Whenever we report something about Dungeons and Dragons Online, the name Victor "Sporkfire" Wachter is almost always the first person that comes to mind (apart from the gamers of course). Being the online community manager of the Turbine-developed MMO, Sporkfire has always been available for fans to give clarifications and comments.

However, in a move seen as very surprising and quite intriguing, Sporkfire left Turbine and jumped ship to Cryptic Studios to serve as the lead community manager for the latter's MMOs. Accordingly, Cryptic has a number of on-going projects which include City of Heroes, City of Villains and the much anticipated title Marvel Universe Online (MMO, X360).

Furthermore, Sporkfire didn't mention specifically what the considerations were made before making the shift. "I am a huge fan of superhero. And so working with the company that put the genre on the MMORPG map is one of the most exciting things to have ever happened to me," explained Sporkfire. Wachter's post back in DDO will be put under the supervision of Turbine's Community Relations Specialist Ariel "Samera" Jaffee-Mark.

We've already reported on the recent interruption to Turbine's DDO service, so we've been following that particular lead, and we were pleasantly surprised by this bit of information.

Apparently as a "thank you" to the loyal DDO player community, the admin is providing each character created before November 2, 2006, a free dragonshard that will permit each character to swap out a previously chosen Feat. If you have no idea what a feat is, think of it as a permanent character upgrade or trait (or "perks" in Fallout, if you're familiar with that classic PC RPG) that a character gets as the character progresses in level.

This is almost like a mini skill reset. So it's a biggie.

Here's the pertinent post on the DDO forums made by Community Relations Manager, Sporkfire:

A Thank You to Our Players

The recent network issues caused some inconveniences for many of you, and we’d like to make amends for that. As a thank you for your patience and support, everyone with an active subscription will receive a dragonshard.

Each character created before November 2nd, 2006 will receive a free dragonshard that will permit each character to swap out a previously chosen feat. As feats are an integral part of character development, dragonshards allow you to tune your character with a better understanding of the game and how those choices affected your character’s abilities. For more information on using dragonshards, please visit the DDO Forums or read the article on Dragonshards.

The dragonshard will be live by November 15th and will appear in character inventories at that time.

Thanks again for playing DDO!

The DDO Team
Victor Wachter
Community Relations Manager

Now that is a nice way to keep your players happy.

Dungeons and Dragons Online offers players capricious missions. Especially now that the modules are released, DDO is getting more dangerous and more exciting than ever. Players who can afford it know it is wise to visit an auction house first before going on a journey. One doesn't know what one needs until one sees it. Sounds wise, right? Don't look for that anywhere, we just made it up.

Speaking of auction house anyway, the DDO map is full of them so no player should miss it. Unfortunately, recent events one way or the other lead for them to close. Community Manager Sporkfire is once more on top of things as he responded immediately. "We are aware of the losses that some people had in the system, and we are working on a solution to help those people out as well," writes the CM in DDO's official forum.

As far as solution is concerned, the management has provided as far as restoring auction posting. They were finally restored back to servers and business can go on as before. "You can now buy and sell securely and reliably again," Sporkfire exclaims. He further promises that more information will be available once they've reached a full scale solution.

After the release of the third module of Dungeons and Dragons Online last October 22, the game's official site and servers suffered tremendous amount of technical difficulties. Not only that, the service disruption also affected some of the game's loyal following. While this could only mean high traffic for DDO, problems such as this always translate to bad business.

Upon noticing the incident, Community Relations Manager Sporkfire quickly addressed the residents of fictional continent, Xen’drik. "It is our goal to produce cutting-edge games that immerse our fans in other worlds, and disruptions like this are unacceptable to us." The official also cleared that all servers remained open. It's just that the network couldn't properly handle the peak number of active users.

Sporkfire further reiterated, "Resolving this issue is our number one priority. We’re truly sorry for the problems any of you experienced. Please bear with us for just a bit longer as we finalize a solution." We guess sometimes, it isn't really necessary for a company to fix a problem at once. It is enough for fans to know that they are heard, being prioritized and ultimately, not forgotten. In case the problem takes a while to be fixed, we could always go back to the good ol' days and play Dungeons and Dragons, pen-and-paper style.

First, the good news: Sporkfire at DDO just reported that Wizard-users will be happy to know that after the Demon Sands update that just kicked in, their Energy Resistance line of spells will be consolidated into one spell

This means that in just one click (and one memorization slot), your Wizard is now protected from all the varying energy types in-game.

Speaking of slots, now for the bad news: When you log on again, do you see all those memorization slots you oh-so painstakingly set up for the individual Resist spells before the update? Scrap 'em.

It turns out that if you don't remove the resist spell icons during your first session and replace them with new spells, those slots will become unusable in your future sessions, meaning you can't even use the space freed up for your more spectacular nukes (ie spells).

We don't have any news on when they'll fix this problem for those unfortunate enough to discover this the hard way, or how the developers plan to alleviate this problem,  but to those only about to log on to DDO, you've been warned.

Heads up, DDO fans! You might want to check out the Gen Con Indy at Indianapolis, Indiana on August 10-13, 2006 as the Dungeons and Dragons Online Team (David Eckelberry, Lead Designer; Terry "SIG" White, Quality Assurance Manager; Victor "Sporkfire" Wachter, Online Community Relations Manager; and Jesse "Eldorudo" Smith, Online Community Relations Representative) will be at booth 1645.

Not only will you get a chances to chitchat with the DDO team, you could also get to play DDO right there, and be updated on the latest plans and upcoming events for DDO - including what they're calling 'the biggest things to hit DDO yet' (we've no idea yet what that might be about - why don't you folks find out?). So mark August 10-13 on your calendar and go on a road trip to Indiana for some DDO fun.

Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach (DDO) Community Relations Manager Victor Wachter (aka Sporkfire), is calling on loyal fans of the MMO to help update the DDO Manual. This is in line with DDO's plan to update the official site and make it a more complete resource page for players looking for information about the game. While some gamers usually like to "wing it" while adventuring into the massive world of DDO, some gamers seek clear and complete instructions on playing the game. Yes, folks, that's what the manuals are for.

Sporkfire has started a thread at the DDO forum to allow players to post issues that they feel should have more detailed information. There's nobody better to help than hordes of DDO players who have logged long hours playing the game. DDO is also interested in information that are incorrectly listed in the manual.

So, whether you spot an incorrect info or you simply want an expanded info on existing features, head on to the DDO forum and let the DDO Team know about the things that have been causing those sleepless nights.

In an interview with Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach (DDO) Executive Producer James Jones has revealed that a PvP feature is in the works and will likely coincide with the Houses of Stormreach tournaments lined up for the MMO.

One curious Arthineous (a DDO forum member) has questioned the sudden change of heart on the PvP feature. Fully 85% of DDO forum members have expressed their disapproval of PvP. Obviously the move on the part of DDO developers is not based on player votes.

DDO Community Relations Manager Sporkfire (aka Victor Wachter) has joined the DDO forum discussion to shed some light, albeit minimal, on the issue of PvP.

Without going into specifics, Sporkfire has assured players that PvP will not impact regular gameplay. He added, We won't balance dungeon combat for the sake of PvP. Any necessary balance changes will be in the PvP Arenas themselves, and not in the PVE game. Also, you will never be in a situation where you were happy doing your own thing, when somebody comes along and ganks you to steal all your gear. That's only fun for one person in the encounter, and we all agree that it sucks.

Sporkfire got into a bit of a "justifying" mode when he said that one of the cool things about PvP is that it can be used with Eberron setting as another means to gain favor of the different houses. PvP rankings will serve as another metric for achievements, in addition to experience, loot, and currency.

In an effort to convince the forum that PvP is A-OK, he said, It's also another activity to do between adventures, and if you have been following our discussions on future plans, you know we have a lot of those kinds of things in development. PvP, crafting, tavern games, social tools and all that are all part of the plan to provide lots of reasons to visit and live in Stormreach.