DDO

[nilzark]

Has anyone played Dungeons and Dragons Online? Is it worth a crap?

[Knuckle]

I have played it, the only way its fun after a few weeks is hanging with some fun people you know. if you want to give it a try send me a PM ill reinstall it.

[nilzark]

Don't have time right now, but I'll let ya know.

[Rhambuk]

even free its crap.

i thought you were talking about a new Dance dance (ddr) type game. ddr is better than ddo...

[Korisek]

I tried it once a long time ago, and as a social game it sucked dick. The chatrooms were FILLED with grognards that only wanted to talk about how UTTERLY TERRIBLE World of Warcraft was, and they stifled all other conversation on any other subject because EVERYTHING reminded them of how fucking AWFUL World of Warcraft was.

Which is a shame, because I was ready to face the world as a 6 CHA Warforged Paladin.

[smokemon]

It's fun for a while

[Nihilist_santa]

If you have a SO you like to do dungeon delving and gaming with, it's actually VERY good for a while.

If I remember correctly you move by pointing and clicking? I think so , it was that way in 9 dragons and they have the same engine it appears. Anyways pointing and clicking just sucks ass.

[Korisek]

If I remember correctly you move by pointing and clicking? I think so , it was that way in 9 dragons and they have the same engine it appears. Anyways pointing and clicking just sucks ass.

You can use both the mouse and the keyboard to move. Same system as in Guild Wars.

[stormlord]

I played it for a while. A few years ago. I'll try to recollect what I can.

F2P locks some of the classes and races. It also locks the "zones" you can enter. BUT you can earn points as a new player by completing all of the quests on elite. As your points go up, you can use them to purchase anything in the game. The problem, of course, is that it requires a lot of grinding. You also have to micromanage your quest list to make sure everything is done. There're a LOT of quests in the game.

When you start a quest you're given difficult levels: easy, balanced, hard, elite, veteran. Well, something like that. If you're in a group, you can start on hard the first time. But if you're alone you should start on easy or balanced to see how things work. Sometimes things can be loopy and your level might be too low to do well. The more you do a particular quest at a particular difficult the less experience you get for it. If I remnember right, you also get less expeirence from it if you're much higher level than the quest.

Basically you move from a town to another town in a linear fashion. All the players, when they're not in instances, will be roaming around in the town(s). Each town has NPCs for quests and an Inn for resting/duels/quests and merchants for various things.

The thing I liked about DDO was that the "zones" you enter have a cinematic feel to them, as do the quests. Even the cities have cinematic fluff thrown in; a scripted play, for example. Each zone has a line of quests to do. The zones will often change in response to completion of quests. When you do quests, there're often voice overs for the other NPCs and there's a narrator that gives you story and advice. The whole thing feels kind of like an interactive movie, if you like that kind of thing. It's ok and even enjoyable, if you're alone. You of course will have lots to do in the quest zones; kill stuff, complete objectives, unlock things, lockpick, etc.

You can combine classes in DDO (by becoming a hybrid) without much restriction. There're 20 levels in the game. Everytime you level up, you're given the opportunity to increase skills/stats and to adopt another class. When you adopt a class for the first time, you gain access to level 1 of that class. As you level up and adopt that class again and again, you will gain levels in it. This system has some restrictions and some classes do not combine well, but it's a fun system to mess with. (I haven't really mentioned all of the talent/rune things that also are a huge factor in character development).

If you reach max level, you can restart at level 1 and gain some new powers. So it's replayable in this sense. But I guess if a persons did this a lot it'd be fairly repetitive.

I don't remember combat very well. I think you get powers that you can use. They drain something. In the higher level ranges, the non-tanks can't take hits very good. Somewhat depends on the build.

The things that eventually made me leave in disgust were:
1) Microtransactions
....... There's really a lot of advertisements. The cash shop thing turned me off. It made them look like they had greasy fingers. I hated it. It separated me from the game.
2) Rush rush rush
....... When I'm in groups, I never had time to appreciate the quest I was doing. Everybody is rushing and there's no time to enjoy the story and the finer details of things. Thus, to really enjoy the story and lore and so on, you have to solo the quests. It's still more enjoyable to do them even if you're repeating them. Soloing just allows you to appreciate things. But oftentimes you'll find yourself joining a group to do a quest. Groups are like a speeding bullet and it totally ruins the fun. Like that phrase "Stop and smell the roses."
3 Lack of sandbox and too linear
...... There were no sandbox features in DDO. It's just a big (mostly) linear game. You can't jump off cliffs because the game won't let you. There're things you just can't do or can't change because the game is set to be done a certain way. You don't have a house. The guild has a balloon, but it's not impressive. You can't really change the world the way you want to. Overall, it just feels like fun on rails.

The game should be fun, at least for a while. But if you've already tried something like LOTRO, I don't see how DDO would be much different or better. I think they're similar - admittedly I haven't tried LOTRO.

I didn't really play DDO long enoguh to see much, though. My max level was someting like 9-11. I had alts. Maybe if I had played longer I could tell you more about how the game plays at those higher levels. Another thing is that I didn't try any of the P2P quest zones. I heard some of em were good.

[Hasbinbad]

You can pick and choose content to permanently buy or have temp access to, or if you subscribe you get it all as long as your sub is active. It's alright if you subscribe or buy all of the content. If you don't, it's repetitive and you can't get beyond XYZ achievements (of course if one was especially important to you, the microtransaction involved to get the thing is probably not that much on its own..).

[Hasbinbad]

always another carrot with this game tho, if you take my meaning

[Aeolwind]

Turbine is dumber than Sony ever attempted to be. They are a trainwreck of failure and stupidity. They make the rants and flames section of these forums look like Rhodes Scholars and Nobel Laureates. Their development team is awful. Their QA Department has a great guy at the helm, but they are not allowed to stop release of expansions regardless of the bugs in them. Including infinite plat bugs, instant quest completion bugs, instant leveling bugs, etc. The game is filled with exploits and bugs that make macroquest seem pointless. There are item dupe bugs, trading bound item bugs, etc.

You will be entertained for a bit, but it is fleeting. Waste not a single dime on the game.