DDO Menace of the Underdark Sees The Light Today
Revitalised by going microtransaction-to-play last year, Dungeons & Dragons Online has found itself in a healthy enough state to launch what appears to be a pretty beefy 'premium expansion.' Menace of the Underdark is, somehow, DDO's first ever full-fat add-on after six years of hanging onto its servers for dear life until business models changed. It brings the more appealing, darker, undergroundy, demonic'n'Drowy aspects of the Forgotten Realms setting to the fore, as well as introducing the skinchanging Druid class for the first time. I am genuinely amazed this game didn't have Druids before now. Aren't all fantasy MMOs supposed to have Druids?
Take a look at the new stuff, settings, enemies, classes and "Epic levels to 25" in a four-part video, which also talks about luminescent algae.
Lolth is a funny name for a big baddie. Lol!
The new settings/adventure packs are these:
o The King’s Forest: Explore deep into the King’s Forest and defend the village of Eveningstar from Lolth’s Drow legions.
o The Underdark: Venture down into the Underdark and confront Lolth’s elite followers in the Drow city of Sschindlyryn.
o The Demonweb: Journey to Lolth’s home plane, battle demon hordes and confront the spider goddess herself as you attempt to stop her scheme.
And all that launches later today. You can still play the base game for free, with the Underdark content ranging in price from $30 to $80 depending on how many bonus bits you want. You don't get the Druid unless you spend at least $44, while $80 gets you tons of special items (I can tell they're special because they're written in a purple font) including a hat shaped like a spider and "a figurine of Wonderous [sic] Power." Waitagoddarnminnit. There's only one figurine of wonderous [sic] power in the world, but I can't for the life of me working out how they're going to explain introducing the original Optimus Prime toy into the Dungeons & Dragons universe.