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DDO - My review and thoughts
lex-icon82
Member Posts: 232
After much hesitation I finally decided to buy this game, got it off amazon.uk for around 20 euro after doing the free trial. I must say that I was very cautious about DDO, I've heard a lot of bad criticism towards it (to say the least) and sincerely the trial didn't really get me excited (I hardly played it).
However now that I've subscribed and gotten into the game proper I find that I'm really enjoying it!. Sure it's true that DDO is not entirely faithful to the D&D franchise, which I myself enjoy both as a player and as DM in real life pnp campaigns, but it is made in a way that makes me forget about it's shortcomings. DDO has just that little bit of D&D that counts to give it a D&D feel and enough of the popular mmo mechanics to make it both fun and suitable for a casual gamer such as myself.
The thing that really catches my attention about this neat little game is first of all the graphics.. although the engine is a little limited DDO sports really, really nice visuals, the models are fantastic and the atmospheres of both the city and the dungeons are enthralling. One flaw is that the characters tend to look very similar, I think that Turbine should work on this in the upcoming modules but overall I see a lot of potential here. Secondly the sound in this game is absolutely fantastic, each sound effect is incredibly vivid and has a 'punch' to it that really drives home the importance of the attack or spell that you perform. The music and ambiance scores are also wonderful even if they are a tad repetitive.. I especially love the way the music changes during key moments.
Gameplay wise this game is a breeze to pick up and learn, the UI is very tidy and the game mechanics are extremely intuitive. A note of warning though, if you have no experience with D&D please look into the forums first! the character creation is extremely challenging and it is very hard to make a character that suits your taste and play style. As with many other aspects of this game there are also some rather annoying flaws to the gameplay, for example the party system needs a bit of work, moving around can be a chore sometimes and also the quest system is a bit confusing at first. The fact that two of my most favourite classes are missing, the Monk and the Druid, really hurts it in my eyes but I'm faithful that the devs will implement them soon.
One of the things I love most about DDO is the performance of both it's graphics and network engine, this game has so far been absolutely lag free, I play the game at highest settings and my modest 6600GT is more then capable of running it without the slightest hitch. So far this game has only hung up on me ONCE and I've neved had a problem with disconnects (something which has plagued me in the past with other games).
Right now I've gotten two characters to level 4 and yes, the content may seem limited but the quests are fun and intriguing, I don't feel like I'm always doing the same thing because there are neat little stories behind the missions which are fun to read and provide some amount of variety. I'm very eager to try out the high level content, I've heard exciting things about the elite challenges this game provides in the upper levels, and much more content is on the way as well as a raise in the level cap.
Overall DDO is a very well made game, the devs are constantly improving things and I hope that people will see past the criticism and decide to try this game out, the community has been wonderful to me so far and if you love Dungeons & Dragons it's pretty hard to not like this game, yes I realize there are better games out there like NWN 1 and 2 but I wouldn't call those MMO's. I suggest eveyone just try it, have fun experimenting with the character builds and exploring the rich lore behind the city of stormreach.
Don't dismiss this game just because it doesn't suit your idea of what D&D is about, I realize that some changes have to be made to make a game of this nature fun and the more I play I understand why the devs chose to do things in this manner.And I do repeat, this game is intended for the CASUAL crowd, if you like grinding and raiding there are plenty of other mmo's out there that cater to this type of fanbase.
Anyway this was my two cents and I hope this little review was helpful to people who are wondering about DDO
cheers
Have played:
UO, WOW, COH/V, EQ2
Currently playing:
Age of Conan (EU)
Comments
What????
You would pay $15 a month for Guild Wars clone.
Glad you like it. Play it for another month and then do another review.
Speaking as a casual gamer.. I played Guild Wars and I like DDO much better. GW was very boring to me.
Yes, it might be true that in a month's time this game will hold no appeal to me, I generally don't stick with one game for a long period of time, but in my review I wanted to express the enjoyment that I'm getting from it now. I'm not going to go back on what I wrote just because I get bored of the game... as most people do nowadays.
Have played:
UO, WOW, COH/V, EQ2
Currently playing:
Age of Conan (EU)
I respect your opinion. Some games are not for everyone.
Some where on these boards there is a thread about the worst game of 2006.
I believe it was a toss up between DDO and DnL. Hopefully, devs read these boards and take posts like yours and polls like the worst game thread and will start making MMO's with better gameplay and more content. We can only hope.
Content is King.
I would take every review and opinion on this website with a very large pinch of salt dude, seriously! Especially the polls people place to choose their best or worst game, I cannot stress this enough.
DDO just won a BAFTA award, voted for by professionals within the industry, none of them affiliated with Turbine. I would trust their opinion over any on this website or others like Gamespot for instance.
Before you retort, let's look at sport, tennis for instance, when Wimbledon is on, who do you have commentating? John McEnroe and the like! Why? because he knows what he is talking about!
The Oscars, who votes for them? Not you or I but professionals within the industry, they know what they are talking about!
Organisations like BAFTA, the BBC, CNN or the American Film Academy make sure that votes are not placed by those who have a product nominated, lest they lose credibility.
Sites like this one and gamespot are like the MTV awards, they honour shit and what is popular at the time, why? Because it is voted for by the general public and they vote for what they like, not for what is perhaps a technological achievement with say a gaming engine or ambience within a game.
Make no mistake, this website and others like it are created for one thing and it is not to push the boundaries of excellence within games, it is for money, organisations like BAFTA are in it to promote excellence, not make money!
Just one last thing to think of, if you played golf and someone on a forum board whom you have never heard of, never met, never likely to meet with a name like PWNR124 and Tiger Woods both said you were the best player they had ever seen, whose comment would carry more weight?
You must not leave until you free Arlos and have gathered your party safely in this hallway.
2006 FIFA World Cup (Electronic Sports/EA Canada)
Animal Crossing: Wild World (Nintendo/Nintendo)
Battlefield 2: Modern Combat (EA Games/Digital Illusions)
Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach (Atari/Turbine)
Guild Wars Factions (NCsoft/ArenaNet)
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter (Ubisoft/Ubisoft Paris)
That was DDO's competition, not really a wide spectrum of the online gaming universe. They lumped one p2p (monthly fee) mmorpg, with a f2p (no monthly fee) one, and a bunch of console games. Secondly do you take the critics advice when buying video games and watching movies? Even game and movie critics state some games and movies are fantastic and yet they are not considered so by the vast majority.
There is alot more variety in movies and video games than there is in tennis.
Yes DDO looks good, yes DDO is fun to play for about 2-4 weeks, no it is not the best multiplayer game of the year. Also lets look at how they judged these games:
1: The official BAFTA shortlisters will be evaluating games shown at E3, at EIEF and will likely use a variety of sources when shortlisting, including reviews & editorials. The shortlisting process simply determines which titles go forward to the juries.
2: Any publisher wishing to make their released titles available to shortlisters can contact the Academy or send the Academy copies/promos.
Yea DDO looked good at E3, as did all its promotions, but did we get a winner in the end as far as fans are cocerned based on their dollar votes?
MMO Vet since AOL Neverwinter Nights circa 1992. My MMO beat up your MMO. =S
"You would pay $15 a month for Guild Wars clone."
The two games are very different to me. I kept hearing so much about Guild Wars I figured it must be the greatest thing since sliced bread. And then I had to force myself to keep playing past just the first hour thinking surely it must get better. I can understand why so many people like it, but Guild Wars and DDO are quite different. Hate to say it, but with Guild Wars I thought I was playing a prettier-looking version of Silkroad Online. Yeah, yeah, open world vs. instanced and whatever else, but I'm talking about the feel of the game.
"Content is King."
And for the typical praised MMO around here, "content" means large areas of sameness filled with random spawning monsters that you are supposed to kill x number of over and over. And then if you stand in that spot too long, the monster you just killed will respawn and kill you because praised MMOs have such "persistent" worlds.
Hmm....I never really thought of comparing DDO to Guild Wars. It just didn't really seem like that to me ...the character building / skills / etc. are completely different - the only thing I see the two games having in common is instancing? When I was playing GW it always felt like a single player game, and somehow DDO didn't have the same feel. Just my thoughts - I don't play either, anymore. Was just an unlikely comparison to me.
Gaming? That's not gaming!
That's just people sat 'round in costumes drinking...
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Currently Playing: Guild Wars 2 and Path of Exile
Quit: Eden Eternal, Wakfu, DDO, STO, DCUO, Sword 2, Atlantica Online, LOTRO, SWTOR, RIFT, Earthrise, FFXIV, RoM, Allods Online, GA,WAR,CO,V:SoH,POTBS,TR,COH/COV, WOW, DDO,AL, EQ, Eve, L2, AA, Mx0, SWG, SoR, AO, RFO, DAoC, and others.
www.twitter.com/mlwhitt
www.michaelwhitt.com
This game have improved alot, turbine mde good things on AC, and they are doing beter in DDO.
I am having fun, i dont care about haters on this site
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Currently Playing: Guild Wars 2 and Path of Exile
Quit: Eden Eternal, Wakfu, DDO, STO, DCUO, Sword 2, Atlantica Online, LOTRO, SWTOR, RIFT, Earthrise, FFXIV, RoM, Allods Online, GA,WAR,CO,V:SoH,POTBS,TR,COH/COV, WOW, DDO,AL, EQ, Eve, L2, AA, Mx0, SWG, SoR, AO, RFO, DAoC, and others.
www.twitter.com/mlwhitt
www.michaelwhitt.com