Greetings everybody! I'm Dungeons & Dragons Online Producer Amanda "Tolero" Grow and I'm writing to tell you what we have in store for the year. If you are just joining us or returning after a break, welcome! Here are some of the things we have been up to:

Looking back:

2024 saw us celebrating a big year with the 50th Anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons! We've been distributing free gifts that are still available to claim as we wrap up the "Year of the Dragon". Read more about these gifts on DDO.com. Our final Year of the Dragon gift is the new Dragon Disciple monk archetype, which will be free for everyone to claim with our 19th Anniversary in late February until March 26th. We released our Magic of Myth Drannor expansion that brought players to the Forgotten Realms to experience Myth Drannor's infamous "Wild Magic". We introduced a new Ravenloft-themed live event called "Lanterns in the Mists" for our brand new 64-bit server, Cormyr. This story culminates with a raid being released for all DDO players soon! The raid will release shortly after our anniversary and features a new enemy we are very eager to see people battle: a Hydra! There is still plenty of time to get your Lantern rewards as well, since the event runs through April 15th on Cormyr. Read more about Cormyr on DDO.com.

New Worlds:

In a previous Producer's Letter I mentioned that our team has been undertaking efforts to improve game performance. The 64-bit Cormyr server was a huge part of that as it allowed us to best optimize how our game runs. Thanks to the hard work of our team as well as the important feedback we've heard from you, we are happy to report that we have made substantial improvement to game performance! I'll write more about our work to combat lag in a developer diary in the future, but for now I can say we are confident in our results and we will be rolling out an important change to all of Dungeons & Dragons Online this year.

We will be introducing new 64-bit game servers to all of DDO, including the addition of new servers based in Europe. As we get closer, we will announce more specifics about how these upgrades will happen, but we want the good performance people are seeing on Cormyr to be possible for all DDO characters. We will offer free transfers to our new 64-bit worlds from our 32-bit game worlds when we open these new servers, and we will have full details about the transfer process when we get closer to these servers opening. Our community has been crucial to making this a reality, and we look forward to sharing more information as we get closer to the launch of this project.

The year holds other updates and fun besides performance improvements. We will be creating new dungeons this Spring that will progressively unlock and we’ll have more information about it as we get closer. We will announce our next batch of rewards for the VIP Loyalty Reward Program that will be added to the current list. This next wave of rewards includes bonuses that stack with the prior year's bonuses in addition to more VIP cosmetics.

Into the Mists:

This summer we're headed to Ravenloft with a new expansion set in Lamordia! Lamordia features the distinct "Victorian" style horror theme Ravenloft is famous for and introduces a new playable character race called the Dhampir, who are poised between the worlds of the living and the dead. Story-wise, players will discover who has been working to free Dark Lords from their Ravenloft domains and why. Dark Lords breaking loose is a big problem! We know our players are no strangers to extra-planar threats, and are up to the task.

The next event:

Later this year we will host another live event, but this time it will be across all servers. Word on the street (i.e., my desk) is that we have some Fey mischief afoot! Players can opt-in to the event so they can group with others even if those players are working on a different goal, a hardcore goal, or no goal at all. We'll be making some improvements on our event tech as well based on player input from previous events, including more visually-distinctive rewards for our most challenging goals, as well as looking into the possibility of leaderboards for this upcoming event.

We will have more to come during the year but that is a high level look at our plans. I am so happy to be here working for the community of the game we all love, playing it together with friends, guildies, family, peers, and others. I look forward to another year together and I will see you in the game!

With Sincerity,

Tolero