D&D Online

[Alysar]

Has anyone else checked out Dungeons & Dragons online? I signed up for the free trial, and I have to say it's fairly decent, at least as MMORPGs go. But it's still just an MMORPG with the D&D name plastered onto it.

A lot of the game has been changed around. Six playable races, only four of which are core. Half-races and gnomes got the axe, and they added Drow and something called a Warforged which is some kind of sentient construct. Large humanoid with metal plating covering what looks like muscle tissue. I think it's supposed to replace half-orcs. Also, Druids and Monks got cut from the class list.

In addition, they added something called 'ranks' between levels. Get enough EXP, and you go up a rank. Go up enough ranks, and you go up a level. I'm not exactly sure why they did it that way. Maybe to create the illusion that you are progressing faster than you really are.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the occasional puzzle, and not every quest you can go on is the standard dungeon crawl (although the majority that I've seen are). And I think this is the first online game I've seen that allows your character to jump, and has jumping actually be occasionally useful.

I'd recommend at least checking it out. Any thoughts from anyone else who's played it?

[Rigel Cyrosea]

Warforged are living constructs from the Ebberon Campaign Setting, which is where DnD Online is set.

[kenjigoku]

This game was a horrible waste of money. For an MMO it was mediocre, for a DnD game it was... pathetic...

[CrazedGoblin]

i played it, loved the tutorial but hated the rest of it dunno why

[tainsouvra]

I played it when it was relatively new, so a lot has been added in the meantime, but when I played it had a pretty fundamental flaw. Naturally, the playstyle was more MMO-ish than strictly D&D-ish, but that isn't a bad thing...the bad thing is that the dungeon designs were strictly made for the classic D&D party once you hit around level 3+. That means that if you wanted to play, you'd either need to try to get a pick-up-group going with all your bases covered and everyone with the same quest prerequisites done, or you'd only have to play when your friends were all playing too--and the latter was much more effective, to the point of really making a PUG sound distasteful.

Designing for a static party works great for D&D, but it was a bad idea for an MMO, and DDO is an MMO first and foremost.

[horseboy]

Eh, 10-15 years ago it would have been the BOMB. However, being stuck in an inn for so long and not being able to sit in a chair bothers me. That and how you're either doing nothing or grinding instances. It gets old around a month or so, since you've done everything.

Neat enough game to catch my interest, but not enough there to hold my interest.

[Morlark]

I played it a while ago and quite liked it. It's set in Eberron, hence the Warforged. It's an generally a good solid MMORPG, but... truth be told, there are other, better MMOs out there now.

The fact that you need to have a party to actually get anywhere has its ups and its downs. On the one hand it definitely encourages the social aspect of the game, which is what MMOs are all about really, and it remains true to its D&D roots. On the other hand, it really does mean that you need a group of friends who you know are always going to be online at the same time. Believe me, I tried PuGing my way through the game... didn't work at all. Not because the other players were bad, simply because there were so few of them. I haven't been back since they did the server merges, so it may have improved; I don't know.

I very much liked the way the quests and dungeons were so neatly done. There were very characterful, and really brought the setting to life. Also, they did not fall into the trap of being lame and grindy, like certain other games. *cough*LotRO*cough*

At the end of the day though, there's a reason why I play WoW now rather than DDO. If DDO had been released maybe a few years earlier than it was, I can imagine it probably would have been quite successful. But now though, it simply can't compete against the current generation of MMOs.

[Alysar]

Warforged are living constructs from the Ebberon Campaign Setting, which is where DnD Online is set.

Ah, that I did not know. Thank you.

[Zincorium]

What I can't frickin' believe is that with three unimplemented Eberron races (shifter, changeling, kalashtar) they went ahead and made drow into a race, when drow are not supposed to be PCs in Eberron. I know, I know, everything is allowed in Eberron, but it's specifically recommended you don't let players be drow (other races, pg 24 of the campaign setting).

[Inigo_Carmine]

I actually started playing the game about a month ago at the insistence of some family members (brother and some cousins/uncles/distant relatives play).I kind of like it.

It has so far been almost the complete opposite of World of Warcraft. WoW absolutely floored me, and made my jaw drop in awe from the second I logged in to my first game (Night Elf starting area was breathtaking). The interface was smooth and extremely intuitive. Wow, however, got worse and worse as the game went on. Both in design and continued developmental direction.

DDO, on the other hand, left me very underwhelmed at the start. The color pallet is muddy, the interface, quite frankly, sucks...every window gets in the way of everything else...and got forbid I want to open my character sheet because for some reason I can load into an entire dungeon faster than I can check what my Disable Device skill mod is. Sadly, I think this probably turns away most people who would otherwise give the game a go.

But, as you play the game, it gets better and better (granted, it would be hard to worsen the initial impression). But I've been playing for a few weeks now, and have had more fun in that time than I did my entire 8 months on WoW.

Dungeons are fun, and I personally a little prefer downtime between actual fun quests than to meaningless tasks like "bring me back 10 spider silk stacks...oh, and the drop rate can vary from 1 in 5 to 1 in 1000". While many people will repeat dungeons over and over again accumulating rewards/xp, grinding is not even close to required unless you're trying for specific items. With my character I try to not repeat dungeons at all, and he's still trying to do quests that are 4 levels below his own. (ie doing the quests will level you faster than the difficulty increases if you try to do all of them).

The game's biggest flaw has already been mentioned: You either have to be intimately familiar with the placement of every single thing in a dungeon, or you have to go with the iconic party: Cleric, Rogue, Primary Arcane Caster, Primary Tank. This isn't so different from most MMOs however, only even in PnP a cleric/druidless party is either going to have a rough time, or the DM is going to have to give them about 20x the recomended wealth for healing items. In PnP it's only the cruelest of DMs that goes: "No one's a rogue? Ok then, this dungeon is going to have about 20 traps in it". Sadly, DDO has those traps whether you have a rogue or not.

Luckily, parties are allowed to be 6 people, and there is no loss in xp or rewards for having multiple people, so once you've got your basic 4, the other 2 can be whatever (and bards are actually good to have around), and you're encourage (or at least not discouraged) to have a full group. Only certain special enemies give you kill XP by themselves, and instead all XP is rewarded for completing a dungeon, and is not divided by # of players or anything.

As far as it being D&D....well, it is an MMO first, but very directly D&D inspired. Many changes were made to make it real time instead of turn-based, and there are some other significant changes (like no AoOs), some of which I even like (spellcasters work off of a mana-like system of spellpoints instead of Vancian casting).

Between levels you get 4 ranks (kind of like mini-levels) where you receive an action point. These can be used to get neat special abilities depending on race and class, and they usually have increased costs for specilization. ie: Elven wizards can periodically spend them to redice ASF in light armor. 1 AP is -5%, another 2 points (with the 1p pre-req) bumps it to 10% total, and another 4 points (with the 3p pre-req) to 15% total. That will be spread across different levels so you can't buy them all at once. It serves as a way to keep []iachievement and advancement[/i] nearby without making you a 20th level character in as many hours of gameplay.

[Alysar]

Personally, I kind of like it. They do need to expand it a bit more, though.

Two words: Monkey Grip

[de-trick]

I never play D&D online but I wonder if they will make a 4.0 version

and also is neverwinter nights a good game

[valadil]

I played DDO for about a year. I'm taking a break now since I'm burnt out (not to mention out of shape and trying to save money).

The game gets a lot of hate from other MMOs. It is admittedly a niche MMO, but I had a lot of fun with it. I think if you're coming from other MMO type games you'll be disappointed with DDO because there are many canonical MMO activities that are missing. Personally I'd rather run a quest than craft gear, so DDO is a better fit for me.

People already mentioned that most of the game is questing. The other big difference is that in other MMOs you invest very heavily into one character. Getting to level 70 in WoW takes a serious time commitment. If you rush through DDO to get your characters capped you can finish the game in a month, and then you're left with little to do. A lot of the quests along the way to level 14 are pretty damn fun, but some players would rather repeat the same 10 quests over and over because they can run those quests on auto pilot and still get XP. This boggles my mind that people complain about content in the game but only play 10% of what's available.

[Wolf_Shade]

My friends convinced me to try DDO. I had been playing WoW. As an MMO, DDO is slow, difficult, and dull. As a D&D game it's stifling, overly restrictive, and kinda boring.

[leperkhaun]

What I can't frickin' believe is that with three unimplemented Eberron races (shifter, changeling, kalashtar) they went ahead and made drow into a race, when drow are not supposed to be PCs in Eberron. I know, I know, everything is allowed in Eberron, but it's specifically recommended you don't let players be drow (other races, pg 24 of the campaign setting).

how many people do you think roled up a TWF drow that uses scimitars? To at least, mess with it if nothing else?

[Hawriel]

I pritty much second Wolf Shades opinion.

LOTR is also made by turbine. in my opinion its a big step up from DDO. exept the character art. thats still dull and generic to me

[....]

They should have made DDO turnbased.

Like, everyone gets an initiative count and when its their turn they have five or ten seconds to decide what to do.

Would be a little more interesting than following the same old gameplay of very other MMO out there.

[Hawriel]

I would hate a turned based mmo

[....]

I would hate a turned based mmo

I'd hate any MMO that was turnbased, except DDO.

If you're going to make a D&D MMO, just make it D&D with pretty graphics and keep all the rules. You figure they'd realize its a solid system with so many people playing.

And for god's sake, set it in Greyhawk, or at least FR. I'm sick of this Eberron crap.

[tannish2]

I'd hate any MMO that was turnbased, except DDO.

If you're going to make a D&D MMO, just make it D&D with pretty graphics and keep all the rules. You figure they'd realize its a solid system with so many people playing.

And for god's sake, set it in Greyhawk, or at least FR. I'm sick of this Eberron crap.

yes. i actually tried the beta. it sucked, it sucked so hard that i lost an arm. and then removed that crap FAST, its terrible, its an MMO with a D&D sticker and ebberon setting... but not really.