It's been over 16 years since Dungeons & Dragons Online was first released, and it doesn't seem to be slowing down any time soon. Its newest expansion, Vecna Unleashed, will be raising the stakes for adventurers by pitting them against one of the most insidious Dungeons & Dragons villains, Vecna. In Vecna Unleashed, players will explore the halls of the massive Morgrave University in the City of Sharn and even venture into the astral plane itself.
The Best War Games chatted with Dungeons & Dragons Online producer Amanda Grow about what players can expect to encounter in the new expansion, as well as other general gameplay improvements coming to the game. In addition to the new adventures in the expansion, there are some sweeping balance changes to improve many of the game's classes as well as the new Macrotechnic Epic Destiny that gives other classes access to previously Artificer-exclusive abilities.
Vecna Unleashed Is Introducing New Environments and Characters
Of course, the big bad in this expansion is the infamous lich Vecna, and players will be journeying into some unusual places and interacting with some of D&D's powerful deities in order to handle the massive threat that Vecna poses. A final confrontation with Vecna has been building throughout some of DDO's quests, and one of the goals of this expansion was to give players some emotional payoff after always being a few steps behind the crafty Archlich.
In this update, Vecna is such a threat to the realm of Eberron that they actually do get to engage more directly with some of these really powerful divine beings in a way that's not typically happening in the setting. So we're very excited about that because it means that players who really want to get in-depth with the dynamics of deities in D&D or any Eberron fans out there will be able to engage with beings like the Traveler for the first time, who has in the past only ever been hinted at, or getting more direct with Lady Vol or the Lord of Blades.
The key location in Vecna Unleashed is the City of Sharn's Morgrave University, a sprawling campus for students of the arcane that features some interesting verticality in its level design. The expansion's quests will also see players off to several other interesting Dungeons & Dragons locales like the Glass Plataeu in the Mournland as well as the Elemental Plane of Water. Naturally, there are also plenty of new and unusual enemies to contend with along the way, particularly those hailing from The Abyss.
Dungeons & Dragons Online Is Making Sweeping Balance Changes
Dungeons & Dragons Online takes full advantage of Dungeons & Dragons' wide range of classes, though such diversity presents more than a few challenges when it comes to game balance. With this expansion's update, the DDO team took a new approach toward game balance by making small tweaks across most of the game's roster, rather than focusing on revamping a single class while other players are stuck waiting for their own updates.
In the past, what we've tended to do was sort of vertical. We’d pick a class and rework it top to bottom, and it's a big overhaul. But since DDO has so many races and classes, it can be a long time before we finally get around to yours.
With this update, what we wanted to try instead was target some small fixes across the board through several different classes, targeting little pain points or pet peeves where players have been saying, “Hey, I really wish that this had changed.” As we've tried to do a slice across a whole bunch of classes, lots of people get to experience some interesting build choices and improvements. So anybody will be able to access that.
Although any balance changes in MMORPGs like DDO will inevitably make some players happier than others, Grow emphasized that the team is heavily focused on making changes that are based on player feedback. She noted that even the content that is introduced in expansions is largely dictated by the game's community, with surveys and polls guiding the team's direction when developing new content. With some tweaks to every class, DDO hopes that the majority of its players will find this expansion's accompanying update to be an overall improvement no matter what class they play.
Dungeons & Dragons Online is free-to-play on PC.