Big news on the horizon for DDO

Hiya, this is Jerry from DDOcast. Just want to thank Shawn and the Massively crew for giving me a mention on this excellent site!

Yeah, something big and very secretive is in the works. I've heard no leaks, rumors or anything about this - which makes me think it'll be something big.

We know that Turbine has an interest in developing its games for consoles. They've had console job openings for months. In addition, their CEO has alluded to console work and social networking as being in the company's future.

Originally, I figured if any of the big T's games were headed to consoles, it'd be Lord of the Rings Online. It's their biggest and most successful game so far. But then again they've been committed to DDO, and maybe they think a more action-oriented MMO might be the key to success on a console.

Also, having DDO be the "guinea pig" (and I mean that in a good way) would give them the chance to enter the console market and learn about it through actual implementation before sending LOTRO to the xbox or ps3 (I think we can assume that neither of these games would be developed for the Wii).

So, on the one hand I'd say that if I was a betting person than I'd put my money on DDO headed to a console, with the Risia server either becoming the console server or turning into a console preview server or something. Then again, on my most recent show my brother Standpoint raised a really good possibility that this could be a good way to hold an event where everyone could play on the same server, or have a separate sort of event server.

During DDO's 2nd anniversary the crew had a great event where the Marketplace tent blew up at the hands of the devils from the plane of Shavarath. It was awesome, but there were some significant lag and technical issues that made it somewhat less than a total success. Having this kind of thing be on a dedicated server might be their answer?

Or maybe this might be a good way to have a dedicated PvP server as a way to compete with the other MMO's that have them, while still providing a preview server in the future?

Like I've said, this is all speculation, but it sure is interesting...

This rumor has been circulating for a long time (On massively even)! And frankly I hope it's true.