WoW or D&D [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Xefas

2007-01-25, 11:32 PM

I've played both, and I can honestly say that World of Warcraft is by FAR better in every way you can think of. D&D Online was very boring, with not much drive to do anything whatsoever, and very little community to it. In WoW, you have things to shoot for. In D&D Online, you have rats, spiders, and the occasional kobold to kill, so that you can get to the next dungeon, to kill more rats, spiders, and kobolds.

Most of all, however, the longevity of D&D Online is laughable. First off, the dungeons are so short and meaningless that you'll find yourself hunkering down and playing the same one fifty times just to fill in the time it would take for you to play one run through Deadmines in WoW. Plus, the level cap in D&D is TEN. The level cap in WoW is SEVENTY. Which is the better investment?

Then...the community. There is none. I ran around several servers trying to talk to people, and start up a bit of roleplay but aside from the population being depressingly thin, noone wanted to really talk. In WoW, there were some jerks here and there...but you hardly noticed with the crowds of thousands of awesome people around to keep you company.

It makes me cry how badly executed D&D Online was. I'm thinking about renewing my WoW subscription, actually...I haven't played in a long time...but I'm sure Burning Crusade is awesome.

Erloas

2007-01-25, 11:33 PM

I've tried both. I wasn't overly impressed by DDO, though I didn't give it too long.
WoW was good for a little while but for me at least it had major drawbacks.
WoW is a decent game but it was definately not the game for me.

The general feel I've got over time is that WoW is a good game if you are new to MMOs and don't know any better, but with some experience its easy to see its problems.
Other people say 1-59 (maybe 1-69 now) is good. After that it is all raiding and grinding, which is what some people, people that are not me, like.

Not that it is what you are asking, but right now I would say that EVE is the most interesting MMO that is worth checking out. EVE is too open and too different from what most people are used to, it is definately not for everyone. The learning curve is also fairly high if you aren't familiar with space games and aren't willing to look to the community for help. It is very heavily based around PvP though, which has its good points and its bad. I've heard that EQ2 has gotten a lot better with the last few updates, but I haven't played it before or since to really say from personal experience.

I'm not currently playing anything right now though, I'm waiting for WAR, which is unfortunately still almost a year from release.

Edit: to respond to Xefas's comments.
Even though I only played DDO for a little while I thought the community wasn't bad, though that wasn't real recently and may have changed.
WoW has had the worst community of any online game I've played.
As for the "number of levels" it is really a none issue. They could just change it so WoW had 1/2 levels between every one and then have 140 levels but it wouldn't add anything at all to the game. If your sole feeling of accomplishment in a game comes from seeing your character go up a level then it might be worth something, but to me a game and character development is much more then simply a simple arbitrary number.
As for the instances, for some people short instances are a good thing, not everyone has the 4+ hours a day in a single sitting to go through many of WoW's instances.
I would agree that WoW is overall a better game then DDO, but I disagree with Xefas's reasons of why.

Xefas

2007-01-26, 12:25 AM

I guess I phrased that levels thing wrong. Its that DDO will take far less time for you to get everything out of it you need than WoW, which might be fine for some people. However, I enjoy having lots of content in my games. So much so that I could play for years and years and still not get it all.

Its not that farfetched to think someone out there has a 10th level everything in DDO. Somebody with 70th level everythings in WoW? Well, slightly less likely.

My enjoyment doesn't come from my character going up a level. My enjoyment comes from finally being high enough level to play and explore Alterac Valley, and finally being high enough level to get a mount, et cetera. Just cool stuff you won't find in DDO.

As for the instances, a DDO dungeon takes about 5 minutes, and the mentioned WoW instance takes something like an hour. Now, aside from questioning why someone who doesn't have at least an hour of free time is playing an MMO, and not a genre that better allows for constricted schedules, I'd like to point out that if one would rather play 5 minute meaningless and boring dungeons, one could just as easily spend those 5 minutes grinding WoW monsters, which would be just about as exciting.

MMOs, in my opinion, are only fun for the big fantastically spectacular epic conflicts like Zul'Gurub, or Alterac Valley, with grinding only being the necessary evil in between, that you spend your time chatting and listening to music to make it go by faster. DDO is ONLY a grind. Even battles that are suppose to be boss-ish are slow and boring.

Plus...theres always stuff like general PvP, professions, auction houses, and all other kinds of social interactions that you don't get in DDO.

I'd also like to add that I, too, am looking forward to WAR.

TheChris

2007-01-26, 04:48 AM

I'll echo what the others have said. I played a while on DDO and I don't like it as much. It's an interesting idea but it is not as clean or as nice as WoW. Not only that but apparently it is pretty standard to run the same quests over and over on different difficulty levels. Which to me, feels like a bit of a chore and less of a fun accomplishment.

Personally if you like WoW and have money for DDO, go and buy Burning Crusade. It's gotten me back in the game and I'm having a blast again!

Shadow of the Sun

2007-01-26, 04:56 AM

I play a level 12 priest in WoW, and I suck immensely at duels- and probably will until level 21, when I get mind flay. Mwahahahaha. Hahahaha. Hahaha. Ha.

Crazy Owl

2007-01-26, 05:16 AM

Played both. If you want a game to play every so often I would go with D&D. If you want something that you don't mind take up a lot of your free time then go with WoW

Krystal_Tiger

2007-01-26, 05:58 AM

I have to say...WoW ROCKS!!! (and Burning Crusade is sooo cool) ok, with that out of the way:

I have played both, and I don't like DDO, it was cool, but no one relly liked talking much, and you could NEVER find a group, it seems to be more of a game for those guys/gals who who play together, like a group of shoolfriends getting on after school to play, and if you don't find 5 or more friends to play with very soon...its just to hard to solo, also people want to repeat the same level over and over, the same level over and over, the same level ...you get my point.

And WoW has so much...muchness! it seems like if they add any more content, the game will implode...(see first part of post for extra detail)

I also play CoH, and thats very good, and ive played EQ2, but thats not the question.

ok...that about all I have to say...*faint*

Logic

2007-01-26, 06:19 AM

Plus, the level cap in D&D is TEN. The level cap in WoW is SEVENTY. Which is the better investment?
Since you have to pay nearly double for that level 70, perhaps not as much as you may think.

Then...the community. There is none. I ran around several servers trying to talk to people, and start up a bit of roleplay but aside from the population being depressingly thin, noone wanted to really talk. In WoW, there were some jerks here and there...but you hardly noticed with the crowds of thousands of awesome people around to keep you company.

I hope you are joking.
"Thousands of Awesome People"?
I tried Alliance, and did not run into a single DECENT person in more than 10 hours of gameplay.
Switched to Horde, and found plenty of TOLERABLE people, and a handful of good ones I actually wanted to do runs with more than once. I only met one "Awesome" person in game.

Although, I do agree that DDO is pretty bad, but WoW is not all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips good either.

Zeb The Troll

2007-01-26, 06:29 AM

In response to the question, I'm only anecdotally familiar with WoW but I absolutely hated DDO. And I was really disappointed by that because I really wanted it to be good and get some more exposure for tabletop D&D. Why on earth they made it a 'twitch' game is beyond me.

As far as "what's the best game to play online (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17059)" there's another thread for that.

I'm also interested in trying WAR (that's Warhammer: Age of Reckoning for those who aren't familiar with it). Some people incorrectly refer to it is WHO (Warhammer Online) but that's not what it's to be called. And besides, WAR is a much cooler acronym that WHO. :smallcool:

Xefas

2007-01-26, 07:01 AM

I hope you are joking.
"Thousands of Awesome People"?
I tried Alliance, and did not run into a single DECENT person in more than 10 hours of gameplay.
Switched to Horde, and found plenty of TOLERABLE people, and a handful of good ones I actually wanted to do runs with more than once. I only met one "Awesome" person in game.

Well, I'm sorry that you had a bad time, but I suppose its the server you play on. I seemed to meet nothing but nice people from the get-go, even though I didn't know anyone who played, so I was kinda alone.

As long as I switched off general chat in the starting areas, things went pretty well. Especially on the Horde side. Everyone was patient to my newness, answered any questions I had no matter how redundant, typed with good grammar and spelling, and gave out any spare items or money they had without me asking.

Later on, once I was a little more experienced, I joined a guild, and things got even better.

Maybe I just got lucky. Sorry you had a bad time, guy :smallfrown:

Arlanthe

2007-01-26, 09:04 AM

"Thousands of Awesome People"?
I tried Alliance, and did not run into a single DECENT person in more than 10 hours of gameplay.

If you didn't see one _decent_ person, something is wrong. Maybe it depends on the server, but don't blame it on the game or whole faction. In WoW, you sort of need to get past about level 30 to get past the kiddies anyway. I play Alliance on Proudmoore, and I absolutely love my guild and the Proudmoore Guild Alliance (hundreds of people). They are all very helpful- and even pass on items in raids for "the good of the group" despite people being in different guilds even. I.e. Heladys passing on a Legendary to give the Wrath warrior the weapon, and people passing on defensive equipment and trinkets of epic quality, for the tank. Etc. People from different guilds help lower level players by taking them through instances and quests, etc.

We all help eachother out, and ignore the (yes, they exist) kiddies running around at level 15 and sassing people. If you want to see what a neato community can come together on alliance in WoW, go to Proudmoore and ask to join one of the Proudmoore Guild Alliance guilds.

P.S. WoW isn't perfect, and will be replaced by somethng better, but don't waste your time with DDO.

Penguinizer

2007-01-26, 09:09 AM

Havent played WoW but ive heard its great. Couple of my friends also play WoW. I will stick with GW and Battle field 2142. Might play on their game sometime though.

Ladoran

2007-01-26, 09:49 AM

Apparantly as a minority here I think that DDO is a good game which I'm currently on a break from but have played for about a year on a european server. I like the dungeons (which usually takes far more than 5 mins to run...) which to me feels a lot less like grinding than WoW does. Even though you do have to run them a couple of times it feels more like progress to do this than to stand in some open area blasting some semi-random mob until enough items drop for you to complete your quest.

On top of that the community in DDO is - in my opinion of course - much more mature and wonderfully free of leet kiddies and people asking for money and generally acting like a bunch of tools. I've never had much difficulty in finding groups or in talking to them. I had more of a problem with that in WoW when I think about it. Your mileage may vary it seems.

I like both games but they are very, very different. Personally, if forced to choose, I would choose DDO for the reasons stated above, the most prominent being that DDO never really felt like work. WoW did at some point, and this was the point at which I left the game.

DDO has had quite a few content patches by now, and the content is quite a bit bigger than when it came out. This helps with the fact that you don't need to run the specific dungeons as many times. The rerunning of dungeons is the grind of DDO of course, but this grinding is much more fun in the long run than the grinding in WoW, to me at least.

Shadow of the Sun

2007-01-26, 10:30 AM

I play on the Dark Iron Server- which has one of the best communities of similar minded people: The Webcomic Wars! On alliance you have the Penny Arcade guilds, who are all very nice people, and on Horde you have the PvP guilds, who are also all very nice. My general strategy is to find a good guild which is populated by >20 around the clock and turn off general chat. It gets rid of most of the tools.

Healos

2007-01-26, 11:18 AM

WoW is fun, but with all MMORPG if you don't get alot of money and good loot it gets UNfun. I'v never played DDO but it sounds like Baldur Gate...hard. stick with WoW get the upgrade (the burning crusade)...or try Crysis sweet gameplay and great graphics, but if you wan't a game that draws you in and keeps you entertaned for years go with Halo. But I see that your in for RPG games so stick with WoW.

Deaddude

2007-01-26, 12:03 PM

Alright, I think I'm Probably gonna stick with WoW. Tho I still want to try DDO. Maybe I'll try to download the demo if I have the time. Thanks everyone.

ChristopherDK

2007-01-26, 12:44 PM

I have played Wow in the past and got really really tired of the constant grinds and the community.

i've been playing DDO since beta now and still stick to it. there's a lot of new content and a lot more versalitity than wow in the game. you can build your character as you want, just like in the pnp. There's offcourse some advantage in some min/max'ing but if you like you can create a wizard with 8 int. this freedom is what i really like about the game.

the combat is much more tactical and with lots of different approaches. there's no need to click, the auto attack is of similar speed now.

but the game is centered around group playing, if you don't want to be dependent on grouping then DDO isn't for you as you will be annoyed very fast.

I think the graphics are very very good indeed. much more to my liking than other mmorpgs i've tried, but then again.. my opinion.

but DDO has a free trial, so give it a go.

Deaddude

2007-01-26, 01:25 PM

I am currently downloading the 10 day free trial of DDO. only 5 hours and 30 minutes to go! lol

Deaddude

2007-01-26, 03:19 PM

Hey guys. well DDO is out. While I was downloading the 10 day free trial my mom said I'm not allowed to ever play anything D&D. LMFAO! I really don't know why though. lol, All well. Guess I'm gonna try some different games now. (Not involving D&D *sad*) lol

Crazy Owl

2007-01-26, 05:48 PM

Shadow of the Sun

2007-01-26, 06:00 PM

My folks were cautious, but they relented, so now I can play DnD!

Deaddude

2007-01-26, 06:02 PM

Sounds like your mum is one of those crazy "D&D is an evil cult" people. No offense.

LOL. She probably is.

Erloas

2007-01-26, 07:16 PM

Change the name on the desktop icon for DDO and your parents probably wouldn't even know unless they came in right when you are loading the game.

Normally I'm of the type that says you should listen to your parents, but what I have found is just like people you see everywhere else and go to school with and such, just because someone is your parents doesn't actually mean they know anything at all. Stupid people breed too unfortunately. Not saying don't listen to your parents, but just like working with other people it comes down to learning what to ignore.

I didn't think DDO was that bad, though I would say in general WoW is better. It depends a lot on how you play the game and what you are looking for in an MMO. The community in DDO seemed better to me, the only thing I didn't like is the fact that absolutely everything is instanced. If they had a "real" world between the instances and expanded much farther beyond the city then it would have been better. Instances have their advantages but there are times when you want to do something else. Sometimes you just want to kick in a door and kill some monsters, there doesn't have to be a story to every single little thing you do.

Arian

2007-01-28, 01:41 AM

Normally I'm of the type that says you should listen to your parents, but what I have found is just like people you see everywhere else and go to school with and such, just because someone is your parents doesn't actually mean they know anything at all. Stupid people breed too unfortunately. Not saying don't listen to your parents, but just like working with other people it comes down to learning what to ignore.

Your parents are more like your boss(es) than your fellow-workers. Irrespective of whether they are wrong or not, they have the legal right, and also the responsibility, to tell you what you can and cannot do while you're a minor. And (except in matters of your personal safety, such as issues of child protection) there's no Bigger Boss over their head that you can appeal to.

So I would say rather: do what your parents expect, for the time that they have authority over you. It will keep your relationship with them calm, and they'll be a lot more flexible than if they come across evidence that they can't trust you - or even a reason to fear they mightn't be able to.

It really won't be very long until they no longer have that authority, and you can choose for yourself. Then you will be carrying the responsibility for what you do - which you may not enjoy as much as you currently think you will. :smallsmile:

purple gelatinous cube o' Doom

2007-01-28, 01:51 AM

Deaddude, Do you want to run around and kill a lot of stuff and level up a bunch, or are you interested in more of a roleplaying thing. If you're interested in the former, I would suggest WoW. DDO in my experience is real glitchy and not very smooth, and I was vastly unimpressed by it. (although Turbine seems to have done a better job with LOTR online, of which I am currently participating in the open beta stress test this weekend). If you're looking for the latter, I would skip the MMO games all together and go for NWN or NWN 2 if you don't already have one of them. I think the persistant worlds of the NWN online play is much more balances roleplaying/bashing stuff than either of the other two games (which really have no roleplaying to speak of).

Wehrkind

2007-01-28, 03:30 AM

I don't know, I wanted to like DDO, I really did. I was very excited for it, and convinced/browbeat my roommates and girlfriend into playing. One of my 'mates has been RPGing for his entire life, one only video game rpg's, and my girlfriend is on video game played #4 (she was hard core WoW for a while).
Anyway, we tried. The MMO boy hated how slow the game was and how ineffective his cleric was. I tried to like the game, and played as much as possible. My RPG roommate hated like it pretty well, but there was no NPC roleplaying to be done, and the community is like most MMO's. My girlfriend was so so on it.
The result: we had no cleric because he quit. We could never get one that wasn't an idiot. We could never quest because we were home at odd times, and couldn't always be 3 online.
DDO has 0 single player content. You can't "just play for 45 minutes". You have to spend X amount of time getting a group, and then Y time replacing people as they drop before the instance is done. That was frustrating.

WoW, as much as I wish it were a little more D&D like, at least has lots you can do by yourself. You can get to 60 solo (hard for some classes, but doable.) Most instances are 5 man, which really cuts back on troubles. Now, I really dislike raids (>5 man instances), but PvP sort of ameliorates that, and there is lots of exploring solo, particularly with Burning Crusade out with more 5 man instances.

Honestly, DDO could be good, but only if you have friends dedicated to playing on a set schedule for a set amount of time. At which point, Never Winter Nights 1 or 2, or hell, pen and paper, might be your better option.

Arlanthe

2007-01-28, 05:17 PM

I

i've been playing DDO since beta now and still stick to it. there's a lot of new content and a lot more versalitity than wow in the game.

I've played both, and I have a hard time seeing where more versatility is in DDO. Maybe you could elaborate? I certainly agree WoW can be a grind, but only if you set a competetive goal for yourself. In WoW, when I log on I can-

1) Accomplish quests in myraid lands (how many lands/zones are in DDO?)
2) Join one of several "battlegrounds" and fight over control points, capture flags, gain honor, and fight the good PvP fight (where are battlegrounds or PvP in DDO?)
3) Enter a dungeon and fight wicked bosses, save the princess kind of dungeony stuff (yes, DDO has dungeon stuff)
4) Earn reputation with various factions, earning new rewards and access to new areas (where is ths in DDO?)
5) Work on becoming an excellent tradesman and crafter (where is crafting or player generated economy at all in DDO?)
6) Fight over control points against another faction, collect materials for reputation, earn respect for major deeds accomplished

Answers to the question "What did I do in my MMO today" are far more numerous for WoW than DDO. Quantitiatively and qualitatively it is a deeper game with more options for play. And the amont of content of ALL types absolutely DWARFS what DDO has to offer. I feel it is much more versatile.

And that's sad, because like Wehrkind I wanted it to take MMOs to the next level and beat the socks off of WoW. I wanted DDO to win. I wanted _my_ game to win. It floundered and failed.