Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited

My Roles: Senior Designer

Skills Used:

  • Free-to-play Design
  • Content Design
  • Scripting
  • Writing

(Images taken from engadget.com and ddonline.wikia.com)

Achievement Highlight:

  • Several of my designs for free-to-play content, events, and offerings helped DDO achieve one million new/returning players and led to a 500% increase in revenue.

Tools:

  • Proprietary Turbine level editor
  • TestTrack Pro

Genre:  Free-to-Play MMORPG

Platforms:

  • PC
  • Mac

Game Download Website: https://www.ddo.com/en

Game Awards: (Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeons_%26_Dragons_Online#Awards_and_reception)

  • Freebie Award: Best Free-to-play-MMORPG (2009) – RPGLand.com RPGs of the Year 2009
  • Best Free to Play MMO (2009) – MMORPG.com 2009 Awards
  • Best Free to Play Game (2009) – Tentonhammer.com Best of 2009 Awards

In 2009, a revamped free-to-play version of the previously subscription MMO was released, retitled as Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited.

This free-to-play change resulted in one million new/returning players and led to a 500% increase in revenue. This also doubled the subscriber base, since DDO has a parallel subscription system as well as being free-to-play. (Source: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/118359/Going_Free_Boosts_Turbines_DDO_Revenues_500_Percent.php)

In addition to contributing to designing DDO’s general microtransaction style, I was the primary designer in integrating new free-to-play offerings into the play experience. I also designed various in-game seasonal events that were the lynch-pins to the DDO store’s various seasonal offerings.

I was also one of the primary designers on the brand new starting areas. I created the flow of the very first playable area, Shipwreck Shore. I also did a vast amount of scripting in the first 3 playable areas (arrival area, first dungeon, first town area). I took this work through many iterations, using team feedback, focus groups and usability groups to make sure they accomplished the goal of retaining free-to-play players & store vectoring as well as possible.

I wrote much of the NPC dialogue, and also made editing passes over dialogue written by other developers. I created the personalities, dialogue styles, and wrote voicelines for the 3 tutorial NPCs: Jeets, Cellimas, and Talbron. These characters are considered to be fun and memorable by the DDO player community, and Jeets in particular is quoted by players very often.