The Test of Time: Dungeons & Dragons Online - Robert Lashley

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The Test of Time: Dungeons & Dragons Online - Robert Lashley

For a new year Rob starts a new column, The Test of Time. Take a look as Rob dives headlong back into DDO and reflects on what made this title worth remembering.

Read the full story here

Greeka

Okay I have played and still play DDO on a regular basis. It happens to be one of the only mmo's that I have stuck with for any length of time greater then 8 months. Now with the end of the article where Robert laments the in game store and micro-transactions and how many games in the West have copied this formula I have to say that every copy of this model has been sequentially worse in all games that I have experienced it in. With DDO it is one of the few games (if only) where you can earn in store currency without having to buy it. Which can be used to unlock content that is gated behind a pay wall. Some of the games that transitioned to the store and micro-transactions does not allow for this.

Additionally it should be mentioned that the partner that Turbine had with the initial development of the game was seemingly at odds with them and basically had a gag order on them so they could not discuss anything. The period of min to late 2007 till early 2009 was one of no new content or discussion from Turbine due to the legal action that was occurring between Turbine and their old partner until a legal split/compromise was come to. Looking forward to reading the article on Wizards part in this and am interested to see what is said.

Greeka

I forgot to add that during that near two years of silence and no development really hurt the game and resulted in a large number of players leaving the game and not returning ever. As well as no promotion of the game ever coming from Wizards (other then the occasional and rare blurb), that did not inspire a great deal of confidence in many to try the game as well I feel. Still looking forward to the next article and will more then likely add a response on what I feel was Wizards abandoning DDO.

Scottgun

Desperate times call for desperate measures and Turbine with their Boston roots took inspiration from Doug Flutie and launched a hail mary pass that was caught in the endzone. Turbine took the unprecedented step and changed business models on DDO converting from a subscription based business model to microtransactions with an in game store on September 9th, 2009. This has subsequently been copied by many different games in the west. Sigh.

Doug Flutie? I seem to recall a cave-painting of that pass discovered in France. But seriously, a friend of mine discovered DDO and got me to try it even though I was a retired LotRO player at the time. I played it for about an hour and asked if he had tried LotRO. He hadn't, loaded it up and was immediately struck by how much better it was. We chummed around with it for awhile, but quickly the Free2suck was too powerful and I stopped playing it for the last time.

flizzer

At one time I was debating about giving this a try since I love LOTRO and continue to play it to this day. Ultimately I passed since the microtransactions involving buying the content seemed a bit onerous to me. Has this changed? I didn't get the idea earning in game currency was really viable way to proceed. Enjoying my time in ESO at the moment so doubt I will get to this game.

Lobotomist

The one that started F2P in west

angerbeaver

I enjoyed the game when I played it briefly, but it did not keep me interested. I did play Lotro for about 6 years though.

mgilbrtsn

I had a good time in DDO.  Was one of those you can pop into, play a few quests and pop out again with no sense of losing ground to others.

Po_gg

Great one Rob, nice colum idea.

Agree with Greeka above, considering they were the "first" in it (with only a couple eastern ones to look for a start), they did a pretty good job with the f2p switch - and based on that the LotRO one a year later, those are 6 and 5 years old models respectively, and still among the best ones. (Rift is better from player's perspective, and Wildstar is cool too, but Turbine has a great balance of earning decent income as a company while still making it possible for players to get everything for free. Plus any combination inbetween. One of the most flexible models out there.)

I think DDO's daily solution is not bad, just remember Neverwinter (you made great Foundry videos back then ) and its "combat-refilled daily" solution... when people used daily power 4-5 times in a fight... doesn't seemed "daily" at all. (don't get me wrong, I like Neverwinter. And I think those shortcuts were fixed already.)


Speaking of Cryptic, and since I'm playing it fairly often lately, could you do CO somewhere along the Test of Time series? It's old, a fun game, and pretty much neglected around here...  

hfztt

The period of min to late 2007 till early 2009 was one of no new content or discussion from Turbine

Actually module 6,7 & 8 was released in 2008. There was a span of October 2008 until September 2009 while they worked on the F2P version where nothing was released, but it was known for most of that time that that was due to the F2P conversion.

Are you thinking of the EU version? That one was lacking behind in the end days before they closed those servers and they moved all players to the US servers and the F2P version.

(That was brilliant BTW. I remember that EU players got like 5000 Turbine Points as a bonus when they moved us to the US and F2P.)

waynejr2

Friends don't let friends solo!

Nebless

mgilbrtsn said:
I had a good time in DDO.  Was one of those you can pop into, play a few quests and pop out again with no sense of losing ground to others.


This!

I've also found that of all the various festival's in the different games I play, DDO has some of the better one's. Not from a 'I win this' or 'It help's me gain this' sense, but from a 'It's fun'. Running around like a headless chicken killing stuff in either Crystal Cove or The Halloween graveyard always brings a smile to my face.

While I'm sure you can buy content just with TP earned, I never figured out how. In that respect LotRO system is more forgiving. TP's just drop into your wallet there and buying new zones isn't hard at all.

As far as content goes, I understand why Turbine's new content is for the higher ranked ppl's, but some new med level love would not go amiss.

Wizardry

I obviously grew up around the DnD games so when this one came out,i was anticipating it.
Well fast forward,it was THE game that i bantered about how bad Turbine was at making games.

It has been awhile but if memory serves me i didn't even last more than one day,it was that cheap looking,generic,boring yep a few hours and out.

I bought a LOT of games over the years like literally multi hundreds so when a game is just bad,i chuck it.
Obviously we are all programmed differently in how we think and what we want out of a game as witnessed by another thread asking why people like ARPG's.I know exactly what i want out of a game,there is no guess work,so i almost know in the first 5 minutes if a game is going to cut it or not.

What i often do is cut some games some slack figuring the system guys are just really bad at presenting the initial experience so i'll try to push forward for a few hours.However al lit takes a is a real bad or awkward UI and i am out there.

Gyrus

DDO is a great game.  (It's been a while since I played - but still)

Because of the fact it represents the D&D IP it can be excused a couple of things that other MMOs should have moved past:

Instanced dungeons.  Like many MMO players I hate the over reliance on instancing.  But in this case instancing is totally appropriate (the PnP game is 'modular' too) and works.

Leveling. Again, in the case of this title levels are faithful to the original IP and appropriate.

DDO is also fun to play.  The thief mechanics were also really good.  Finding traps felt like finding traps.

I had a lot of fun in this game playing in the Perma-Death Guilds.

Solar_Prophet

DDO is about as close to D&D as you can get for an online game. If they'd used Forgotten Realms instead of Eberron, it would've been an instant hit. That decision still throws me for a loop. I understand wanting to promote a new setting, but basing an MMO on it right off the bat? Ballsy, but stupid. Really, really stupid. 

Gyrus

The whole Atari / Turbine / Cryptic thing really hurt everyone involved.

The dirty underhanded dealing by Atari was inexcusable (it's all detailed in the court submissions).  Exactly what choices Turbine were forced to make initially based on their license agreements we may never know.

If Atari had marketed and promoted properly it could have been an instant hit too.

Ikeda

Honestly, the launch of DDO was terrible.  And that was with a group of friends stoked to play it.

Later on, they redid the intro and fixed a bunch of stuff (with the F2P transition) and it was better... but had gained the F2P trappings that I hate (needing to pay for every single item).

Asm0deus

Ikeda said:
Honestly, the launch of DDO was terrible.  And that was with a group of friends stoked to play it.

Later on, they redid the intro and fixed a bunch of stuff (with the F2P transition) and it was better... but had gained the F2P trappings that I hate (needing to pay for every single item).





You guys do realize you didn't have to go the f2p/premium route? You could just continue to sub to the game and get access to everything including some tp every month.

Gyrus

@Ikeda
And the F2P thing was done because Turbine had to recover from the bad North American promotion by Atari.

If you don't like the F2P approach look at ATARI - that was in the court submissions also.

Actually, this might be worth mentioning in any future article.  DDO survived in spite of ATARI's efforts... not because of them.

Warlyx

i like the puzzles and traps , but disliked that ranger with Bow were nearly useless ,and only way to regain MP on dungeons are shrine...yeah it makes sense that way ....still.... ugh

Ravensworth

Honestly the Freemium Model saved both DDO and LOTRO. Plus I think the way they have done it, making it possible to earn cash by playing the game, is the most fair. The PAY wall is much cheaper than shelling out $14.99 a month or if you prefer to subscribe there is no PAY wall. I subscribe every year at Christmas for $100.00 a year this give me all the content and a ton of in game cash for cosmetics. A game that was Standard monthly subscription gives you other options This is not the first Pay wall game. It was the first game that went Freemium like Star Wars is now.

Thebeasttt

That's probably the best argument against F2P, it keeps terrible MMO's alive. At launch DDO was a poor attempt at a D&D MMO and it still is to this day. It should have never lived past a year or two but thanks to F2P it keeps chugging along, encouraging bad developers everywhere to do just enough to get by.

Splattr

flizzer said:
At one time I was debating about giving this a try since I love LOTRO and continue to play it to this day. Ultimately I passed since the microtransactions involving buying the content seemed a bit onerous to me. Has this changed? I didn't get the idea earning in game currency was really viable way to proceed. Enjoying my time in ESO at the moment so doubt I will get to this game.


Earning TP (in game currency) was a viable option (haven't played in a while, so not sure if it still is). While I played the game pre-f2p and kept the sub option after it switched over, I had several guild mates that went purely f2p. Some of them were able to buy everything just through grinding out TP.

I do wish the game would have been in the Forgotten Realms originally, but even without that the game gave me several years of great gaming. I still drop back into the game every once in a while and spend a few months playing. It still ranks as my favorite MMO of all time.

Golelorn

Was a huge fan of DDO until the started doing the Epic stuff. And then guess what happened? The population plummetted. Yet, they still push this garbage.

Gyrus

@Thebeasttt So what is so bad about it?  Is it just that it's F2P?  Or that it's instanced?  Or the graphics?

@Golelorn So you don't like it just due to low population?  It sounds like you did like it to begin with?

jbombard

As a huge D&D fan, I gave it a good try but it just felt really clunky and cheap. I have no problems playing games with old looking graphics as I still play the old baldur's gate games and neverwinter nights on occasion. The whole feeling of the world didn't feel like D&D and the interface and movement etc... just felt bad. It was really hard to get into so I just quit.

I liked LotRO a bit more, but that game has it's own set of problems. Note I say all of this is a lifetime subscriber. Crappy character progression/talent tree system. Really slow/long combat. Floaty feeling abilities. Takes way too long to get anywhere so you spend way too much time moving/traveling compared to doing stuff.

DDO never got me interested enough to be disappointed by it. LotRO on the other hand, was a disappointment in a lot of ways, because there was so much I did like about the game(but the bad stuff ultimately got me burned out on it).