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• • A Founders Review of DDO

  • Originally posted by jposavatz
    

    For those who answered my question about the world still being instanced, thanks.  Despite what I said (I'd only come back if it was no longer as instanced), all of the other responses have me getting excited again. 

    Time to give DDO another shot!  I've just downloaded the trial and before I install it, can I ask a bit about the servers?

    Are there certain ones with "better" populations (by "better" I mean - I'm looking for a sizable population so things don't seem like a ghost town, I'm looking for a mature audience insofar as possible, and I'm looking for folks who are intersted in occassional light roleplay)?

    Thanks in advance.  Can't wait to give this one another shot. 

    
     

    I'm not sure how one server compares to another, but I bet they all have equal populations and maturity of community. I am on the Sarlona server, which it and the Thelanis server are both considered the unofficial RPing servers. There aren't a lot of guilds that actually RP though, so your choice will be limited if RP is your thing.

    Myself and Valczir above is apart of The Forsworn 'RP' guild. We are a guild who RP's while we adventure and are actually pretty active. I've been in the guild for a month now, and we've raided 3/4 of those weekends I believe. I went on the last raid as a lvl 7 and we succeeded. I'd invite you to the guild I'm in, but the guild officers and leaders require that the prospect understands that we are a RPing guild first and foremost.

    I am in that guild, but I spend the majority of my time NOT RPing, because I spend a lot of time in pick up groups (PUG's). While I group with my guild mates, I do RP and it is fun. We go through the dungeons slow enough to be able to RP and do well at the same time. Voice chat is not allowed while in a guild group, which all of us love, since hearing a big booming burly manly voice behind a frail female elf is a bit immersion breaking.

    What I'm trying to say is that if you want a good guild and are willing to RP with us, but also appreciate taking a break from RPing and running normal PUG's, you can do what I do and have a great time.

    I am Validorn on the Sarlona server.

    You've met Valzir already, wich is a guild mate of mine.

  • Posted: 7/02/08 10:33 AM
    D&D Online
• • A Founders Review of DDO

  • Originally posted by jposavatz
    

    First, to the OP, this is a great review.  Thanks!

    I also tried DDO "some time ago" (probably over a year I'd say) and I got pretty bored pretty quickly.  For me I think it was the closed-off nature of the world - e.g. one of the things that I love about MMO's is the completely open world where you can walk anywhere and bump into random NPCs, mobs, other players, etc.

    It wasn't clear to me (sorry if I missed it) in your post as to whether or not that dynamic has changed.  Is it still a mostly dungeon/instanced world with nothing else to see, or have they made the game more "open" like most MMOs (EQ, WoW, etc.)?

    If they have indeed opened the world up, I will absolutely try it out again!

    
     

    Yes, everything is still instanced. They've added a lot of content that takes place outside the city, but on the same continent, however, those areas are instanced for you or your group only.

    I like an open world and such like traditional MMORPGs have, but I have to admit that the way DDO does things saves a lot of time in traveling and you get to quest a lot more with your friends.

  • Posted: 7/01/08 8:29 PM
    D&D Online
• • What do people think about the new Monk class?

  • Originally posted by Valczir
    

    I don't like the general feel of DDO monks, compared to D&D monks.  In D&D, you were encouraged to use your fists if you had a lot of monk levels, because your fists were way better than any other weapon you could use.  In DDO, you're encouraged to use kamas at high levels, because you can't dual wield your fists.

     

    
     

    Hey Val, it's me Validorn. I was just writing a short review on the game when I was going to pop on over to this thread and give my impressions of how you do in-game. But your already here, lol!

    Guys, Valczir is really modest, so he won't ever tell you how strong his character is. I'm not saying his monk tops the charts or anything, but he kills his share of things and has the added bonus of being versatile and having utility. He has finishers that doesn't require him to equip an elemental weapon, because he has the ki to use them during battle. He also has a new ability that allows him to regen his health to 100% by meditating out of combat.

    My overall impression judging by Valc's Monk and many others I have grouped with is that a monk can be a really weak class, just as likely as he can be a strong class. I've seen some just outlast other tanks and really put the dmg on as well. They have great saves, wich honestly helps them a lot. They can get out of situations that other tanks cannot. To top all of this off, they don't have that much HP's. So they are strong, just in their own way and not exactly strong like other classes are strong. They are different and easy to mess up, but also strong and good to have in a group if they know what their doing.

    I'd definitely withhold judgement on the class until you are over the hump. Not sure when that hump is, but I know I fealt weak on my Monk at lvl 3. I saw monks performing pretty well around lvl 5, so maybe that's the hump.

  • Posted: 7/01/08 11:14 AM
    D&D Online
• • A Founders Review of DDO

  • First of all, if you already have a good idea of what DDO is from a trial or owning the game, this review will not help you really. For the rest, hopefully it will shed some fresh light on what DDO is to a veteran player.

    Setting the Stage

    I am a 27 year old married gamer w/ a 6 yr old son. However, I am able to play on average of 3-5 hours a day w/o really neglecting my responsibilities or family. I know, I'm lucky. I've been playing MMORPGs since 2002 w/ the start of DAoC. I eventually started playing 2 MMORPGs at a time when I found out about SWG. I was devistated when SOE killed SWG and stopped playing DAoC when Catacombs started ruining group xp groups. Since then, I've played practically everything on the market. I've rearranged my values, likes and dislikes with games since then. Now, although I prefer a virtual world, skill-based sandbox game w/ FFA PvP, I am just as content playing a game w/ a good community that likes to group, where the adventuring is fun and character development is varied.

    Previous Experience w/ DDO

    I started playing DDO at pre-release. I got a character to level 5 when the max level was only 10. The launch was relatively smooth for me, with only 1 Raid adventure. My major gripes was that it wasn't an open world, you needed to repeat content a lot, and the game wasn't completely true to the 3.5E rulebook. I ended up quitting the game after the first month.

    I returned to the game probably a year and a half later to check it out, but never got a good feal of the game, because I joined a perma-death guild and never made it past lvl 5 w/o dying. I got utterly bored with running the same 20 quests over and over again, due to my self inflicted perma-death style and quit at the end of that month.

    DDO at Present Day

    I just resubscribed about a month ago, when the new Module was released. Some of my opinion of this game will have carried over from my previous experiences with DDO.

    Character creation is a blast. You can spend as little time as you want creating a character or you can spend literally hours creating your ideal character. The choice is yours, but in this game, you must choose semi-wisely.  You can modify your characters look, which isn't much, but the strength of DDO's character creation isn't in picking your look, it's in designing your class.

    You have your choice of 9 classes and 5 races at the start of the game. After getting some favor w/ various factions, your choices of races increases by 1 w/ the Drow. After choosing a class, you can go with a default build or you can pick and choose where you want your attribute points, skill points, and which feats and spells you want to start out with.

    While leveling up, you will be able to further inrease your attributes, skills, feats, and spells. You also can greatly improve your character through items, gear, and weapons.

    After a great deal of work on increasing favor with the various factions, you can create a 32 point attribute character, which gives you a nice goal to work towards while playing the game naturally. This is an increase of 4 points from a standard character, which makes somewhat of a difference in-game and really makes multi-classing a lot easier.

    Speaking of Multi-classing, you can pick up the 3 classes to be on your character. Be warned though, not all classes compliment each other, and multi-classing takes some skill with the character builder. However, the rewards for multi-classing can be many and it offers a multitude of ways to play the game.

    The combat system is a 3rd person twitch system. It adds the ability to use tactics in the game, which is needed if you are to pass some of the more challenging quests. The AI in the game seems to react to your actions, so running a dungeon more than once offers a different experience.

    The quests in the game vary, but you don't have your cookie cutter MMORPG standard quests in DDO. You have dungeons and open landscapes designed with plenty of twists and turns, traps, and surprises to keep you busy while you are on your quest to do whatever for whoever. The quests are set up with different lengths and difficulty and are designed for different levels of usually a full group. For example, you can take a lvl 5 Medium quest. This means you will need a full group of lvl 5 people, and the quest may take your around 30 min to complete. There are quests from 1 to I believe 18, and lengths ranging from Short to Very Long. There are a lot of single quests and quest chains. Every quest has a short to medium length story to set the stage.

    I'd have to say that the quests are very entertaining and is one of the games strengths. Between being able to create a variety of character builds, having actual fun and challenging quests to do, and a good community to do the quests with, I haven't even though about ending my subscription this time. I barely even notice I am leveling when I do. Your concentration is on the quest when you are doing it, not the xp.

    My initial complaints of having to repeat quests aren't much valid anymore. There are more quests than I know what to do with right now. At this rate, I am lvl 8 w/ quests ranging from lvl 4 and up that I havne't even done yet.

    I will point out that if getting a 32 pt build is your goal, which a lot of people don't care about, you will have to repeat dungeons for favor. Drow is really easy to unlock w/o repeating dungeons and you will unlock it early in the game.

    The game also has raids, which are designed for 12 people. The first raid is lvl 10 and there are many more raids after that. I did my first raid in DDO last weeked as a lvl 8 and we succeeded. The raids are very challenging, a lot of fun, and very rewarding in terms of xp and loot. It's a great way to spend a few hours. I'm doing a raid this weekend to kill a Dragon, that required me to complete 4 pre-requisite quests first, which sets the stage for the last 2 quests, which are designed for raids. I can't wait.

    The community is mostly good. There aren't many servers anymore, only 4, so the smallish community compared to your mainstream games is concentrate into those 4 servers, which  makes you not even notice the total subscribers playing DDO. I rarely have trouble finding groups, and when I am having trouble, I can easily fix that by creating one of my own, which people join fairly quickly.

    There are many roleplayers to group with and run things slow with if that is your thing. There are also many powergamers whose main goal is to conquer and destroy the games content as quickly and as efficiently as possible. You do have those that care which build your are and choose to roll with the most optimal builds for whicher roll, but there are also a lot of people who can careless as long as you can pull your own weight.

    I pick up group a ton and I have only had one bad group this past month, and that was when I joined a group that ended up being some really young kids. The rest of my PUG's were all adults and varied on the gender of the players. Both men and women call this game home and you will have your fair share of both in your group. Mostly everyone is able to play well and is pretty patient and understanding. The playerbase is overall pretty mature.

    My only gripes w/ DDO is that it doesn't include all of the races/classes that the setting offers, nor does it follow the rules for the feats and classes exactly. However, it isn't a gripe that is even close to game breaking. It also can be very complicated creating and building your characters. Depending on your class, and especially if you multi-class, you can easily gimp yourself. The good news is that there are plenty of people to help guide you, a character planner to use before you create one, and it is just plain fun recreating characters anyways, so when you screw up, you can start over w/o much grief and pass your nice items down through the mail to your new characters.

    Conclusion

    My conclusion to this rather limited in scope review is that this game is a lot of fun. It is a niche game and will attract people who would rather adventure with their time than traveling for 20-30 min to a destination to finally start killing thing. The game has added crafting as well, but is geared towards adventurers, not full time player crafters. There is always something to do, unlike how the game was at release, and you won't notice that you are in a city mostly. Your quests will take you all over the continent, so you will get a variety of scenary, but you will have Stormreach to come back to to sell and regroup. I'd recommend this game to anyone who wants to get straight to the adventuring when they have time to play, likes a great character creation/building system, and wants to play with a mature community. You must like to group, because you will be grouped mostly. You can solo some quests and even solo some group quests once you outlevel it by some.

    If anyone has any questions, please respond to this thread with them. I know I didn't cover every aspect of the game, nor do I desire to. I know this thread will be baried eventually, so it really isn't worth the effort. However, it is always worth the effort answering questions and helping other people out who are thinking about playing DDO.

  • Posted: 7/01/08 11:00 AM
    D&D Online
• • Vets have 30 days free!

  • Originally posted by hosal
    

    That's okay thunderous, everyone has their own opinion.  I was a beta tester for this game, and loved it since day 1. Yes NGE is not as good in any way shape or form as pre-cu was, i know.  But the devs have implemented many things lately which are making this game worth while.  You don't like SWG in its current state, i do.  Just like you just said WOW and AOC are good crop games.  I think WOW is the biggest excuse for a good mmorpg, and i bought AOC and unsub'd after a week.  I think it was the biggest flop ever.  It's just opinions, i too am a pre-cu vet.  Many vet's are coming back to SWG it just depends on what you like.  I've played ton's of MMO's and can never stay sub'd long enough to do anything because i try to compare them all to SWG and they, in my opinion, stink.

    
     

    You said SOE brought some good to SWG recently; what good did they bring? I am not being sarcastic, I just really want to know. I don't do research on the game anymore, not since the last time I tried it earlier this year for a month.

    I have a CL 90 Jedi, and a CL 80 pre-NGE toon I haven't touched yet. I don't want to play those again; I'd rather create a new character. One huge thing in my way is the boring leveling system. Long ago, we used to group up and kill things for xp, now we are soloing these insanely boring Legacy Quests. I've already done the legacy quests several times and will not do it again. So unless SOE has somehow changed the game to where leveling with others is better or they created an alternative way to leveling than Legacy quests, I won't return...not even for free.

    Also, I won't return if they haven't fixed the Jedi issues players have been complaining about for years, such as a FRS system among several other things. Another thing bugging me is the economy. Try leveling pilot along with your ground levels. It isn't going to happen, because the ships and the parts are priced for those whove been playing for years and have millions of credits. The ability to wear whatever clothes you want as a Jedi through clothing attachments doesn't change anything when the cost for them is only affordable to those with millions. Also, I'm finally happy they added 5th gen sabers, so we can finally use whatever type of saber we want, but they still have special lightsaber crystals which make it unfriendly to players who'd rather use a different colored crystal. They introduced new cloaks, but failed to realize that everyone will have them, so everyone will still look the same still.

    These are my gripes with the game...gripes that didn't exist pre-NGE. I don't care anymore if they want a class/level based MMORPG. I just care if the game is fun and is doing the Star Wars name justice. I watch the movies and read the books, then play SWG and think that SWG is terrible. SWG doesn't seam like Star Wars at all, other than the skin.

  • Posted: 6/27/08 1:16 PM
    Star Wars Galaxies