Anybody playing DDO?

[TCrouch]

Dungeons and Dragons Online is a very strange, refreshing take on the MMO genre. You get no xp per kill (only for completing quests, which has led to a lot of fun times so far). You don't regenerate hit or mana points by sitting around. You don't charge forward into many enemies and take a lot of damage, since you can only rest up at a rest shrine or in a tavern (that also serves as a gathering point for quests and finding parties, etc).

The combat is interesting, as it can either be turn-based or twitch-based. Set auto attack to play it like other MMO's, or use your right mouse button to swing a weapon and shift to block. Hold shift and hit a direction to tumble. In the end, it almost feels like a Zelda game or something.

Dungeons REQUIRE the correct combination of classes. Traps are everywhere, and without a rogue a party is pretty much doomed. My warrior can wade through gobs of enemies, but a trap will cut him down in no time. I also didn't have enough intelligence to open an enchanted chest last night .

Best thing yet, the quests give random rewards tailored to your class, so opening a chest will yield 2 or 3 things for everybody in the party, reserved for those in the party.

I guess bottom line is, is anybody else playing it?

[TCrouch]

Re: Anybody playing DDO?

I'm guessing that's a "no"

[Graphik]

Re: Anybody playing DDO?

I wanna get this, is it free or pay to play?

[TCrouch]

Re: Anybody playing DDO?

It's a pay-to-play deal. It's such a new take on the traditional MMO mold that there's room for it in my budget, for sure.

[Graphik]

Re: Anybody playing DDO?

It's a pay-to-play deal. It's such a new take on the traditional MMO mold that there's room for it in my budget, for sure.

Damn, I was strongly considering getting it but I just cant do the pay to play deal. I dont have that many hours in my monthly life to dedicate to it.

[TCrouch]

Re: Anybody playing DDO?

The cool thing about it is it's closer to a Morrowind or something than a World of Warcraft. You can get some nice armor and weapons and feel pretty beefy after an hour of playing, not a month.

It's more like a single player RPG that you play with friends (yes, I know that contradicts single player) than it is a traditional MMO.

Portions of the game, if playing as a Rogue or a Ranger, feel like Splinter Cell. You have an "eye" that shows up next to you when stealthed. 1 eye=hidden. 3 eyes=fully visible. That leads to some excellent "creep up and backstab" or sniper shot moments.

Other portions you're navigating dungeons a la Prince of Persia. Leaping from crates, grabbing ledges, pulling yourself up, etc.

More Prince of Persia, you have traps that spring out and rip you to shreds, so if you're not a rogue you're trying to time the mechanism and leap through without getting sliced and diced.

The actual combat is a lot like Zelda. Move with the FPS controls and use RMB to strike. Hold shift (I have it mapped to a thumb button) to block/parry, or hold shift and move to tumble/roll around.

It's really a lot like an online version of a single player RPG, since most of your time is spent questing and whatnot. The game focuses on the experiences of an adventurer more than the experience points themselves, per se. If they come out with a demo, you really should give it a shot.

[Graphik]

Re: Anybody playing DDO?

Crap, you should'nt of mentioned Morrowind. Now I gotta check it out. What do you mean by a single player type game? You still have to find a party for most quest?

[TCrouch]

Re: Anybody playing DDO?

Depends on the class, honestly. If you're a rogue or something, yeah. You just physically can't wade through monsters solo. But finding a party is extremely easy, and the community itself is much nicer than other games that I've played. I haven't met anybody yet that was a real tool.

If you're a warrior (as my main character Mordred is) you can wade through large numbers of the lower kobolds and whatnot, so it's easier to solo. I'll pull out a big 2-handed sword and mow one down, or grab dual 1-handed swords and dual wield on them. I might pull out the sword-and-shield combo if I need the armor boost.

It's hard to explain, but most MMO's feel sort of like this at the start:

"Get early quest. Go kill stuff. Level up. Train a bit. Go kill more stuff. And more. Level again".

Single player RPG's usually aren't like that. It's follow a story arc or a storyline of some sort, and the killing nonstop action doesn't come into play unless you want it to. You aren't leveling constantly early on to keep your interest level up and make you feel like you accomplished something. They don't usually have restrictions on whether you can use a weapon or armor until level 30, for instance.

DDO has you starting on a story quest first. You run a couple of tutorial quests and then you're in Stormreach Harbor. You are befriended by a Lord and run some errand quests for him, and before you know it you're following a quest based on a quest you've already done. The random rewards net you some +1 banded mail or something, and you're using better weapons and you're feeling much stronger while simply following the story. You will NOT level up fast (level 2 is 10,000 xp and you only get a couple hundred for a quest). It's not about level-grinding, it's about the quests themselves and the loot you get for doing them.

If you get in a good party, quests are an absolute blast. You have the rogue out front scouting and disabling traps (the entire party learns to stop dead in their tracks when the rogue crouches down and does the "search around" animation, because that means something bad is nearby), you have the Rangers pulling from the rear lines with sniper shots, warriors chewing up the enemies, and then the wizards just unleashing hell. That's an interesting thing, too. With absolutely NO regeneration anywhere except taverns and rest shrines, the entire exercise is one of pacing yourself. If a level 1 wizard has 150 mana points, and casting a fireball costs 10 points, you can imagine you won't get far by nuking things to start out with. It takes a lot of coordination to beat the harder dungeons, and some of the lower dungeons are repeatable (I actually cleared one dungeon so many times that the treasure chest at the end started telling me "you've taken everything of value from this chest already" about 20 times later).

When you turn a quest in and get a good reward, it's like a perfect golf swing. It made everything worthwhile. Pacing is much slower and more deliberate than other MMO's, and I find myself tracing a storyline more than just leveling up. I talk to this NPC, who tells me to meet some guy in a tavern, who sends me to talk to his friend, who sends me into a basement, which is a trap, which I then go kill the friend because of, who has a note leading me to a lighthouse, where I steal a book, which is another trap, and I'm dodging MORE traps, and...whoa all of a sudden I'm level 2. You're so caught up in everything BUT the level grind that it kind of sneaks up on you...like a single player RPG.

[TheTruth]

Re: Anybody playing DDO?

Terry...I'm going to have to put you on my ignore list. You got me hooked on MMOs with CoH, but now that I am not playing it or WoW I am looking for something to take their place. And Star Wars just didn't do it for me in the end.

How long does it take to do a quest? Is this all you do are quests?

[TCrouch]

Re: Anybody playing DDO?

If you want to get xp, then yes...all you do are quests. There are no experience points for single kills like in every other MMO there is.

And the quests vary. The good part? When you go to do the quest, they're ALWAYS instanced, so it's your own pace. When you double click a door, a quest prompt comes up, where you can choose normal, hard, or elite difficulty (hard and elite are locked unless you beat it a bunch of times or are a very high level, I think). It also lists the quest duration

So if you know you have a few minutes, do quests that are listed as "Short". The "Medium" ones typically take me 15 minutes or so, and the longs are 30 minutes or more if you don't know exactly where to go or what to do.

Most quests that aren't main story arc or tutorial quests are repeatable as well (with random rewards in both the treasure chests in the dungeon and for completion, so you don't just get the same old thing over and over. In that respect it's a lot like Diablo. Dungeon crawling looking for that good loot!), so you can just do a couple of short ones if you like, or move on to the longer ones.

[TheTruth]

Re: Anybody playing DDO?

So no side skills to work on like in WoW? What is your feel on the variety of quests and such...does it feel like it will be the same ole thing over and over so far? Also, is there much customization to your tune (face, clothes, etc)?

[Defel]

Re: Anybody playing DDO?

The beta was extremely dull. The only thing that I find really different about this MMORPG is the reliance you will have on other people. In other games, you are usually rewarded when you're in a group; this game forces you to be in a group or you will die.

[TCrouch]

Re: Anybody playing DDO?

Defel: I've solo'd almost nonstop through the beta, previews, and now retail with a warrior and been just fine with it. You can't get away from grouping for harder quests, but that's the nature of an MMO.

I've ONLY been able to solo effectively with a warrior, however. Dull? I don't see it unless the slower pace of the game itself is what made it dull for you. It's definitely a much more deliberate affair than most whack-a-mole games.

Truth: side skills like alchemy, tailoring, etc? Not that I know of, but I never even look for those actually. Not my style, but I don't think they have that in D&D and the entire game is based around the hardcore rules set. The customization option is far greater than WoW (eyes, nose, lips, facial scars are all individual, etc) but not as good as something like SWG or EQ2.

I can imagine that the quests will get repetitive after a while, but I had more quests than I could keep track of on Mordred, so I have plenty to do before I run out of things. Not to mention it was all in one zone, without even heading out past the market and out of the harbor itself.

[TheTruth]

Re: Anybody playing DDO?

Yeah, I didn't really get into the alchemy, mining, stuff and was just wondering if you needed to do that kind of stuff in DD.

With GRAW PC coming out hopefully in the next month and maybe having to get the 360 version until the PC version is released, and other games coming out, I think I will give it some time before I drop 50 bones on DDO. Maybe a demo will come out soon and I can give it a try. Would like to continue hearing your feelings on the game as you get deeper into it though.

[MachoMyers]

Re: Anybody playing DDO?

Four year old bump from oblivion!

DDO Unlimited has been free to play for months now. I just installed and am about to try it. Anyone else play/try it?

http://www.ddo.com/