D&D Online: Stormreach
 

Is anyone else giving this game a try?

I've played a few MMORPG's: The Matrix Online, World of Warcraft and City of Heroes, and by far this is the more mature group of players I've seen so far. The lag is pretty bad, but this is something they want to happen in the stress test, and the gameplay is interesting.

Is it still the same repetitive leveling tread mill all the other ones you mentioned are? Or does it offer something new?

Your in an abandoned ruin

go north

My wife and I are planning on trying it along with several friends of ours that play that type of game. Right now I don't think it's going to replace WoW for me, but it looks like it'll provide a couple months of amusement at least.

I'll try it out but, my time right now is spent of WoW.

Not sure why WoW is so damn addicting for me...

you are eated by a grue.

No PvP. End of interest for me.

I am interested in this one but plan to wait and see how the first month or two go.

That always happens to me!

D I T T O !

i can only take killing the same brainless mob over and over again for so long.

What is PvP anyway?

Player vs Player.

I might try it out, but WoW takes a lot of time and I'm giving Eve Online another shot too. Plus, I've read a lot of articles on this game, and I'm just not sure about it. It sounds like you will need to find a group to do everything. I also really like the D&D rules for single-player games, but for MMORPG, I'm just not sure it will translate well. A lot of the D&D stuff is for roleplaying purposes, and honeslty and unfortunately, roleplaying stuff does not translate well to the MMORPG genre, at least right now.

I'll probably put this on my wait and see list. I think it's going to go through a lot of hard times before getting it right after an expansion or two, if they can get it right.

Quik is referring to the ad they had with the incorrect spelling. :)

It is a great dungeon style game. I've had quite a bit of fun playing throughout the beta.

This is the reason why I quit WoW -- PvPers. The RP and PvE servers are always too full, and a good bit of PVP players are childish idiots. Not saying you are, I'm speaking in generalities, but I can't stand PVP. It's not much fun for my Lvl 40 character when 2 Level 60's kill me over and over with no penalty to what they do, and that's everywhere on WoW. Buncha 12 years olds showing their age.

To me, an RPG is a group of people that work TOGETHER for a common goal. Having PVP strikes in the face of the idea of RPGs. There's a place for it, just not in D&D Online.

Not sure what you're looking for. It's D&D, so of course they'll be leveling, and dungeon crawling. What new things are you looking for out of a MMORPG?

Ah, see, I dislike the straight up PvP servers. In fact, I pretty much despise WoW's implementation of PvP. Dark Age of Camelot, before they decided to go apeshit with realm ranks and the Grinding Expansion From Hell, had some pretty damn fun PvP that sort of meant something. Despite a lot of quirks and issues, it was quite fun.

Never played Dark Age of Camelot. How do they implement PvP?

1) They heavily changed it after I quit, but it's still the same basic concept. Just...expanded.

3 factions in the game. 3 pretty large "frontier" zones, one for each faction. You went through a massive keep to get to your frontier, or you teleported to your border keep to get into the enemy frontier. All enemy faction players are ALWAYS killable, they simply can't get into your PvE areas. The entry points to your homeland is defended by a really big damn castle with a lot of utterly high level guards that noone is gonna kill (and people did try - there were competition to see how far in they could get before they died).

Each frontier had 7 keeps. A few NPC guards defended it, plus of course the fact that there were walls and gates to batter down. In each keep was a "lord" npc, which when you killed, you took control of that keep for your faction.

The whole purpose of taking keeps (aside from general fun) was to lower the amount of guards stations at the 2 relic keeps. Each faction had 2 relics, at 2 seperate Relic Keeps. These had I think 4 seperate gates you had to batter down, and badass NPC guards. Took a serious raid to try and take the relics (your entire faction got bonuses towards melee/magic the more relics your side owned, hence the draw). The more keeps in an enemys frontier that were not owned by them, the less elite guards spawned in the relic keeps.

That's the jist of it. Got more in depth, and there were some issues as time wore on and more features came in, but it is still the best PvP implementation I've ever seen.

I'll never pass up a opportunity to Zork :)

God, i loved that game on my C64. **sigh** the good old days

My wife and I have played WOW for 13 months. We are addicted. We have an awesome guild - Nevers End (www.neversend.net), and we raid all of the big instances - Molten Core, Blackwing Lair, Onyxia, etc...) and we are stacked equipment-wise. We have a ton of fun with our guild friends and the challenges of the high-level instances. When you are a high-end player, there's not a lot of time for PvP. PvP (Battlegrounds, etc.), to me, is for the casual gamer, or the non-social, non-tactical gamer. You would think otherwise, but from the TONS of experience I've had, it's true.

I've been playing DnD Online, and I agree with Mustang: It should be fun, but only until the WoW expasion comes out, or my first free month of DnD runs out.

Try Blackwing Lair or Ragnoros in WoW sometime. Brainless mobs are for the casual (or lazy) gamers.

nothing... i mean nothing compares to fighting a human.

nothing was better then a 10 on 10 guild fight at Vesper Bank in old UO.

Nothing was better then the Dread Lord Havok and 8 other Dread Lords, defending the Chaos shrine from a million blue-be's.

Also, my former guild and I played Shadowbane beta from day 1 (a member of our guild was on the development team) and while that game was a massive disapointment. We had some truly amazing guild wars/town sieges in beta. I mean epic. All the top PvP guilds were in beta, SiN, KAAOS, KGB, etc....

And while i hate EQ and most of the carebears that play it, my former guild and i played on the good/neutral/evil servers when they first opened up. I gotta say it was a freaking blast for about 2 months. Then everyone hit level 50 and it lost all appeal. My entire guild and I were Halfling druids, it was freaking hilarious when we would fight. 10 Halfling flying around all with SOW :)


I like the feeling of knowing im never safe, that any minute i could get attacked. It makes the world feel real to me. Now i do agree PvP is implemented terrible in most games mainly because its an after thought. DAOC had a good idea but they made it level based instead of skill based. So all you had to do was be 3-5 levels higher then the guy you were fighting and you'd win everytime.

Im still waiting for that ultimate PVE/PVP game all rolled into one. But i doubt it will ever come.... and the older i get the less time i have for a mmorpg anyway.

I absolutely disagree with that since I enjoy strategy and comraderie, but that's beside the point: One can always play on a WoW PvP server.

Regardless, I hope people find the perect game for them.

Dola.

The "fighting a human statement" statement bothers me more than just on the PvP server level: WoW has created a very nice Battlegrounds system where PvP is very rewarding and fun (even for a non-PvPer like me). I think a lot of people left 5-6 months ago and still stick this stigma onto WoW unfairly.

If someone just didlikes WoW, that's fine. I just want them to like them for the right personal reasons.

man.... this is the part about EQ addicts i never could understand. You don't think strategy is involved in 10 on 10 guild wars??? or 20 on 20 etc??? Or when your outnumbered 15-10??? But instead of going against a dumass mob thats got 98549864 hp's, your going against a human who can and will out 'think' you.

and comraderie?? i willing to bet money that the longest standing guilds in all mmorpg's are PvP guilds. SiN and KAAOS are perfect examples. They go back to Merdian 59. They're like brothers(and watching them fight together is almost scary).

Im not trying to bring PvE guilds down or anything..... hey, play whatever makes you happy. But please don't compare a AI MOB to live person/persons. Its not even close.

My problem with PvP is that, in the case of WoW, you get ganked with no penalty to those that do it. I'm Level 30, and I get attacked by a raid of 10 Level 50-60 characters, and they get REWARDED for it. That's simply stupid. If there's other games, such as the one that Coffee Warlord described, than that's cool. But the way it's implemented in Wow leaves alot to be desired.

Personally, people can call me a carebear if they want (and I think that's a moronic title designed by childish people), but I'd rather play in a group with other people than fight against them, at least when it comes to RPG's.

No, they don't get rewarded for it. They get nothing out of it. Sure I hated being a 25 getting ganked in the Tauren Mill section over and over. I just moved on to a different quest. Now I'm level 55, I don't get ganked very often anymore.
Anyway, you only get rewarded if the char is within 7-8 levels (I forget which) of you. So if a 60 with a lot of spare time kills a 51, 45, 37, & 29 Char, he gets nothing. Now, if a group of 5 42's kill that 60, they get a lot of honor for that kill.

Also, now that I'm on the top of the food chain, I mess with the lower levels, but if they are grey, I don't kill them unless they attack me first. I like following them around... hunters and warlocks, I'll kill their pets. I usually don't have time to bug the greys, but every once in a while it's fun to mess with them.
If you want good PvP action that requires people to work together, go try AV. That is awesome. Though the one game I played it lasted like 8 hours.

So. Play. The. Battle. Grounds. In. Wow.

I have said this multiple times. Depending on the BG you choose, you will be in a 15-20 person group. It's fun, and it rewards you as much or more than PvE.

People's gripes make no sense. I do both and love it.

I had a nice little post about 4 paragraphs long before I "fat fingered" the keyboard (which is impressive the number of times I do that, considering I have fairly slender fingers) so I guess I'll have to go with the less eloquent summarized version.

It's just like the economy we speak so often about in hattie- anyone can make a character who can survive if they level it up enough, but if you play PvP, you're compelled to play a limited number of options that are the strongest, most broken, and, without fail, most outside-the-original-intent-of-the-game creator's characters. Game designers set out to try and balance all things out, ideally, and all you do when PvP'ing is choose that which most breaks that mold.

If you think it takes a better character, in whatever aspect of the word you seem to think above, to see who can out-twink everyone else and build the biggest broken character, who am I to stop you. But let's not pretend it's something great to see who can bend the rules the most to make the character who is most broken to beat up on other broken characters.

How does that make you any smarter than the guy who set out to make the max level character who can best beat all the super missions and the enemies programmed by the lead designer? You're fighting versus a human being either way- it's just what level of abstraction you're willing to accept as "better". It's like saying that man is the greatest enemy to hunt because they're smart and resourceful. Unless of course, you didn't stack the table in your favor, but rather you're stuck in a cage with a hungry lion and no weapon.

And let's not even get started on those who like to pick on non-PvP characters and brag about how they beat up on, for instance, my co-op tailored cleric/healer/paladin/doctor. While there are some "honorable" PvPers, the majority are and always will be little punks who like to pretend they're a lot bigger than they are because they can bully people who would rather they not even be in the game to begin with ("Haha! I beat up your cleric who's 15 levels higher than me" "WTF did you expect me to do to your twinked tank mage? Heal you to death?")

SI

you totally lost me here.

If your saying that the best Pvper's are just guys with uber tweaked char's and no skill or thinking is involved then you are WWWWWWAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY off base. Some games maybe(like EQ). But like i said earlier, when they first put up the good/neutral/evil servers everyone was starting from square one. No uber tweaked char's or nothing... it was some of the best fighting ever.

Again, im still not sure if thats what your referring to, but that just sounds like a response coming from someone who's been whipped in PvP to many times and blames it on everything else. (tweaked char, broken char, higher level, i was afk, lag, etc...)

I don't like uber tweaked char's either or guys that gank newbies all day. There are ways to build PvP games were those guys get penalized. But a huge chunk of the MMORPG market is people who are terrified of PvP. They got ganked in UO a few times and think all PvP is EVIL! They're happy camping the same mob all day and collecting shinny gear. (which is fine i guess, whatever floats your boat.)

But if some company would take a chance and build a great PvE mmorpg, with well implemented PvP, i think you'd see more people enjoying PvP. DOAC had a good idea with 3 factions all fighting eachother. SO you were usually safe in your lands. Shadowbane had a good idea with player run towns, UO had a good idea with a skill based system instead of the retarded level system and EQ had one of the best PvE systems. (never played WoW)

Someone needs to combined them all.

dola

oh... and the best way to aviod under tweaked char's is to stop making magical weapons/armor so freaking powerful in games. (UO did it best, they were nice to have but you could win without them)

(The whole second half of this has nothing to do with what I was talking about so it got snipped.)

First, the "but that just sounds like a response coming from someone who's been whipped in PvP to many times and blames it on everything else"- yeah, I've been PK'd a lot and I don't like it. This smacks of that whole "I'm better than you because I can PK people" attitude that is prevalent with PVPers. I already said this above- I make healers, I'm going to suck at PVP and killing me proves absolutely nothing. But I can guarantee you, I'm damn good at what I do (keeping my party alive) much like you're damn good at what you do (killing other players). However, you seem to think that you're a better player. Whatever.

As to the tweaking part, I think the easiest illustration is this: Every major update, are you in that army that complains about what's nerfed because, suddenly, that unintended loophole you were taking advantage of was closed? Does it make you a good player to be able to find and then exploit that which was stronger than it should have been?

SI

why are you putting words into my month? When did i say im a better player? I've never said that, not once. Im just saying that it takes more skill/strategy to be successful in massive guild wars. And you being a healer has nothing to do with it, healers are just important in guild wars as anyone else. Not so great 1 on 1 put most PvP'ing isn't 1 on 1.

Just by the way your responding(in a hostle kinda way) here i can tell you have some deep seeded hate for pker's. Thats why i said you sounded like someone who's been pk'ed to many times. If you wanna just play PvE, collect loot and kill AI mobs all day then play EQ or something. I don't care... whatever makes you happy.

Don't let a few dumbass childish pk'ers ruin your idea of PvP (as i can tell it already has).



Once again... you have this whole attitude like all PvP'ers are a bunch of hack/Powergaming/exploit using/newbie killing assholes. And thats just not true.... Should i call all EQ players a bunch of town hiding/loot hording/mob camping/super-duper carebears?? Your taking a small % of the population and making us all out to be bad guys.

Now will a pure PvP guild generally use the most powerful classes in the game. uhhh yeah, if the development team didn't balance out all the classes before release, what do you think is gonna happen?

I hate PvP in MMORPG's. The Asshole Factor goes tend to go way up when PvP is included. I play online games to have fun, not to be griefed by other people.

That's where I strongly disagree. It's not just a few dumbass childish pk'ers or a small % of the population- the good PK'ers are the small minority of the population in most games.

And c'mon, I'm not putting words in your mouth about how you think the best challenges and players are PvP'ers, you said that:

Those are pretty much what I said about PvP'ers- there are some good ones, but they're quite outnumbered by the asshole ones.

We both left some wiggle room for good people on both sides of the aisles, but it's pretty clear we both think the majority of the other side is either the "12 year old asshat" or the "mindless drone who just camps mobs all day" stereotype and probably aren't going to change each other's minds.

SI

agreed... we both are bias. But i'll never change my view on skill. AI will never be better then human.... ever. Also, i like MOB hunting sometimes to, and it certainly has its place in a good PvP game.

I also believe if you set a game up for PvP and PvE when you orginally design it, instead of throwing it in as an after thought it can work. There are ways to penalize PK'ers and griefer's who prey on noobs, but none of these recent games do it because once again, PvP is an after thought. They just kinda throw it in endgame for people like me who enjoy PvP'ing, So its wildly unbalanced. Or just kinda throw us all on 1 small server where any PvP goes and griefer's run wild.

Alot of people knock PvP'ing/GvG'ing before they even try it. Get into a good PvP guild and engage in a couple 10 v 10 battles. After that you'll probally love it :)

I don't mind PvP but, I want some control over it. Some nights I would rather just log on.. do some quests, makes some items or just grind it out looking for shiny trinkets. I like the ability to turn it on or off. . .

Game just went Gold according to bluesnews. Any beta testers out there with thoughts on the game?

I played it during that week they opened beta to everyone, and thought it has a lot of potential. It's really got that oldschool DnD feeling. Leveling is slow and hard, as it should be. Character creation is a lot of fun.

Any specific questions?

Comparisons to other games. Not based on the content, but on the 'feel' of the interface. Is it like the Matrix Online (Bad) or like City of Heroes (Good). Combat system would be nice too, what other game does it resemble. Things of this nature. If you were a beta tester, would it be worth your money to buy this game.

I liked the interface, but I think it could be a bit better as far as the size of buttons and such. It reminds me of a slightly less appealing version of the WoW interface, which I love.

I will definitely be buying the game, although I'm not sure how long the appeal will last. I've been spoiled by WoW, which I'm still playing after over a year.

Anyone doing the headstart tomorrow or this weekend?

I'm considering picking this up next week. Will be hard for me to play two mmo's, but I'd like to see if there is a fun factor to DnD online. I've been playing WoW for 4-5 months, and my rogue is just now getting some epic drops from MC. I'm somewhere between a casual gamer and hardcore gamer, so WoW is the right place for me.

Well, here are my initial impressions on the game after 1 1/2 hours playing.

Early pros

Interface - Eerily similar to WoW. If you've played world of warcraft you should have absolutely no problems being very familiar with the setup. Smaller buttons though but, that isn't too big of an issue. Plus, 10 areas to put buttons.

Adventures - Nice to have a reward at the end of the quest. In each quest, I found that there was a main goal plus little optional things to do along the side. You reward in XP is in completing the item.. in some of them, you wouldn't have to kill a single thing to complete the quest. I haven't tried grouping up yet to do quests so, we shall she how that goes tonight

Character Customization - More variation on the characters than WoW. Probably 12-16 each on the eyes/nose/face/brows/hair so, you will see more varying degrees of faces but, WoW in the end will probably have them beat on costumes.

Early cons

Movement seems a little stuttered. Pretty sure it isn't my graphics card. I turned everything off and I still saw it... hard to explain but, visually, doesn't look 100% smooth to me.

Seeing what an item does. In WoW, just hover and a display box pops up. In DDO, you have to click the item and then click view (at least from what I saw.. although, maybe there is a setup button to click to avoid that). Extra step, not a biggee but, just a little annoying.

I think there is some potential for this one. Definitely should appeal more to those that don't like to grind over and over...

I'll wait 2 or 3 months before i even consider picking up DnD Online. I've jumped in on two MMORPGs on release (WoW and Shadowbane) and i greatly regret both purchases. WoW was marginally good in the beginning, but was missing some key elements (Battlegrounds, especially). Shadowbane was simply a bad game. I'd rather wait for a bit and let the devs work out the kinks before i start playing; saves me a lot of stress and annoyance.

One thing that a lot of people miss about PvP is that it really make MMROPGs insanely difficult to balance. It's relatively easy to take each class, assign them a role in group play, and then implement abilities that allow them to effective play that role. It's another thing when you have to balance battles between each individual class and each other individual class. Devs then either try a 5 or 10-way rock-paper-scissors idea that usually ends up disappointing a lot of players, or they implement skills in each class that beat each other class. Neither way bodes well for the game in general. It simply brings the classes closer together and allows players to use essentially the same playstyle regardless of the class they play.

Tactics that players use against each other are forged from the faults in class balancing. Exploiting an overpowered skill is all the average player does if he wishes to prevail in PvP. Sure, some people just play their class very well and would win in a balanced fight anyway, but most people go to a forum, read about an overpowered technique, then spam it all day long. Also, the community of the PvP centric games that i've played have been exceedingly poor. Let's face it, interacting negatively with other players when there is no actual roleplaying (separation of the character from the person playing the character especially) leads to pain and suffering for all. Often, one half of the players feel cheated and griefed by the end of the encounter. When the player IS the character, PvP degrades rapidly. Attacks on a character then become attacks on a person. That leads to added stress and irritation for the losing party.

The great part about PvE centric games: Players who are dicks can't survive. Sooner or later no one will group with them and they'll be stuck, alone, in town, typing "lvl60 warrior lfg" 80 thousands times a day. In PvP games, you can meet up with other similar assholic people and be assholes together without penalty. In fact, it's often the way to play if you want to win.

Hmm.. I don't know if DDO even has PvP.. In the PnP style, players killing players wasn't a common thing (Which is another reason I might find myself more geared toward DDO than WoW).

But, I agree with what you said.