Transcript of DDO Fridays at 4 episode about the 64-bit server

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Transcript of Fridays at 4 episode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbeP8MduOZ8
(upbeat music)
 - All right, hello everyone.
 Welcome to Fridays at four on Twitch.tv/videostream.
 I'm your community manager, Kurt Oven,
 and I have a special guest with me today.
 We're gonna be talking about, oh, I don't know,
 something like 64 things.
 So let's get our executive producers,
 several and on to welcome Sev to the live stream
 and nice to have you on here this week.
 How you doing?
 - I'm doing great, what's going on?
 - Well, we started some rumors over about the past week
 or so about a little thing called a 64-bit server.
 And so we're here today on today's Fridays at four,
 at least the start of it here,
 to talk a little bit about what we are actually doing.
 So let's do that, huh?
 We have a 64-bit server.
 - Okay, first of all, whoever was talking about that
 on the Discord, you need to talk to them.
 It's like anybody who just appeared talked about that
 and then didn't follow up, it's like--
 - I hear they might have even said something on Twitter,
 but that's okay, yeah, so, but that's fine.
 That's what we're here.
 We're excited about this project
 and it's been in the works for a little while here.
 And so it's really nice to be able to start
 to talk about it today.
 We'll have a lot more information in the coming weeks,
 but we did wanna kind of peel back the curtain a little bit
 and let you know what we're working on, so.
 - Sure.
 - All right, so, yeah, okay, so first of all,
 let's put to rest rumors that like,
 this is not a Genesis 64 or a Commodore 64 port, okay?
 Like when we say 64, that's not what we mean.
 - I'm down, by the way.
 I might even be able to get us a floppy disk writer
 or something like that, so.
 - Yep.
 - I believe if anyone could get a floppy disk writer
 would be you.
 (both laughing)
 - Sure, let's talk about it.
 So obviously, people have seen who play both games,
 have seen that we've had new servers on the Lojo side
 that are 64-bit, and it's not just 64-bit,
 it's that the 64-bit allowed us to have a caching technology
 with our code that has, we were hoping,
 would improve performance, and on the Lojo side,
 we saw some big changes in the people on those servers,
 did report that it was much better.
 On our side, we are looking at 64-bit servers on DDL,
 how best to use that technology.
 So, right now, we're hoping to have a,
 in the final throws of getting a server up
 into our internal test,
 that not only is 64-bit on the code side,
 but has a much larger capacity hardware-wise
 in order to help with these systems.
 However, we don't have the capability to know
 where we want to just deploy this to all our servers,
 because we have to see how it works over time,
 we have to do a lot of evaluation behind the scenes,
 because these are time and money intensive
 before we want to make the way to do that.
 So, like Lojo, we're going to introduce one new server
 for now to test, it will be VIP only,
 otherwise the queues will just get too large.
 But we're also running an event on there
 that is sort of our answer to hardcore,
 to be a special event.
 But one of the issues that we had with,
 like a lot of the people ask,
 why aren't you doing hardcore anymore, right?
 And one of the issues with hardcore
 is that once everybody who likes to make groups and stuff
 goes over to the hardcore server,
 it has an effect of making the normal servers feel empty.
 And the other thing is that sometimes we do new stuff
 on the hardcore server,
 but there are people who actually want to participate
 in the content, but they don't let the hardcore find it.
 And so we have a new event called Lanterns in the Mist.
 And the Lanterns in the Mist is cool,
 because when you go over, at first level,
 you have to claim one or more lanterns,
 and then you equip it.
 There are some lanterns that you can equip,
 and if you die, you don't lose progress.
 There are other lanterns that once you equip,
 if you ever die, all the lanterns in your inventory
 and that are equipped are destroyed.
 And so because of that,
 you have to get to a certain level
 or have to get to certain goals,
 much like hardcore in order to proceed on that.
 But one of the things that I think will be cool
 is if you're doing the Lantern event
 where it's a one and done,
 a hardcore lantern event isn't that your character dies,
 it's that the lanterns destroyed.
 So I don't want to call it hardcore,
 but it has the same feel to it.
 Your friends who aren't participating in that
 can help get you through dungeons and play with you.
 You don't have to go through the tragedy
 of losing your character and kind of losing
 the lantern progress if you don't want to.
 In fact, they can be working on their own lanterns
 that aren't destroyed and travel with people
 who have the lanterns
 in case they don't want that kind of play.
 - So this lanterns in the Miss event,
 it really has two sides to it.
 A more opt-in, you know, kick my butt side
 and a more casual, I want to take part
 and get some cool things side to it is what we're saying here.
 - Well, the other thing too is that
 the lantern is the opt-in entirely,
 meaning if you want to try this new server
 because it's performant and have a new experience,
 'cause it will be like any hardcore,
 it will be players will start fresh.
 But if you want to just play on that server,
 you don't have to claim a lantern at all.
 - Yeah.
 - But yeah, and there's multiple lanterns,
 there'll be five lanterns of each kind.
 So as an example, one lantern will be the,
 you have to get to level 20
 and then that lantern will be solved
 and you can kind of get some goodies about it.
 And then other lanterns will have other things
 and you have to accomplish.
 Mostly revolving around while you have a lantern on
 or if a party member does,
 it will reveal these mist walkers that are dangerous.
 I'm sure that people who have played in hardcore
 are no strangers to having dangerous things kind of appear,
 but the lanterns will reveal them.
 And then as you kill them,
 you'll make progress on your lanterns.
 And so I think it'll be very cool in terms of that.
 - And these enemies are just
 throughout regular dungeons
 and your regular questing experience?
 - Yes, but you're gonna have to progress somewhat
 going through the game.
 You can't just,
 the progression isn't as simple
 as just keep killing things until they appear.
 Does that make sense?
 - You're actually seeing they're kind of invisible
 in the world and you're revealing them
 with these special lanterns that you're acquiring.
 - Yeah, right.
 But the exciting stuff about that is
 behind the scenes our games have this proprietary code
 that has its own virtual engine in the game.
 And one of the complex things about working on the games
 is that code exists in a C++ base,
 which exists on hardware that's also virtualized.
 And so the memory management becomes complex.
 This new technology caches all of that inner code
 so that it doesn't have to page in and out.
 And before this, we couldn't do it
 because we didn't have the memory space for it.
 And we found that it's very performant on retro
 and we expect there to be performance increases on DDO.
 Do we think that this will like solve all performance?
 No, like many things.
 You know, DDO is a complex game,
 but I think that if you look at the Loto community,
 those servers really are like much better.
 And we have already made some strides and performance.
 So we are hoping that that is the case.
 But one of the nice things is sometime next week,
 we wanna call upon the community to come in,
 we'll announce it probably next week, early sometime.
 - It could be the week after.
 - It could be the way, just to put a caveat,
 let me interrupt my own executive producer
 and say could be the week after maybe, I don't know.
 Could be next week.
 - It could be next week.
 It depends on whether we find,
 once we get the server up for finding problems.
 But once we make the call,
 we want a whole bunch of people to slide in
 as many people as they can.
 So the initial call will not be VIP only.
 It will be free transfer,
 bring your expensive characters over.
 You know, like the ones that are level, high level,
 many trees, do raids, do the things that normally
 really help us try to bring down the servers performance.
 And we wanna get as many people on there as possible.
 So we're asking the community to jump on.
 - Yeah, it'll be a stress test.
 And we really do want to.
 Now, I don't know if the lanterns and the myths event
 will be available for that first test.
 Might, I had heard some things that maybe it wasn't.
 Okay, okay.
 - Nor do we want it to be.
 The first test is about stressing out the 64-bit technology.
 So we want people to copy over.
 It's a copy not transfer.
 I know I said transfer, I apologize for that.
 Copy over their high level characters,
 kind of bought through raids or do high level content
 that you would expect to try to see what it looks like.
 And then we'll do a database wipe later.
 - Yep, before it goes live.
 So for this first preview,
 and for the previews for the server,
 you'll probably be using the Lamania game launcher.
 So if you've gone to any of our Lamania previews,
 and have that launcher in place,
 instead of Lamania, which will still be there,
 there will also be then this new server
 when the preview is available,
 and you'll be able to log into that,
 which will be the 64-bit server.
 One interesting thing,
 if we are able to get this out next week
 is we're working toward a second raid preview
 on the traditional Lamania preview game server as well.
 So there's a chance,
 if everything falls into place in the coming days,
 that the raid could get a preview on the regular world,
 and then you could turn around
 within say a couple of days or something like that,
 and then run it on the 64-bit side
 and have a real-time comparison to some extent
 between our new raid coming here with--
 - Oh, before and after, yeah.
 - Yeah, yeah.
 So, and that's the kind of thing
 we'd love to get feedback on, I'm sure, so.
 - Sure.
 Yeah, like, okay, so answering more questions.
 First, we have to get a successful 64-bit server.
 Once this server is successful,
 we've had a chance to look at it.
 Yes, the idea would be,
 we would open up new 64-bit servers
 with this new technology, with new hardware,
 and open those up to other transfers.
 But that still weighs off
 because the process to prepare one of these,
 to set it up, to rework the data center
 in order to make room for them will be,
 is it time-intensive, more time-intensive than I'd like?
 And so other servers will follow, but not.
 You won't see that turned around very quickly.
 - This is not an event server
 in the sense of hardcore being a 90-day experience
 or something like that.
 The intention is to keep this world open,
 is my understanding.
 - Yes, in fact, this is actually longer
 because there are bits about this event
 that will go into the new year, so.
 - But the event could kind of come and go.
 - From the world.
 - Yeah.
 - So, I don't want to talk too much about the future
 because I need to see how this performs
 because, like I said, there's a cost.
 The way I envision it is,
 let's say the server is really good
 and people are going on and they run raids
 and they see less lag and it's noticeable.
 What we would do is instead of trying to pick
 what servers to move and what servers not,
 we would open new servers and then open free transfer.
 But to do that, we would have to have guild transfer,
 which we don't have now.
 And then eventually, the people would move
 from the old servers into these new consolidated servers
 so that we'd have mega servers,
 as I talked about a while ago,
 and we'd open it up so that people could go in,
 that way we don't have, people can make grouping.
 We would never want to do that now
 because if you are on a smaller server,
 it might be because you like avoiding the lag
 of a larger server.
 If we have performance servers though,
 then the consolidation of players
 is less of an issue in terms of performance.
 - Do we, we don't have a name for the server yet.
 Do you, I'm sure someone's got a name for it.
 I haven't heard the name of the server yet.
 - Do you?
 - Okay.
 - The new one, yes.
 - Is it still a process?
 - No, I think I'm pretty sure we're set on Cormier.
 - Oh, okay, okay.
 Well, there you go.
 - Yeah.
 - Yeah.
 - But that's not, that, I wouldn't,
 I wouldn't, I don't know that I would talk about that
 until it officially is in print,
 but yeah, I think that's what we're talking about.
 - Okay.
 All right.
 That sounds good.
 - Yeah.
 - So the new, the new one.
 - Yeah.
 So the idea would be that there would be fewer servers
 that could hold many more players
 so that you could find groups easier.
 We've been, but to do that,
 there's some things that have to happen.
 We have to prove that the performance can handle more players.
 We have to have
 guild transfer and there's some character transfer things
 where small things, small things don't go over
 like master manual, for instance.
 We have to solve those.
 If we're going to expect people to transfer
 from old 32-bit servers onto the 64-bit servers,
 we have to make sure nothing's left behind,
 if that makes sense.
 Like right now this,
 you get most of your stuff on the transfer,
 but there's definitely some things that the players
 would worry about.
 This strategy would, would,
 you'd have to make sure that everything came over.
 Like I think there are times when you lose certain amounts
 in pets that can't happen.
 - Yeah.
 Yeah.
 A creature gradient stable would be one.
 There's a bunch, I mean, there's honestly,
 there's a full checklist,
 I'm sure we could come up with.
 So, yeah.
 But these are things that we would solve before that
 would be a thing we would proceed with.
 So, we'd have a solution.
 Yeah.
 I wanted to go back in just a little bit.
 We tend to try to separate out the games
 in our discussions.
 When I'm on DDO stream,
 I talk to Anderson Dragons online.
 When I'm on the other game side,
 I talk about that game.
 And we tend not to compare, contrast,
 and talk about the games too much.
 And sometimes when we do people who are into one of the games,
 but maybe less so the other,
 tend to get into our chat and be like,
 I can't believe we're talking about Lowtrow
 or something on the DDO side or vice versa on that.
 But there's a reason we're doing it this time
 in terms of our comparison.
 And that's why I wanted to bring it up
 as a conversation point,
 which is that part of what we're doing here
 on the Dungeons and Dragons online side is,
 I think it's safe to say a bit of a reaction
 to the initial work that we've done on the project
 over on the Lord of the Rings online.
 So the success we've seen since that opened on August 1st
 and our desire to want to bring that to DDO as soon as we can,
 really.
 Sure.
 So essentially,
 the only reason I bring up Lowtrow is
 the reason I'm excited is that we expected
 we expect incremental changes in performance.
 And players see it, some players actually say,
 oh, this is a little bit better,
 but I'm still seeing these lag spikes.
 And some people are like,
 oh, my high level character is still not getting
 the performance I want.
 But the change in perception of this technology
 on another game kind of proves out
 that the technology and the caching actually had a big effect.
 And since the underpinnings of the game are not the same,
 but somewhat similar,
 we're hoping to get a similar effect in this game,
 meaning we now have live experience that shows
 that this could make a big impact.
 That's the only reason I'm bringing that up
 is that like this 64-bit strategy has shown success
 and now we're bringing it over to this game,
 if that makes sense.
 - Why are sitting about one of the pillars
 that needs additional work before we're able to really
 just open up character transfers to a 64-bit world
 is an issue that I've heard you talk about
 called serialization.
 And I think it's probably worth bringing up
 that the 64-bit server itself is meant to provide
 an improved game experience.
 But there's several pillars that we're tackling right now
 in terms of game performance improvement.
 And one of those is kind of your character data footprint.
 Is that a safe way to describe a serialization issue like that?
 - Yeah, serialization is the character data footprint
 and the ability to move it from place to place.
 So let's talk about that.
 Usually the character data footprint comes into play
 in two ways.
 One is I'm loading into a new area.
 We want that to be short as possible,
 but if it takes you longer to load into a dungeon,
 that usually isn't the same thing as having a spike
 in the middle, but it could cause it
 if somebody else is loading into a dungeon
 on the same executable server code that you're on.
 But the second thing is if you get moved
 from place to place, which can sometimes happen,
 everybody has to move off of the server
 and onto a new server for whatever reason.
 Both of those things can happen.
 But I think that one of the things that happens
 is when there is one of these serializations thing,
 you can be in a position where--
 - Take care of the phone or whatever, if you need to.
 It's fine. - I apologize.
 - Yeah, yeah, don't worry about it.
 - I didn't know where I put it.
 - Yeah, yeah.
 - So I think that one of the things is
 when you serialize, it has to load this code
 in order to figure out all the things you're holding.
 And what we're finding on the low-cho side,
 what we're suspecting as we look at the code is that
 we think that when you come into a new server,
 there are things in your--
 there's code it needs for your specific character
 that it then has to load, and that's already in memory.
 And so we're hoping to see some changes,
 some improvements there.
 Like we did.
 - And that would help because if we were to,
 let's just say open up this first server
 to everybody for character transfers
 of historically veteran characters,
 that would potentially degrade the experience,
 not just for the gains that you would see
 with the fresh 64-bit server,
 but it could impact other people too.
 - Sure, well, we'll say like I think a good test
 will be getting as many people with their big,
 you know, high level characters to test on our test,
 one of our, and we'll do more than one of these tests,
 but we wanted to try to kind of flood the service for that.
 - All right, so I'm sure we have plenty of questions.
 - It is an interesting thing that for some of our players
 may be a slight downside though.
 The new server will not be in our current data center.
 The new server is going to be in Las Vegas,
 which will be very interesting.
 So what'll happen is not only is a new server,
 but it's a new data center, which means
 that if you're on the East Coast,
 I believe your ping will be like slightly higher, 15 maybe.
 - That's true.
 - Yeah.
 Yes, the server will still be linked
 to your live game account and your DDO store purchase history.
 Now, not for this stress test preview,
 that'll be in the Lamania environment,
 which is different from the live game environment.
 But when we actually released the server
 to the live game world,
 some people can start logging in and doing it.
 - Yeah, everything that you've purchased,
 that's an account unlock in the DDO store
 or that you've purchased for your account,
 like expansion purchases and all that kind of thing.
 It's all just going to be there for you.
 The only things that wouldn't would be character-specific
 purchases or things that you would need
 to purchase on every server.
 And same with like your VIP benefits
 and all that sort of thing, it's VIP access,
 but you will carry over all those benefits.
 - Yeah, so yeah, I'm super excited about it.
 I'm super excited to see the players playing
 on new hardware.
 I wanna see what happens with the performance.
 Obviously, we're all like waiting on that
 and working on that.
 Like I said, the process behind it is complex.
 It requires acquiring new hardware
 and expanding the capabilities
 of what a single server can do.
 But in the longterm, I would also be excited
 about having a lot of players on, you know,
 many fewer performing things,
 slowly moving their characters
 from the existing servers over so they can group.
 So the servers will seem alive
 and that like as you're doing your TR loop
 or endgame, you think you can find more people
 and maybe different guilds will be stuff.
 - Yeah.
 - It's true that so Lich wants to know,
 when will our stress test be?
 Don't say it's a weekday.
 - I think it's gonna be a weekday.
 I'm sorry about that.
 - Probably the video.
 - Yeah, at night.
 - Yeah, we need it to be.
 - I'm not one for the thing.
 - Yeah.
 - Yeah.
 So as for EU, right now, we'll see.
 I don't know that I can justify the cost
 of an EU server right now.
 When I look at the numbers of it,
 for a couple of reasons.
 One is I love our EU players
 and I want you to have a good experience too,
 but yeah, the EU data center
 is having an EU option is even more expensive.
 So I'd have to look at the numbers again.
 So, but let's see how this one does.
 I know extra ping is hard on European players,
 but also not having 10 second lag spikes
 is pretty sweet as well.
 So yeah, so I think that's really cool.
 I was looking at the art for the lanterns.
 So the lantern gets equipped in your trinket slot, right?
 And in this, the art for it of these cool, like,
 'cause when we're talking about lanterns that are missed,
 the mist of Ravenloft mists, right?
 - Yeah.
 - Like, we haven't been able to do that.
 The mist of Ravenloft mists, right?
 - Yeah, we haven't brought that party in.
 I wasn't sure if we were ready to say that,
 but this is associated with Ravenloft.
 - Yeah, and the lanterns are all like these stained glass
 horror-looking lanterns, they look really cool.
 - Yeah.
 - Yeah.
 I don't know when they're gonna see that.
 - I see players.
 - I see players may actually be better
 because won't they be coming through California?
 I-E-U comes across through the East Coast,
 but Aussie may come specific-wise.
 - Yeah, I don't know.
 I'm sure Australian players who are used to picking
 in the servers would know which,
 better than I, which direction I go, but...
 - Okay.
 I mean, I think we've kind of covered the news
 of what we can say here today.
 We are, you know, today working to get this server up
 and running in a preview environment
 for that first preview.
 So, you know, as soon as that work gets done,
 we're gonna be getting in there ourselves
 and kicking the tires and see how things look.
 And assuming things stay on track,
 we'll have a lot more to say about this.
 I would say in the coming weeks,
 but perhaps even for Safan next week, we'll see.
 - When will the test be?
 Yeah, everybody is like, don't say it, you'll jinx it.
 - Yeah.
 - So that's cool.
 - Yeah.
 - So hopefully this will be really cool for players.
 I really like the Lynch and the Miss thing.
 I think it solves a lot of the issues
 that we saw with hardcore.
 And I think that the players who like hardcore
 will have that vibe to it moving in
 and a fresh, you know, a fresh server experience
 where they have to make sure that they don't die.
 So it'll be scary.
 Yeah.
 - Awesome.
 - Yes, night rebels will be coming soonish.
 - I think, I mean, we're pretty close to announcing that.
 I think that should be set for generally first
 or maybe second week of October.
 I think it depends on when our patches may be,
 but it'll be throughout most of October is the answer.
 - Unless we have more questions.
 - Will I see more Ravenloft stuff?
 I am reasonably confident that you will see more
 more substantial Ravenloft content,
 if that's what you like.
 I have nothing to announce now, but like we also like that.
 So we are eager to do some more Ravenloft stuff.
 - I don't want to take too much of your time here today.
 So I think I do have a few other things for the stream as well.
 We're gonna show off the prismatic dragon cosmetic armor
 that people are gonna get next week
 with either the dragon here once we're done.
 So, and then we'll be heading in game
 and maybe do a little myth trainer or something as well.
 We'll see.
 We'll see what we end up doing here today.
 Kinda depends how many questions we get.
 So the reason I'm bringing this up for us is if you're in chat,
 let's get a few, let's get some more questions going.
 I knew I'd get--
 - Give me some of the switch questions.
 - So let's do that.
 - Yep, yep.
 - So the first one is the idea is that lantern users
 can group with lantern users.
 That's the whole point is that we want people to group
 as much as they possible.
 If you're a hardcore lantern user,
 meaning your lantern is destroyed when you die,
 you can group with a non-hardcore or lantern user
 because it's not the content,
 it's not even a server flag, it's the lantern itself.
 So people who are using lanterns that don't get destroyed
 can help you out and make progress for it
 while you're doing that or they can mess with you.
 So you want to be careful who you group with
 if you're in the hardcore issue.
 So that's the answer to that is that we want people,
 or if you don't have a lantern at all,
 you can group with people there,
 although it might reveal a mist walker
 and even if you don't have a lantern,
 you'll have to deal with that.
 You want to be careful in grouping
 because it could reveal,
 each lantern can reveal mist walkers.
 So you want to be,
 you want to be careful on that.
 So for the lantern question,
 we're not shutting down trading,
 but that's one of the reasons
 that we have a fresh start server for it
 so that everybody starts unequal footing.
 So you can, so it will be like a normal server
 and that we're not restricting,
 we're not restricting trading and all of that stuff.
 But since you can't transfer,
 you won't be able to move a character over
 and add twink items, for instance,
 in order to power through.
 And the only time that somebody will be able to power
 through you through stuff for you
 will be if they've made progress on the server themselves
 and even then you,
 the mist walkers won't appear to people
 that are wildly outside the range.
 So I see about all the rune arm lovers.
 I will talk to Steelstar,
 mention that people were putting in for rune arms,
 more rune arm love,
 he's a big artificer of lover as well.
 So I'm sure that he will be super happy with that.
 - I can answer the question about the mimic hunt.
 It's still on our schedule of events
 to come up here in the future.
 We just need to find the right time and place for it.
 It'll be coming back.
 - Wow, you asked people are loving to ask
 like specific itemization stuff.
 Yeah, we'll probably have more sounding rune arguments.
 So that will be good.
 There was another question.
 - I see one from Johnny asking about
 what's the new adventure pack in the fourth quarter?
 I don't know that we're really interested
 in getting into plot at this point.
 It's really up to whatever you know about it really.
 But we do have one coming.
 We do, in fact, actually have a cross pack coming here.
 - Do I want to spoil it?
 I don't think I want to spoil it yet.
 It's definitely thematic.
 Like they all have the same theme.
 So, and it sounds cool,
 but I don't want to spoil it quite yet.
 - Yeah.
 - One of the things about the sun and moon
 statements slotting is that our first main goal
 for the sun and moon slot is so that you weren't locked
 into set bonus blocks in your gear
 that didn't allow you to progress your gear
 unless you give it up.
 But the downside is that the sun and augments
 kind of reflect that.
 And so if you had weaker set bonuses earlier on,
 there are still augments for that.
 And I imagine that in the long term,
 you'll slowly see sun and moon augments that will replace that.
 And that way you're not locked into these big set bonuses,
 but you still have the ability
 to kind of build extra stuff on gear.
 - I don't think we have a plan to bring these
 to the regular game worlds.
 This lantern's in the midst of that.
 But someone is asking, if we did,
 could they have an enemy mechanic there
 that's different or something like that?
 - Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying for now,
 this is only for the single server.
 You want to be careful because this can be disruptive
 to play players, to people who don't want to opt in.
 And so we want to keep it on the single server
 because we don't want people to troll other players
 by equipping a lantern when they didn't expect it
 and have missed walkers here.
 Yeah.
 - All right, let's say last chance for questions.
 - You're really trying to, he's,
 so he really wants to show this cool armor.
 - Well, I do.
 - Well, I just don't want to, you know,
 we basically said everything that I know that we can say
 mostly about the 64-bit worlds at this point,
 but at least from what I know.
 - Call Art wants to know, you know,
 can we expect this kind of new event
 that are non-hardcore on this new server for the future?
 So for example, you know, this is gonna have a beginning
 and it'll get shut off at one point.
 Could we see events like this in the future?
 And the reason I wanted to ask a little bit more
 about that too is because we had our
 Elithid Invasion event last year,
 which thematically, I think at least in the creative space
 was somewhere in the same wheelhouse as this.
 I think there's a Venn diagram there
 where the two are overlapping a little bit, right?
 - Yes.
 - Basically, this server will be on forever.
 So when this event ends,
 you'll still see all of the normal mimic events
 and I'm trying to think of the cove,
 the name of the cove event.
 - Crystal Cove. - Crystal Cove, thank you.
 For some reason, I had Corsair's Cove
 stuck in my head.
 I'm like, I know that's not right.
 Crystal Cove, all of those will come on,
 night rebels will come on and the server and such.
 So. - Yep.
 - Oh, I know that there's a bug on some accounts that,
 like it's hard to get your DDO account
 and your LOTRA account on.
 And we, I think we looked and tried to fix that and take.
 So that's something we have to look into.
 - We obviously got a lot of chatter going
 about transfers in that here for potential future plans
 of what we could do after this debut
 of our 64-bit server here.
 So, I want to be a little careful.
 I don't want to cause confusion though as well.
 So we're not talking about character transfers
 to this 64-bit server.
 This is C4-bit server will be VIP only
 and will not have character transfers enabled.
 The discussion from earlier about character transfers
 is about what we might be able to do afterwards.
 - Right.
 And that all predicates on how well this server does.
 For instance, if we've run into this
 and the tech just doesn't work as well,
 we can't do the same plan because it wouldn't be able
 to support the same amount of people.
 Also for the test, the other thing
 that I don't want to be confusing.
 We want as many players on as possible.
 Won't be VIP, we'll have character copy.
 You do all of that.
 Then we wipe it and it's a fresh start server
 to VIP only.
 - We are going to have some kind of rewards
 for these lantern events,
 but I don't think we want to talk about that today.
 But you get stuff?
 Yes, yes, you get stuff.
 - Oh, yeah.
 - Yeah. - Absolutely.
 - Yeah.
 All right, Seth, thanks for joining me here today.
 I really appreciate you taking some time
 with us here on this live stream.
 Well, I'm sure we'll be seeing you again probably
 in a few weeks as we're rolling out more information
 about the 64 bit server here.
 So thanks for joining me.
 - Awesome, have a great one.
 - All right, I am going to,
 what happened to my text?
 Okay, here we go.
 I'm going to go in game.
 There we are.
 Yes, this will be a long-term server.
 (gentle music)
 - It's not that I ignored your Mythjour in our lore question,
 it's just that I don't know the answer to it.
 I just, several in focus, it was on the 64 bit world.
 And I think really the answer to that question
 would be best asked to the people
 who did the story work for Magic of Mythjour in our.
 So that would be knockback and the quest designers
 in particular who are going to be able to offer
 and more insight into the motivations
 of why they selected certain parts
 of Mythjour in order to focus on over others.
 All right.
 So I am in game on an undisclosed world
 in an undisclosed location.
 And I am here to show you on Cordova
 and the new outfit that will be arriving
 with Year of the Dragon next week.
 So before I actually show you the new stuff,
 I need to remind you about the old.
 You have through,
 what was our official cutoff day too?
 We've double checked my cutoff date.
 You have through September 24th.
 So through Tuesday, you have through Tuesday
 to pick up your Draconic Raiders reward box
 by speaking to Zathrol and the Everon Hall of Heroes.
 This will get you your selection of raid loot
 once per server.
 So only one character on the server is gonna get it,
 but you get your own pick a nice raid loot, historical,
 for free by talking to a person.
 As long as you do it through Tuesday.
 So don't show up on Wednesday
 and be like, what?
 Oh man, don't be that person.
 You too can log into the game
 and get your free awesome loot for free.
 And make sure you do it in time.
 But you do have through Tuesday, September 24th to do it
 because starting on Wednesday,
 once we come up from our weekly downtime,
 we're gonna have a new reward.
 And that's going to be a prismatic dragon cosmetic outfit.
 I think, well, we've got the names here.
 I am actually gonna be showing it off.
 So these are the items.
 There's three of them.
 There is a prismatic dragon helm.
 Fashioned after a dragon,
 that shimmers like rainbows on the sun.
 A prismatic dragon armor bound to account.
 These are all cosmetics and the cloak.
 And I'm gonna equip them here.
 And we'll take a look and see, see what we think.
 I'm character there, so.
 There we are.
 This is gonna be the free cosmetic set
 that arrives on Wednesday.
 You can speak this after all to pick it up
 and it'll be available for a month until our next year.
 The dragon gift arrives.
 We're doing monthly gifts
 just for logging into the game.
 Celebrating 50 years,
 touches the dragons online this year,
 and this is our most recent one.
 So, so there we go.
 Mr. green dragon wings getting in the way, that's fine.
 I'm not even mad.
 But let me, let me pop into, oops.
 All right.
 There we go.
 I'm just gonna keep this up then for a little bit
 while I go through some questions.
 (soft music)
 Dance please.
 I don't know what dance is, I think.
 I don't know what dance.
 Two.
 There we go.
 We'll do this one.
 (soft music)
 (soft music)
 Yeah, it's fortunately my, it's darkness here.
 I don't know if I can, let's see.
 We may have to kind of just sort of wait
 till it gets later out.
 But let me, let me pop somewhere else
 and see if I can, oh, I've got an idea.
 This totally won't crash the game world, I say.
 Famous last words.
 Here we go.
 Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can see this much better
 in some regular kind of ish sunlight.
 Well, this is still kind of not quite right,
 but you can see that it's got more going on here
 in terms of coloration and kind of shimmer and shine.
 So, let me get us into some sunlight.
 (soft music)
 (soft music)
 (soft music)
 (soft music)
 (soft music)
 (soft music)
 (soft music)
 (soft music)
 (soft music)
 (soft music)
 Let's see, can I actually get out here?
 Nope, nope.
 Okay.
 (soft music)
 Oops.
 (soft music)
 Here, and what do you pick up before Tuesday?
 What you pick up is the Draconic Raiders reward box.
 And you do that by speaking with Zatharal
 and the Eberron Hall of Heroes through Tuesday, September 24th.
 Someone said, I just missed what what the important thing was.
 What's the important thing?
 Well, this is the important thing.
 All right, well, I'm not getting my sunlight
 that I was hoping I might get by swapping to this location,
 but I'll just stay here anyway while I go look for,
 look at some questions.
 Once we claim it, will it be like the wings?
 Yes.
 Well, I don't think it's like the wings.
 It's a cosmetic.
 So you'll be able to just claim it in the future
 by speaking to the claims NPC associated with this,
 you're the dragon stuff.
 All these cosmetics are gonna be re-acquireable
 by speaking to, is it Estras?
 I think it's Estras, whoever that is,
 that's also in the Eberron Hall of Heroes.
 So long term, you'll be able to get new copies
 of these cosmetic items, but you do have to claim it
 during the month that it's available.
 Oh, I don't know, you know what?
 I don't think I've got the wings on this admin character.
 I don't think I gave myself the wings yet.
 No, I don't.
 Sorry.
 I can't do the wings look on this armor
 'cause I don't have the wings.
 I can try, however, to get to the other side here.
 See if I can pick up some of that sunlight maybe.
 Okay.
 Any reason why the gauntlets of immortality were not offered.
 I don't think there was a specific reason
 why any singular raid item wasn't offered
 in the Draconic Raiders reward box.
 Other than we wanted to mix it up some
 from what we did with the old Raiders reward box.
 We wanted to make sure it was different
 with the exception we kept in the sort of shadow
 'cause everyone wanted it.
 But I think really that's mostly what it was is,
 is it roughly dragon related
 and or could it be sort of theoretically lumped enough
 in to include and is it different enough
 from the other one that we did a few years back?
 And so in terms of the gauntlets of immortality,
 I don't think there was any specific reason.
 I can tell you, I like those gauntlets.
 They're not too hard to get, at least in my experience, so.
 How did I get it a week early?
 I'm a cheater, yes, I am.
 Okay.
 Are we gonna do a community design quest again?
 I don't think we were in a rush to do another one.
 We did one this last year in 2023
 related to the PAX East presentation
 that we did that year
 and we wanted to offer it as a free dungeon
 at the end of that year and we did.
 I think I'm sure we might do something like that again,
 but it probably wouldn't be any time too soon.
 I did end up being a bunch of work to do that making of
 and it was a good time.
 So.
 All right.
 I think I saw something,
 Strimmed Tom had asked a little bit,
 both DDO and Lotra have had a few game performance issues.
 This past week seems to be happening at the same time
 as there were a reason for that.
 The answer is yes.
 We have had a few issues at the data center this week
 and sadly that did impact both games at the same time.
 Yeah.
 Oh, my cat is passed out.
 It's a rainy dark day here today
 and cooler than it's been of late.
 I think it's been 64 degrees right now, which is great,
 but it's not 85.
 So between that and the wind and rain,
 my cat is just sort of zonked out in a chair
 as a good cat ought.
 I don't think she's gonna want to go on her five o'clock walk
 because it's all crappy out.
 Oh, let's see, Strimmed Tom, name mentioned, let's go.
 Yeah, yeah.
 Yeah, we saw some of the issues
 we've been having in recent week or so have been
 something that has been within our level of control.
 And there have been a couple of things that have happened,
 say last weekend in a little bit this week
 that were somewhat less out of our control.
 And so we do apologize for that,
 but we have had a couple of issues over the past week.
 All right, I don't know what else should we mention.
 Should I just spend the next 10 minutes reading over
 my Dungeons and Dragons player's handbook brand new one?
 This thing's sweet, loving it.
 I think the artwork on the book is really excellent.
 I've been digging it, reading through the classes.
 It's been a good thing.
 I think, you know, one of the things that really struck me
 is that they're not kidding when they were saying
 that it's still mostly fifth edition.
 And it is, so organized really nicely,
 though, I've been really digging it.
 All right.
 No, you're wrong.
 You are wrong, Beldorat.
 I'm sorry, but you're just wrong.
 (laughing)
 I mean, you don't have to like the player's handbook.
 It's fine, but to say that it's like,
 not of quality is incorrect.
 It's clearly of quality.
 When is DDO getting its campaign book?
 Well, it's already got one.
 It was made by a player called the Storm Reach Campaign
 many years ago.
 You have to translate it,
 but you should be able to largely do that.
 That would be sweet, though, wouldn't it?
 I would be down.
 I would be down.
 Can't wait for February and Dragon to cycle.
 Who needs the holidays?
 Let's skip it.
 Yep, I think Steelstar has talked a little bit
 about Dragon to cycle in recent weeks.
 We don't know if it'll be free transfers
 or not free transfers.
 So typically it depends on what we would end up doing
 in the future related to the existing game worlds.
 Typically if an existing game world
 is going to be continuing on in its state long term,
 then we wouldn't want to only offer free transfers off.
 We would typically do that if we were ultimately going
 to be moving people from one world to another.
 But typically in a case where we are moving people
 from one world to another,
 we will offer those transfers for free.
 There's no expectation that everyone is going to have
 to pay their accounts to move, say, from,
 like whenever we did that one a while back.
 That's the way it works on hardcore as well.
 So I wouldn't expect any major changes
 between the way we do it for hardcore
 and the way we would do it for any world.
 Because it's a pretty basic setup that we have,
 which is that if it's optional, it's optional.
 If it's not optional, then we're not going to make it pay for.
 [ Silence ]
 >> Can we get some more information about the next 69.3,
 Lamania Preview and Patch planned release date, perhaps?
 Go take a look, see what I can dig up for you.
 When I look at our current schedule, it looks like,
 so like we say, it's likely that next week
 we will at the very least have a Lamania Preview,
 our second preview for the new RAID.
 So regardless of what ends up happening in the coming days
 with the 64-bit server testing that we're doing,
 it's likely that there will be a Lamania next week
 and it'll be the RAID at the very least.
 But the addition could be that in addition to a Lamania Preview,
 we're going to have a core mirror preview
 using the Lamania game launcher.
 And that would be something that we'll announce
 if we can next week, but at the very least,
 we'll be having a RAID preview for 69.3,
 and that will be next week on Lamania.
 So then, if next week goes well
 in terms of the RAID preview and things,
 there is a potential that we could release 69.3
 sometime in early October.
 It is likely that there's some night levels
 working there as well.
 So depending on the timing of that 69.3 patch,
 as I think going to determine partially the timing
 of night levels, so I would expect early October
 for 69.3, and I don't want to get more specific than that,
 but it'll be one of the first Wednesdays in October.
 Do the math, look at the calendar.
 But next week, we've got our Lamania Preview,
 our next year of the Dragon giveaway that we're doing,
 and Crystal Cove is underway as well.
 That's the other bit that I haven't had a chance
 to talk about yet, but you could see right here.
 Euphonia's Challenge, Treasurer of Crystal Cove,
 arrived this Thursday, yesterday,
 and it runs through September 29th.
 It's just something to do.
 We know that some people have been asking for it back.
 We thought it would be a fun thing to do,
 get you a chance to do some loot,
 celebrate yesterday's talk like a pirate day,
 and just generally have fun and enjoy.
 So that's what we've been up to in terms of this week.
 Let me get back in there.
 There we are.
 Quite sure what happened.
 Something happened with my game client source.
 Just now, I lost it on X split.
 Furls up and I couldn't.
 Couldn't unfurls it.
 It's furls in and it wouldn't unfurls, so.
 That's fine.
 I'll just do it live on the air.
 You'll see CNN doing this.
 All right, so more information than otherwise about 69.3,
 my expectation would be it would be any final polish needed on new night
 levels because we have, I think, something in the range of a couple of new
 items and a new quest that'll be happening here with night
 levels. It'll be the new raid and probably a few bugs and polish that
 didn't get into either 69.1 or 69.2 and then at that point,
 I think with the release of 69.3, we'll be closing the door,
 hopefully fingers crossed on the update 69 release cycle and begin looking at
 update 70, which will be our quest pack that'll be happening here to round out
 the group. Independent, really, of this 64 of them.
 We need a new quest where we help strike the cobalt, woo a female cobalt that wishes.
 She were a human and even wears a wig with pigtails coming out.
 Okay, oh, I don't know where you're going. Do we need to help? The
 main thing is we need a dating quest to help
 Scrag find a date. I could be down for that, I could be
 down for that.
 Or perhaps Scrag has even better found a date and needs somebody to watch his
 dogs while he does. Because, although they were not Scrag's dogs,
 as anyone who knows, will know that they were, you know,
 intruders. The experience of having so many dogs
 in his residence was enough that he has become a dog
 fan and now he has lots of dogs who need to be kept
 while he goes out on his romantic date. And so you have to
 basically herd tendons. Legendary raid.
 Best raid MMO.
 The bonus for the weekend is the return of Crystal Cove.
 We call it DDO bonus days, but it's really a mix of bonuses and events.
 And in this case, it's on the event side rather than the booster side.
 And I'm just kindling some time here because it's already five o'clock. There
 was no point kind of starting a new quest in that, so I thought it would just be
 that.
 Pac-Man Ghost Gang is missing the pink one. You're right.
 There's, it's just the three ghosts in the, in the Pac-Man.
 Yeah, yeah. I don't think several of them picks winners
 there in Infinite. I'm sorry, I just early cozy.
 I, I don't think several of them wants to engage and,
 and picking who's the best live streamer. Besides, we all know it's cozy
 bean. Oh, I'm kidding. You can clip that if you want to lose audience.
 It's like a reverse promo thing, right? Instead of actually helping your channel,
 I heard it.
 Yep, protect the puppers.
 Scrag is obviously the cat person. I, you probably are right. I could see
 Scrag being more of a cat person, but you know, like I said, the experience
 changed, changed Scrag. So, so there you go.
 Yeah.
 Cue to who Scrag State could be.
 Malaysia. Anyway, okay, so thank you for watching
 Fridays at four on twitch.tv/ddostream. This show gets up on YouTube
 a few hours afterwards, and thanks very much for being here in chat.
 I will have a lot more information in the coming weeks as we
 do our first preview of the 64-bit server and beyond. So, hope you're having a
 good time and Dungeons and Dragons online. I will see you in
 Myth, Dranner, and beyond. Have a great week, and everyone. Talk to you again soon. Bye-bye.