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DDO - my Thoughts
Kien
Member Posts: 520
First, Turbine should be commended for creating a stable game and executing a flawless launch. On the technical side, Turbine did a great job. On the game design side, things fell apart.
Content
The most serious issue with DDO is the lack of content. You've probably already heard that you will end up repeating the same quests over and over. What you may not know if that different quests may use the same dungeon. So, even if you're doing a quest for the first time, you may end up re-entering a dungeon you've already conquered! The dungeon will have the same traps, the same treasure chests, and will likely have the same monsters in the same locations (example: Splinterskull).
In addition to lack of content, there are a very limited number of monster models in the game. Let me tell you, by level 4 you're going to be sick of killing kobolds!
Numerous Little Bugs
Although the game is stable, there are a lot of little bugs that players have to suffer through.I have a level 9 wizard (level 10 is the current level cap). This post would grow very long indeed if I attempted to list all the bugs I've encountered that relate specifically to wizards and wizard spells. At one point while writing this post I attempted to describe the bugs surrounding the charm line of spells, and ended up with four long paragraphs.
The Instance Concept
There is no exploring in DDO. There are quests and that's it. Prior to joining DDO I thought this was a wonderful idea as it forced grouping. Now I am not so certain. The problem is that if you don't get into a group right away after logging into the game, there's nothing to do. You can't explore or craft as you can in other games.
Final Analysis
If you're thinking about joining DDO, wait a year for Turbine to add some content. If the game is up after a year, by all means give it a try. The game can be very rewarding if you get into a good guild or if you have a regular group of friends to adventure with.
Comments
I only ever seen one game release near flawless. Based on the beta I expect the lauch to be quite poor and give all the newbies time to go to the forums and rant about not having druids and monks and everything being instanced, because they didn't know it was.
So, lets say
Excellent post Kien. How many other players are at or near the level cap already? If a good chunk of the population is nearing the level cap this soon, it doesn't bode well for subscription numbers a month or two down the road.
Once you have hit the level cap, is there anything for you to do with that character? If not, how many people will reroll and go through the content again? Replayability is looking really slim for this game and that is BAD for an MMO.
It's not hard to release a game that runs decently when there is nothing in the game to begin with.
OK! Who wants to run the same dungeon over and over and over again with the only difference being the "difficulty level"? Show of hands!
Anyone?..........
Anyone at all...........
Ya....didn't think so.
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
Just to reply to questions from posters above, I said Turbine had a flawless launch because I didn't experience crippling lag or game downtime (there was some bad lag in common areas like taverns, but the problem was quickly solved as players spread out). The only other launch I've been a part of was WoW, and Blizzard had tons of problems with lag (remember when the game would freeze up for five minutes whenever you looted a corpse?). So, in comparison to WoW, the DDO launch was flawless.
To answer the question about levels, I would guess that your typical "casual" player is level 7. I was level 9 yesterday when I cancelled my subscription. Many people have already hit level 10. The power gamers did it in the first week. Some of the people that hit level 10 have started alts, others quit. I've no idea what the ratio is of people that quit to people that started alts, but I can tell you that a lot of people in my guild are unhappy. I expect a mass exodus on April 6 when subscriptions start coming up for renewel.
The launch wasn't even close to flawless. Total server shutdowns every Saturday night for the first three weeks, not only booting you w/o notice, but rolling back your progress causing hours of wasted time and lost items.
Server down times have been excessive. Balance issues with many of the dungeons, and quests being shut down.
These are just a few of the problems off the top of my head. I'm sure others can name more.