Originally posted by x_rast_x You don't get a second chance to make a first impression. I trialed it a while back - it just felt way too much like a single-player game to me. No open world, all the dungeons had a solo setting and since I was new that was pretty much all I had available to me. And the combat was way too twitchy for me. But I might try another trial just in case...
A first chance for a second impression, sometimes works.
Solo setting was added to try and make the introduction to the game a little easier, the setting starts to disappear quite quickly and by level 6 (I think) there are only a few quests with it. It is possible to solo though beyond that, it just isn't spoon fed easy.
Someone mentioned a dungeon with an underground city, this I believe is the Shan-to-Kor quest chain. Worth making sure you get in a group and at least try this during your trial. One of the trap rooms is just insane.
You really have to advance a little more in the game to experience the team based fun. The first part on Korthos Island can be considered as a tutorial. I personally dont like solo playing any quests.
Like i said before, the learning curve is a little steep and i think the 10-day trial should be increased to a 14-day trial.
The quests have been made to be played in groups and the solo option (which is far too easy and will disappear later on) is only added to advance the first part of the game more quickly and for newbies to try the game out at their own pace.
When i started playing DDO i had exaclty the same feelings, that the world is too small. I totally changed my mind. DDO has about the same amount of quests as in Guild Wars if i remember correctly. It seems small because (aside from explorer areas which you can skip), there is no tedious mindless traveling or grinding monsters without using tactics like in WoW.
I agree with the fact that it may be too zerg-like for new players. But this is a problem that is hard to solve. There are many veterans that create new characters and you have to somehow seperate the newbies from the veterans. But you can always create a party that says 'no-zerging' or 'newbies only', thats totally up to you.
Every game has some problems and this may be one of DDO's, but its kinda inevitable and up to the players to solve it.
but they should have made it so that you can't do a dungeon again once you've completed it once.
Unfortunitly if they did that, then all of the players would have left along time ago! LOL.
The actual title of this OP probable should have been 'a diamond tha's been forgotten by it's DEV's'.
It is a pleasant little game, but to make up for the lack of constant new content they set it up so you can run the dungeon's on higher difficult settings. Nothing really changes, the place just get's a little harder each time.
While this is nice, it doesn't make up for the lack of new stuff to do. I play it with my youngest son and once we hit the wall as a 2 man fighter group and can't complete anymore of the dungeons I'm sure it will be dropped as he won't want to go back and re-do them.
I would have liked more character creation customization options but it seems to have just about the same as many other games (change the face but not the body) and I like the graphic's and visuals of it and would rate them above AoC while demanding a lot less from my machine.
As far as it not being an open world game ..... well D&D did involve travel to and from the dungeons so there was some and I guess you could say the wilderness areas kind of equal that. Wheither or not it would still have been able to claim D&D as it's father if it would have been a total sandbox style is hard to say.
For the setting of Eberron. It was picked as a direct Wizards of the Coast tie in, same as sticking Clone Wars stuff in SWG. Pure marketing. Atleast Turbine seems to have done a better job at working with what they were given.
it flat out sucks, don't waste your time, at least try the free 10 day trial first, thank the creator i never paid money for the game, learned my lesson long ago.
I would say DDO has some of the best Dungeons and Quests its just to bad its not a open world even if it was just zoned it would have been better than instancing pretty much everything. The only thing that I didn't like about the game was people wanted to grind the same dungeons to get gear. I know its not the games fault but they should have made it so that you can't do a dungeon again once you've completed it once. Just like in PnP DnD you can't do the same quests over and over again.
Well, if they did that, they would need tripple the amount of dungeons. You 'need' to repeat dungeons to get xp. The normal is to run a dungeon 3 times on normal difficult, then 3 times on hard and finally 3 times on elite. I think it has loosened up a little since I played, but you are still forced to repeat dungeons to get enough xp.
All this repeating was one of the things that drove me away from the game.
You 'need' to repeat dungeons to get xp. The normal is to run a dungeon 3 times on normal difficult, then 3 times on hard and finally 3 times on elite. I think it has loosened up a little since I played, but you are still forced to repeat dungeons to get enough xp.
When you want to lvl up fast you can do this on the quests that give the most xp. The normal thing for me is once on normal and hard. Sometimes once elite for xp. Mostly once elite for the extra favor it gives. I get to lvl 16 with doing maybe 50-60% of all quests atleast once.
This means you can really enjoy each quest and play them all once on hard for example. There are currently more then enough quests, you dont really need to repeat any if you do them all. Once again it's up to you if you want to repeat quests. You dont need to, in DDO you can do what you think is fun.
Alright lets say it is adiamond for the sake of argument.
Its make of crystalized carbon sure, but its kind of yellowish, its cut is non-ideal, its about 0.5 carat and has some fluoresence.
Not all diamonds are worth all that much money. The one I just described is no where near the price of a flawless and ideally cut diamond.
Point is yeah DDO has some very nice features that are pretty much unique and (IMO) badly needed in the MMO world. But it also has a ton of flaws and often falls back on BS out dated BS mechanics. The raiding and gear grind suck as bad as any other MMO. Same with the way the force to grind dungeons multiple times to get the good stuff. Yet the game is a spectacular action game. Seriously flawed.
It might be diamond sure its got nice stuff. Doesn't mean it is valuable.
Lord help us if this is a "diamond" in the this genre we all love/hate.
I'm not sure there was a more disappointing game for long time D&D fans, or even fans of the computer D&D games (me). I can't point to a single thing I liked about this game, so honestly, I can't relate to this thread at all.......
I feel the same way. I've said it once, I'll say it again, Turbine got their hands on an IP with nearly limitless possibilites. In the end they chose a lame, un-familiar D&D setting and half-assed the game.
Lord help us if this is a "diamond" in the this genre we all love/hate.
I'm not sure there was a more disappointing game for long time D&D fans, or even fans of the computer D&D games (me). I can't point to a single thing I liked about this game, so honestly, I can't relate to this thread at all.......
I feel the same way. I've said it once, I'll say it again, Turbine got their hands on an IP with nearly limitless possibilites. In the end they chose a lame, un-familiar D&D setting and half-assed the game.
The setting they chose was the Major setting that Wizards was pushing at the time. I would blame Wizards not Turbine for the setting.
Me I wish they did planescape. Fits DDO way better city of doors = instances with immersion, just a plain cool setting, and can do all the high degree of available magic stuff Eberron can do. But no one seems to do planescape. IMO it is clearly the best MMO D&D setting. What with all the factions, the already in place explanation for zone flow by level and the literally limitless possbilities. And with Planescape: Torment as a cult classic diamond in the rough with tons of story behind it you could easily build on a previous franchise.
Lord help us if this is a "diamond" in the this genre we all love/hate.
I'm not sure there was a more disappointing game for long time D&D fans, or even fans of the computer D&D games (me). I can't point to a single thing I liked about this game, so honestly, I can't relate to this thread at all.......
I feel the same way. I've said it once, I'll say it again, Turbine got their hands on an IP with nearly limitless possibilites. In the end they chose a lame, un-familiar D&D setting and half-assed the game.
The setting they chose was the Major setting that Wizards was pushing at the time. I would blame Wizards not Turbine for the setting.
I do not believe the setting was the downfall. The 98% instanced game world, the weak game mechanics, the low amount of content (at least in the beginning) where you ran the same dungeons over and over, the total lack of an economy (at least in the beginning), etc, etc. It just wasn't a very good MMO, at least at release. I cannot say about the state today because they botched it so bad in the beginning, I would never give it another shot.
You 'need' to repeat dungeons to get xp. The normal is to run a dungeon 3 times on normal difficult, then 3 times on hard and finally 3 times on elite. I think it has loosened up a little since I played, but you are still forced to repeat dungeons to get enough xp.
When you want to lvl up fast you can do this on the quests that give the most xp. The normal thing for me is once on normal and hard. Sometimes once elite for xp. Mostly once elite for the extra favor it gives. I get to lvl 16 with doing maybe 50-60% of all quests atleast once.
This means you can really enjoy each quest and play them all once on hard for example. There are currently more then enough quests, you dont really need to repeat any if you do them all. Once again it's up to you if you want to repeat quests. You dont need to, in DDO you can do what you think is fun.
*shrug* I don't know why we have such different experience with the game. I ran stuff on normal once and ran out of content before I was good enough to take the same dungeons on hard.
I didn't play in full groups though, mostly small groups with 1-2 other people. So perhaps you are right, you can just do stuff once, if you can find a full group for it.
I was seldom able to find full groups, sometimes people simply didn't want to be grouped with a new player with no twink gear, other times there simply wasn't enough people. So I normally ran stuff alone on normal (solo dungeons gives absolutely zip in xp), or with 1-2 other people.
This is one of the reasons why I say I 'had' to run stuff 3 times, to squeeze as much exp out of the dungeons as I possible could.
So when you say 'in DDO you can do what you think is fun', I wish it was true. But it was not the experience I had during the months of playtime I have in the game. And when I look at the population, this thread and the newbie boards, I can see I am not alone in this experience.
But I'm glad you are having fun and have a completely different experience than mine
I would say DDO has some of the best Dungeons and Quests its just to bad its not a open world even if it was just zoned it would have been better than instancing pretty much everything. The only thing that I didn't like about the game was people wanted to grind the same dungeons to get gear. I know its not the games fault but they should have made it so that you can't do a dungeon again once you've completed it once. Just like in PnP DnD you can't do the same quests over and over again.
DDO isn't a gem. I tried it. I agreee with the post above. Doing dungeons on easy, medium, and hard, is not very fun. Also did not like the clickety clickety combat that didn't really add anything, except tired fingers from clicking the mouse.
I did like the way treasure dropped. One chest, and everyone in the party got a pull from the chest. No ninja looting, no platemail for the wizard, or magic wand for the fighter, no "need before greed" arguments, it was a great solution for loot IMO.
The Dungeons And Dragons 4th Edition was supposted to have an online component, where you get an online map, a Dungeon master that could control monsters, 3d monsters and player characters. You played with a DM, the software calculated the damage, and the DM tells the story, you play with voice chat, or typed chat.
Now THAT I was looking forward to, but I don'tk now what happened to it.
Yeah Ihmotepp the loot system was great you got what you could wear no arguing and it was nice.
Yeah I was looking forward to the DnD insider which is what I think it was called but its the name of a Magazine as well. But if they do release it I would pay 10 bucks a month to get on in some DnD action. It may not have flashy graphics and a ton of people playing but atleast I'll get my party fix. I get tired of playing solo most of the time in MMO's because nobody likes to party.
Atari does not own DDO, they own the D&D IP that is all. Turbine has to consult with them when it comes to rulesets differing from the D&D design, but that is Atari's only connection with the game. Next time get your facts straight. Despite criticism above, the game is not bad and well maintained by Turbine. Shame more people don't try it, it is well done considering the limitations of the D&D ruleset.
Actually WOTC is the final decider on ruleset changbes not Atari. Atari is supposed to doing the advertising and you can see what a great job they do there.
I have to question the well maintained part. Lag is terrible and Turbine to save money has farmed out the servers. They have failed the player base in maintaining this game of late.
Actually WOTC is the final decider on ruleset changbes not Atari. Atari is supposed to doing the advertising and you can see what a great job they do there.
I have to question the well maintained part. Lag is terrible and Turbine to save money has farmed out the servers. They have failed the player base in maintaining this game of late.
Long time ago since Atari did something right, I'm still upset about what them and Obsidian turned "Neverwinter nights 2" into.
But yes, DDO isn't doing as well as it should. Maybe they should turn it into a F2P game, or sell ok priced life time subscriptions like you get when you buy Guildwars (which seems to be the game that took most players from DDO).
*Grabs Pen *& Paper and plays D&D the way it's supposed to be*
About Atari owning D&D...? WTF? D&D originates from TSR (Gary Gygax's work), who went bankrupt in 1997 and bought by WOTC. Later WOTC was bought by Hasbro (who in turn is bought by some other party later on).
Atari only has a licence to make D&D as computer games, one that you actually don't need, since D20 is open source, and i you use that, everyone can make a D&D alike game (thought D&D is a TM'd name).
About the whole part you wrote... I've played DDO. Compared it to PnP (A)D&D, compared it to other games, and I think DDO sucks balls. Not even the DX10 graphics look nice...
The problem with DDO is that there is this game called Guild Wars which is free and quite similar.
DDO shines in a few places;
1) Character customization - Let's face it, most MMOs today are designed with next to zero character customization because it's easier to balance. And because it's easier for newbies and/or retards, which is what most MMOs today are designed for since they think anything remotely complex or difficult is just too much for the majority of their user base to handle. DDO is right up there with Shadowbane in the depth and awesomeness of its character customization.
2) Grouping/Quests - This is DnD. The emphasis on forced grouping and instanced quests should be obvious. Again, DDO does this very well compared with your average run of the mill theme park MMO "go kill 10 rats and then run around delivering love letters" quests. The problem is, like every MMO, there is not enough content. The 25th time you do some quest it doesn't particularly matter how good it is. It's long since become a mean to an end and not something you actually enjoy doing. With DDO this is even more troublesome seeing as how there is... uh, nothing else to do in the game.
I grab a trial every now and agin to see if they have fixed everything Ken Troop screwed up. The only way to do that would be to delete the code and start over,only this time put it in the Forgotten Realms.
Been there, done it and read the book... *Grabs Pen *& Paper and plays D&D the way it's supposed to be* About Atari owning D&D...? WTF? D&D originates from TSR (Gary Gygax's work), who went bankrupt in 1997 and bought by WOTC. Later WOTC was bought by Hasbro (who in turn is bought by some other party later on). Atari only has a licence to make D&D as computer games, one that you actually don't need, since D20 is open source, and i you use that, everyone can make a D&D alike game (thought D&D is a TM'd name). About the whole part you wrote... I've played DDO. Compared it to PnP (A)D&D, compared it to other games, and I think DDO sucks balls. Not even the DX10 graphics look nice...
DDO is the best MMO out there in my opinion. Atari owns all licensing right to create D&D based games to date. No, no one else can do it if they don't allow it.
I played most of the MMOs out there, starting with MUDs, Ultima Online, going through many like WoW, LotrO, WAR, GW, AoC, and free to play, like now - hack 'n slash Warrior Epic, which rips of DDO in some places - but lacks the depth, quests, narration and active combat of DDO. AoC is a DDO rip off too, to some extent.
This tells much, and DDO suffers ONLY becasue Atari didn't like to advertise it after rough start, which probably brought them losses. ONLY Atari can advertise DDO to date, however I smell something's changing now...
If DDO had much bigger population (and it's now bigger than few months ago, even with this mysterious "announcements" which hold Mod 9), it would shine. And I think it still may shine, because Turbine is working on something DDO behind the scenes. According to recent interviews, the announcement about it may come soon.
I tried getting into D&D, but I couldn't get any of my friends to give it a go. Even my friends that played D&D (pen/paper/dice) before just didn't want to give this game a try... and yes, they do play other MMO's.
While D&D was the original 'fantasy' game to me, well before I played computer based games, it entered the MMORPG realm too little, too late in the fight. It's just one of the hundreds of watered down, bastardized titles out there now.
The lore and history of D&D is a great one. The format, style, and way that D&D is portrayed in DDO just doesn't pull me in though.
I have circled back to DDO a few times to give it another try, but each time... it feels more lonely and vacant than the time before. Ultimately, reading a book about the legend/lore is more fulfilling than playing the game.
Comments
A first chance for a second impression, sometimes works.
Solo setting was added to try and make the introduction to the game a little easier, the setting starts to disappear quite quickly and by level 6 (I think) there are only a few quests with it. It is possible to solo though beyond that, it just isn't spoon fed easy.
Someone mentioned a dungeon with an underground city, this I believe is the Shan-to-Kor quest chain. Worth making sure you get in a group and at least try this during your trial. One of the trap rooms is just insane.
Well we are off to the eternal battleground of Shavarath in the next mod. Ebberon's version of the Blood War.
You really have to advance a little more in the game to experience the team based fun. The first part on Korthos Island can be considered as a tutorial. I personally dont like solo playing any quests.
Like i said before, the learning curve is a little steep and i think the 10-day trial should be increased to a 14-day trial.
The quests have been made to be played in groups and the solo option (which is far too easy and will disappear later on) is only added to advance the first part of the game more quickly and for newbies to try the game out at their own pace.
When i started playing DDO i had exaclty the same feelings, that the world is too small. I totally changed my mind. DDO has about the same amount of quests as in Guild Wars if i remember correctly. It seems small because (aside from explorer areas which you can skip), there is no tedious mindless traveling or grinding monsters without using tactics like in WoW.
I agree with the fact that it may be too zerg-like for new players. But this is a problem that is hard to solve. There are many veterans that create new characters and you have to somehow seperate the newbies from the veterans. But you can always create a party that says 'no-zerging' or 'newbies only', thats totally up to you.
Every game has some problems and this may be one of DDO's, but its kinda inevitable and up to the players to solve it.
Unfortunitly if they did that, then all of the players would have left along time ago! LOL.
The actual title of this OP probable should have been 'a diamond tha's been forgotten by it's DEV's'.
It is a pleasant little game, but to make up for the lack of constant new content they set it up so you can run the dungeon's on higher difficult settings. Nothing really changes, the place just get's a little harder each time.
While this is nice, it doesn't make up for the lack of new stuff to do. I play it with my youngest son and once we hit the wall as a 2 man fighter group and can't complete anymore of the dungeons I'm sure it will be dropped as he won't want to go back and re-do them.
I would have liked more character creation customization options but it seems to have just about the same as many other games (change the face but not the body) and I like the graphic's and visuals of it and would rate them above AoC while demanding a lot less from my machine.
As far as it not being an open world game ..... well D&D did involve travel to and from the dungeons so there was some and I guess you could say the wilderness areas kind of equal that. Wheither or not it would still have been able to claim D&D as it's father if it would have been a total sandbox style is hard to say.
For the setting of Eberron. It was picked as a direct Wizards of the Coast tie in, same as sticking Clone Wars stuff in SWG. Pure marketing. Atleast Turbine seems to have done a better job at working with what they were given.
SWG (pre-cu) - AoC (pre-f2p) - PotBS (pre-boarder) - DDO - LotRO (pre-f2p) - STO (pre-f2p) - GnH (beta tester) - SWTOR - Neverwinter
I could have liked DDO if:
1. I wasn't expecting a D&D related experince.
2. I didn't want an open game world to play it.
Considering the game was supposed to be a D&D MMO, those are two pretty big failures.
I'm not saying people won't like it, but they probably won't if they're looking for a D&D MMO.
Its more like mulit-player Diablo with fees.
it flat out sucks, don't waste your time, at least try the free 10 day trial first, thank the creator i never paid money for the game, learned my lesson long ago.
I cry every time a new MMORPG comes out that doesn't outright steal DDO's dungeon style.
Well, if they did that, they would need tripple the amount of dungeons. You 'need' to repeat dungeons to get xp. The normal is to run a dungeon 3 times on normal difficult, then 3 times on hard and finally 3 times on elite. I think it has loosened up a little since I played, but you are still forced to repeat dungeons to get enough xp.
All this repeating was one of the things that drove me away from the game.
You 'need' to repeat dungeons to get xp. The normal is to run a dungeon 3 times on normal difficult, then 3 times on hard and finally 3 times on elite. I think it has loosened up a little since I played, but you are still forced to repeat dungeons to get enough xp.
When you want to lvl up fast you can do this on the quests that give the most xp. The normal thing for me is once on normal and hard. Sometimes once elite for xp. Mostly once elite for the extra favor it gives. I get to lvl 16 with doing maybe 50-60% of all quests atleast once.
This means you can really enjoy each quest and play them all once on hard for example. There are currently more then enough quests, you dont really need to repeat any if you do them all. Once again it's up to you if you want to repeat quests. You dont need to, in DDO you can do what you think is fun.
Alright lets say it is adiamond for the sake of argument.
Its make of crystalized carbon sure, but its kind of yellowish, its cut is non-ideal, its about 0.5 carat and has some fluoresence.
Not all diamonds are worth all that much money. The one I just described is no where near the price of a flawless and ideally cut diamond.
Point is yeah DDO has some very nice features that are pretty much unique and (IMO) badly needed in the MMO world. But it also has a ton of flaws and often falls back on BS out dated BS mechanics. The raiding and gear grind suck as bad as any other MMO. Same with the way the force to grind dungeons multiple times to get the good stuff. Yet the game is a spectacular action game. Seriously flawed.
It might be diamond sure its got nice stuff. Doesn't mean it is valuable.
I feel the same way. I've said it once, I'll say it again, Turbine got their hands on an IP with nearly limitless possibilites. In the end they chose a lame, un-familiar D&D setting and half-assed the game.
I feel the same way. I've said it once, I'll say it again, Turbine got their hands on an IP with nearly limitless possibilites. In the end they chose a lame, un-familiar D&D setting and half-assed the game.
The setting they chose was the Major setting that Wizards was pushing at the time. I would blame Wizards not Turbine for the setting.
Me I wish they did planescape. Fits DDO way better city of doors = instances with immersion, just a plain cool setting, and can do all the high degree of available magic stuff Eberron can do. But no one seems to do planescape. IMO it is clearly the best MMO D&D setting. What with all the factions, the already in place explanation for zone flow by level and the literally limitless possbilities. And with Planescape: Torment as a cult classic diamond in the rough with tons of story behind it you could easily build on a previous franchise.
Exactly.
As a long time D&D fan, I was pumped for this game. I bought it on release and got....disappointment.
"Great!", I thought. "My character can travel to distant lands and... well, no. I guess it's just the one city, then".
"But at least I can enjoy the awesome races available like..umm..Warforged? Wtf? No."
"Well, at least the city looks...err.. like a slum with floating torches. Ok, I'm out."
This game needs to be forgotten. Sooner rather than later.
I feel the same way. I've said it once, I'll say it again, Turbine got their hands on an IP with nearly limitless possibilites. In the end they chose a lame, un-familiar D&D setting and half-assed the game.
The setting they chose was the Major setting that Wizards was pushing at the time. I would blame Wizards not Turbine for the setting.
I do not believe the setting was the downfall. The 98% instanced game world, the weak game mechanics, the low amount of content (at least in the beginning) where you ran the same dungeons over and over, the total lack of an economy (at least in the beginning), etc, etc. It just wasn't a very good MMO, at least at release. I cannot say about the state today because they botched it so bad in the beginning, I would never give it another shot.
You can not sugar coat a turd, they tried with vanguard and failed hard. You can not do the same with DDO bro
http://helpourfuture.blogspot.com/
save our future.
You 'need' to repeat dungeons to get xp. The normal is to run a dungeon 3 times on normal difficult, then 3 times on hard and finally 3 times on elite. I think it has loosened up a little since I played, but you are still forced to repeat dungeons to get enough xp.
When you want to lvl up fast you can do this on the quests that give the most xp. The normal thing for me is once on normal and hard. Sometimes once elite for xp. Mostly once elite for the extra favor it gives. I get to lvl 16 with doing maybe 50-60% of all quests atleast once.
This means you can really enjoy each quest and play them all once on hard for example. There are currently more then enough quests, you dont really need to repeat any if you do them all. Once again it's up to you if you want to repeat quests. You dont need to, in DDO you can do what you think is fun.
*shrug* I don't know why we have such different experience with the game. I ran stuff on normal once and ran out of content before I was good enough to take the same dungeons on hard.
I didn't play in full groups though, mostly small groups with 1-2 other people. So perhaps you are right, you can just do stuff once, if you can find a full group for it.
I was seldom able to find full groups, sometimes people simply didn't want to be grouped with a new player with no twink gear, other times there simply wasn't enough people. So I normally ran stuff alone on normal (solo dungeons gives absolutely zip in xp), or with 1-2 other people.
This is one of the reasons why I say I 'had' to run stuff 3 times, to squeeze as much exp out of the dungeons as I possible could.
So when you say 'in DDO you can do what you think is fun', I wish it was true. But it was not the experience I had during the months of playtime I have in the game. And when I look at the population, this thread and the newbie boards, I can see I am not alone in this experience.
But I'm glad you are having fun and have a completely different experience than mine
DDO isn't a gem. I tried it. I agreee with the post above. Doing dungeons on easy, medium, and hard, is not very fun. Also did not like the clickety clickety combat that didn't really add anything, except tired fingers from clicking the mouse.
I did like the way treasure dropped. One chest, and everyone in the party got a pull from the chest. No ninja looting, no platemail for the wizard, or magic wand for the fighter, no "need before greed" arguments, it was a great solution for loot IMO.
The Dungeons And Dragons 4th Edition was supposted to have an online component, where you get an online map, a Dungeon master that could control monsters, 3d monsters and player characters. You played with a DM, the software calculated the damage, and the DM tells the story, you play with voice chat, or typed chat.
Now THAT I was looking forward to, but I don'tk now what happened to it.
Yeah Ihmotepp the loot system was great you got what you could wear no arguing and it was nice.
Yeah I was looking forward to the DnD insider which is what I think it was called but its the name of a Magazine as well. But if they do release it I would pay 10 bucks a month to get on in some DnD action. It may not have flashy graphics and a ton of people playing but atleast I'll get my party fix. I get tired of playing solo most of the time in MMO's because nobody likes to party.
Actually WOTC is the final decider on ruleset changbes not Atari. Atari is supposed to doing the advertising and you can see what a great job they do there.
I have to question the well maintained part. Lag is terrible and Turbine to save money has farmed out the servers. They have failed the player base in maintaining this game of late.
Long time ago since Atari did something right, I'm still upset about what them and Obsidian turned "Neverwinter nights 2" into.
But yes, DDO isn't doing as well as it should. Maybe they should turn it into a F2P game, or sell ok priced life time subscriptions like you get when you buy Guildwars (which seems to be the game that took most players from DDO).
Been there, done it and read the book...
*Grabs Pen *& Paper and plays D&D the way it's supposed to be*
About Atari owning D&D...? WTF? D&D originates from TSR (Gary Gygax's work), who went bankrupt in 1997 and bought by WOTC. Later WOTC was bought by Hasbro (who in turn is bought by some other party later on).
Atari only has a licence to make D&D as computer games, one that you actually don't need, since D20 is open source, and i you use that, everyone can make a D&D alike game (thought D&D is a TM'd name).
About the whole part you wrote... I've played DDO. Compared it to PnP (A)D&D, compared it to other games, and I think DDO sucks balls. Not even the DX10 graphics look nice...
The problem with DDO is that there is this game called Guild Wars which is free and quite similar.
DDO shines in a few places;
1) Character customization - Let's face it, most MMOs today are designed with next to zero character customization because it's easier to balance. And because it's easier for newbies and/or retards, which is what most MMOs today are designed for since they think anything remotely complex or difficult is just too much for the majority of their user base to handle. DDO is right up there with Shadowbane in the depth and awesomeness of its character customization.
2) Grouping/Quests - This is DnD. The emphasis on forced grouping and instanced quests should be obvious. Again, DDO does this very well compared with your average run of the mill theme park MMO "go kill 10 rats and then run around delivering love letters" quests. The problem is, like every MMO, there is not enough content. The 25th time you do some quest it doesn't particularly matter how good it is. It's long since become a mean to an end and not something you actually enjoy doing. With DDO this is even more troublesome seeing as how there is... uh, nothing else to do in the game.
I grab a trial every now and agin to see if they have fixed everything Ken Troop screwed up. The only way to do that would be to delete the code and start over,only this time put it in the Forgotten Realms.
DDO is the best MMO out there in my opinion. Atari owns all licensing right to create D&D based games to date. No, no one else can do it if they don't allow it.
I played most of the MMOs out there, starting with MUDs, Ultima Online, going through many like WoW, LotrO, WAR, GW, AoC, and free to play, like now - hack 'n slash Warrior Epic, which rips of DDO in some places - but lacks the depth, quests, narration and active combat of DDO. AoC is a DDO rip off too, to some extent.
This tells much, and DDO suffers ONLY becasue Atari didn't like to advertise it after rough start, which probably brought them losses. ONLY Atari can advertise DDO to date, however I smell something's changing now...
If DDO had much bigger population (and it's now bigger than few months ago, even with this mysterious "announcements" which hold Mod 9), it would shine. And I think it still may shine, because Turbine is working on something DDO behind the scenes. According to recent interviews, the announcement about it may come soon.
Lecture:
vault.ign.com/View.php
www.zam.com/story.html
Those are the most recent interviews. Long wait may soon end.
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Someone should write into Mythbusters about this whole "sugar coating a turd" thing :P
Other than that I have no opinion here past everyone should be allowed to enjoy waht they enjoy and try to share that with others.
I tried getting into D&D, but I couldn't get any of my friends to give it a go. Even my friends that played D&D (pen/paper/dice) before just didn't want to give this game a try... and yes, they do play other MMO's.
While D&D was the original 'fantasy' game to me, well before I played computer based games, it entered the MMORPG realm too little, too late in the fight. It's just one of the hundreds of watered down, bastardized titles out there now.
The lore and history of D&D is a great one. The format, style, and way that D&D is portrayed in DDO just doesn't pull me in though.
I have circled back to DDO a few times to give it another try, but each time... it feels more lonely and vacant than the time before. Ultimately, reading a book about the legend/lore is more fulfilling than playing the game.