC as well.
Baulder's Gate
The Side Scrolling D&D Arcade Games
Dark Sun PCgames
After WoTC
Neverwinter Nights and it's first expansion (didn't play 2 won't speak for it)
Also, the aforementioned WotC really isn't a video game company and D&D imho should be left to PnP then PC. Unless you are doing email or post or what not, but not a video game.
I'm glad not everyone who plays video games, writes like the op. You could get eye strain trying to read that bloated, massive paragraph.
I'd like to contribute to the topic, but I didn't read more than two lines. So I'll just say I hope we get a 4th edition D&D game eventually. But not another damn MMO. At least not until we get some "good" rpg games. Then they can release another steaming pile of crap. Aka, MMOs.
FR was first published in 1987 ... that's not 40 years.
What's 7 years or so?
That said, I'm not sure this belongs in the Future Releases forum. You could send your input directly to WotC as well.
He said 40 years - 1987 is 23 years, not a 7 year difference.
Even though at the time it was owned by TSR I point to the following as being good.
Baulder's Gate
The Side Scrolling D&D Arcade Games
Dark Sun PCgames
After WoTC
Neverwinter Nights and it's first expansion (didn't play 2 won't speak for it)
Also, the aforementioned WotC really isn't a video game company and D&D imho should be left to PnP then PC. Unless you are doing email or post or what not, but not a video game.
Hey you forgot Baldur's Gate 2! Best PC RPG of all time. (I realize you might have been including it under Baldur's Gate but it came out under WotC so it should be a seperate entry.)
I stand corrected Ranadiel you are right. I had meant it to be under Baulder's Gate as a whole, mostly because I hadn't realized it was a WotC.
Ao my list should also read .
WotC
Baulder's Gate 2
FR was first published in 1987 ... that's not 40 years.
What's 7 years or so?
That said, I'm not sure this belongs in the Future Releases forum. You could send your input directly to WotC as well.
He said 40 years - 1987 is 23 years, not a 7 year difference.
…Woops! Shows you how tired I was last night. I meant to say:
"What's 17 years or so?" ;)
Was it unwise to sell the license to Atari? Probably. I'm no insider, I have no idea what went on behind the scenes here, but from the PoV of a consumer it seems like it was a horrible move that's costing WotC huge opportunities to really make it big. But, at the same time, Atari might be working on something in-house that they just haven't released info on yet. Maybe.
Either way, until WotC gets that license back and either develops an in-house video game studio or sells the license to a company that actually makes good games (like Black Isle did back in 2.0 under TSR) we're stuck in this current situation and no amount of fanboi rage could possibly change it.
I'd also argue that ownership of properties like FR doesn't give WotC a huge leg up on the game; having "a ready made world, characters, maps..." isn't much of an advantage, because creating those things is only a tiny, tiny part of a game development cycle, and adapting them for use in an online game isn't neccessarily any easier than working from scratch. (This is also an odd thing to use to draw a comparison to WoW, since Blizzard also had all of those things, plus far more people played the Warcraft franchise prior to the release of WoW than played Forgotten Realms.) The primary advantage having properties like FR bestows is simple name recognition; simply porting things like the D&D ruleset to an online game would not result in a particularly successful game; in particular, things like turn-based combat in an MMO look bafflingly archaic by modern standards, and the rules system as a whole is optimized to maximize fun in a certain modality - kitchen table group play - not as an MMO.
The Side Scrolling D&D Arcade Games
This is what needs to be made. A 4E-inspired arcade-style beat-em-up. When I say need, I mean a requirement. Those games, although pretty damn hard and cluncky (flipping through your spells while in the heat of combat meant certain death), were awesome.
Anyone could play the Fighter or the Dwarf, but you had to be a master to play the Elf or the Mage. Gods that Mage rocked, I had to work damn hard to convince a DM to let me have boots that let me levitate only a couple inches off the ground to fit the motif back in 2nd ed for my version of him. EDIT: I'd love to see these old side scrollers, and a new one put on the the Xbox live arcade and the PS version so that ps3 folks arent left in the dark b/c no one should be deprived of these gems.
I'd argue that the previous successes of D&D games were in spite of, not due to, having a (modified) D&D ruleset under the hood.
This right here. The Baldur's Gate saga, and Planescape: Torment were amazing games, but it was not the D&D ruleset that made them amazing. They were amazing games because they had amazing writers and designers.
I'd argue that the previous successes of D&D games were in spite of, not due to, having a (modified) D&D ruleset under the hood.
This right here. The Baldur's Gate saga, and Planescape: Torment were amazing games, but it was not the D&D ruleset that made them amazing. They were amazing games because they had amazing writers and designers.
I would argue that they were also successful due to the industry being more accepting of niche games back then. The chance that Planescape:Torment would get greenlit today is fairly slim unless it is BioWare that is doing it.
Atari doesn't know how to make a turn-based RPG. Bioware is pretty good, but still ends up making everything quasi-real-time. We need a game that has separate in-combat and out-of-combat modes so it can be turn-based.
But the real problem, I think, is that D&D is inherently multiplayer, but turn-based multiplayer games are almost inevitably disastrous. You'd need video chat to make it at all engaging, and the current model for that is matchmaking... and I know I personally never want to be randomly paired like that. Plus it's expensive.
So the best game would be either single-player, eliminating the strongest aspect of D&D, or a completely different experience, similar to D&D in name only. That said, I'd love to see a good Devil May Cry-style game starring a soulknife or swordmage.
I'd argue that the previous successes of D&D games were in spite of, not due to, having a (modified) D&D ruleset under the hood.
This right here. The Baldur's Gate saga, and Planescape: Torment were amazing games, but it was not the D&D ruleset that made them amazing. They were amazing games because they had amazing writers and designers.
I would argue that they were also successful due to the industry being more accepting of niche games back then. The chance that Planescape:Torment would get greenlit today is fairly slim unless it is BioWare that is doing it.
That'd largely be due to the costs of making games these days. Along with the decline of niche games, we've also seen a general decline in the proportion number of lame shovelware and licensed games. There was a time when it seemed like *every single* commercial propety had it's own videogame.
Due to the success of 4e Activision/Blizzard will buy WotC and release the sequel to WoW.
Warcraft becomes one of the DnD settings and in "World of Dungeons and Dragons" (just the project name not final) each realm will be bound to one specific setting.
So you can choose between FR, ER, DS, Warcraft and whatever I forgot and will be playing on an appropriate realm.
[/strange future vision]
[strange future vision]
Due to the success of 4e Activision/Blizzard will buy WotC and release the sequel to WoW.
Warcraft becomes one of the DnD settings and in "World of Dungeons and Dragons" (just the project name not final) each realm will be bound to one specific setting.
So you can choose between FR, ER, DS, Warcraft and whatever I forgot and will be playing on an appropriate realm.
[/strange future vision]
Nah, wouldn't see that one, companies are to big Hasbro and Blizzard would then kill each other in a merger trying to decide whose properties would stay and who's would go.
Then we'd get some strange setting combo where it turned out that a portal opened up by Drizzt lead to the WoW world and at the same time Kerrigan and Zertual unleashed so much psychic energy that a tear in the universe occurred, while simultaneously Diablo himself used the herodric cube with 2 full Tomes of Town Portal, Wirt's Wooden Leg and Wirt's Wooden Eye to conjure up a hellgate that merged all the settings. Then my friend the gaming world would end. This would also come packed with a 15 day free trial of WoW
Then we'd get some strange setting combo where it turned out that a portal opened up by Drizzt lead to the WoW world and at the same time Kerrigan and Zertual unleashed so much psychic energy that a tear in the universe occurred, while simultaneously Diablo himself used the herodric cube with 2 full Tomes of Town Portal, Wirt's Wooden Leg and Wirt's Wooden Eye to conjure up a hellgate that merged all the settings. Then my friend the gaming world would end. This would also come packed with a 15 day free trial of WoW
Hahaha, that made my day, thank you! Kinda reminds me of this.
And there is a D&D MMORPG, it's called Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited. It's pretty good, though the aforementioned Atari has been doing its best to hold the game back so they can screw the developer (Turbine), make the game tank, then release their own in-house D&D MMORPG.
Has anyone played DDO recently? They are free now except you pay for the different perks you can get. Its kind of a cool concept. Is it populated, or is it a ghost town?