Runewalker and SOE are eager to show off their open-beta project, Dragon's

Prophet. We got an invite to a live-streamed demo of their

upcoming content on Thursday, but that didn't work out as planned.

Instead, we got the straight dope right from the mouth of Associate

Producer Rod Haza, who gave us the rundown on what's

happening now and what's in store for this intriguing new F2P game.

The focus of the interview was largely on the game's first expansion, Wintertide.

Generally, one might expect an expansion to come out sometime after the

game officially launches, but Runewalker/SOE are bucking that trend and

releasing the expansion while Dragon's Prophet is still in open beta. When

the game eventually does go live - the date to be announced at this year's

SOE Live in August - it will come pre-packaged with the expansion already

included.

In addition to a slew of beta bug fixes, Wintertide introduces a new

zone, new game systems and an increased level cap, from 60 to 70.

The new Wintertide zone is, as you might guess, winter themed, with lots

of snow and ice and new creatures to fight. In terms of story, there's

enough content to get characters from level 60 to the new cap of 70, and

there are 4 new dungeons to explore.

"Three of those dungeons are your standard, either one person or

five-person dungeons," Rod explained. "And then there's the fourth

dungeon, which is one of our legendary dungeons that is a main storyline

dungeon that is a climax for that zone. It also has additional bosses in

it, so that dungeon, when you go through it, you'll hit five different

boss mobs as compared to the other times when you have a single boss mob."

The Wintertide region comes with a bit of history. In times past, it

served as a battleground of one of the first Dragon Wars, when legions of

dragons battled each other and their human allies, the Osira, for control

of the land of Auratia. The remains of the legendary dragons of old are

still scattered across the landscape of Wintertide - great vaulted

ribcages and serpentine lines of vertebrae, sheathed in ice and snow. The

main story in Wintertide doesn't deal so much with history, however, as it

does on the current relationship between the Osira and the Ice Trolls, a

race of giants who live in the area. The relationship is not a neighborly

one, and the story follows the conflict between the two peoples.

The Wintertide expansion also introduces a couple of fairly major new or

revamped systems to the game.

The first has to do with collecting dragons. Dragons are a pretty big

deal in Dragon's Prophet - they are mounts, combat buddies, skill-sharers

and resource-gatherers - and a lot of players want to try to collect as

many of them as possible. Unfortunately, players have a limited capacity

to actually collect dragons because of limited storage. The solution: the

Dragon Chamber.

"What the Dragon Chamber does for you is, it allows you to store

additional dragons," Rod explained. "Currently when you are playing the

game, you have your Dragon Stable, which is the dragons you carry around

with you that give your your abilities and your dragons that can fight

alongside you. Previously, we allowed you to then store those in the

Dragon Lair, where they could do activities for you. You can send them out

for resources, or you can train them to get different abilities through

the Dragon Lair. We've now introduced a third area where we allow you to

store those dragons. After you've tamed a few of the ancient or fabled

dragons and you wanna keep them, but you're working on different dragons

at the time, previously you had to let them go or lose them. You only had

a total of twelve you could actually have [at one time]. The Dragon

Chamber allows you to store them as kind of a warehouse of your dragons,

let them off to have a little retreat. And you can store an additional 96

dragons if you unlock all the slots."

Guilds are getting an update with the Dragon Sanctuary,

Dragon's Prophet's version of a guild hall. According to Rod, "It gives

you an instance that you can go to for your guild - it's a personal area

that only your guild can go to. The Dragon Sanctuary gives you access to a

few extra world NPCs so that you can adjust your Dragon Shards which are

enhancements to your items. You can also access your lair while you're

there, and it also gives access to guild banks."

There are already plans in place to increase the functionality of the

Dragon Sanctuary. "We also have some other features that will be coming

out soon with the Dragon Sanctuary that aren't quite available yet. Down

the line, it's going to give you the ability to actually have encounters

within the Dragon Sanctuary, so that you can spawn a boss mob of sorts for

your guild to fight in that Dragon Sanctuary, and get special rewards just

for that system. That will be coming down the line pretty soon."

And it's not just guilds that are getting fancy new homes. Individual

players will get new housing options, too. Previously, players had the

ability to buy an open-world lot and build a house on it, or a private

instanced apartment, which can be upgraded by buying additional rooms. The

Wintertide Secret Apartment housing upgrade uses teleporter

pads to transform lowly apartments into "bigger on the inside" private

island retreats.

"What we added was an additional upgrade to that. The original system

allowed you to have a single apartment and you could upgrade that to a

two-room or a three-room if you wanted to. With this update, we added in

the Secret Apartment.

What that does is, it adds a teleport that takes you to your own instance

island. Once you have that island, you can actually go into there and

place full-sized houses and decorate them. It's one of the things a lot of

players are really looking forward to, because a lot of them bought the

Dragon Lord and Dragon Master packs, in which one of the housing items was

an actual house. The problem they ran into with the current apartments,

they had a hard time placing that because it was so huge. But the secret

island gives them an opportunity to place those houses and really get into

the housing system a lot more than they previously did."

This update and expansion is available now. Stay tuned for some upcoming

Dragon's Prophet newbie guides!