D&D Online

I played beta and then I also played trial about 1 year ago and I'm wondering if it has improved any since then

when i played it seemed slow asfar as grind was concerned and also seemed to lack story content, you could also not play evil and there was no pvp.

has any of this been changed and do the things i do ingame accually mean anything later or are they just an instance that has no real effect on the story?

The grind is the same, but there is about twice as much content as from launch so you do have some choices in what to grind.

Some of the stories are tying together but there really are only a very small number of "major" storylines.

You still can't play evil, and probably will never be able to.   The added PvP to some taverns as brawling pits and a couple battlegrounds but nothing outside of that.   PvP is usually a who can {crit, finger, stone, fascinate} the fastest...  I've never had a PvP battle last more than a couple seconds.

Everything is still instanced, but with the recent live event they are starting to move into world changing events to change things up a bit.

On the other hand they've added auction houses, favor rewards, and a new enhancement system which is really an improvement over the past "pick 4" system.

So overall,  it has improved a great deal but not so much in any of the things you are talking about.

DDO has a bad grind and lacks story content? Even back during beta I'd have said, "Huh?" if hearing that. It's only a grind if the person insists on powerleveling and running the same quests over and over.

A "persistent world" in MMOs is pretty much a myth regardless of the game. They're persistent for about five minutes.

A LOT has changed in the past year or so, overall. PVP is only in certain locations.

it did lack story back in beta... then again i really shouldnt try to hold it anywhere close to comparable to its namesake i mean its hard to get an interactive world and super storydriven world without a real DM....

Originally posted by Bahemoth

it did lack story back in beta... then again i really shouldnt try to hold it anywhere close to comparable to its namesake i mean its hard to get an interactive world and super storydriven world without a real DM....

Would you be willing to explain why beta should dictate an opinion on a finished product 2 years after it went live?

There's a story, you just have to read. 

I agree with DDO not being 110% accurate to D&D.  The reason here is that the majority of us who played Dungeons & Dragons did so through our imagination and only used the rules as a guide.  Each DM had their own style and the games played reflected that.  Turbine is the DM in DDO and other then a few instances (blanket imunities) they've done an extremely good job at providing for an wholesome experiance set in dynamic environments.

Now to answer the initial questions:

Grind - Only if you want it.  If you're the type of player who likes power gaming and grinding out content then you can very welll play that way in DDO.  Thankfully it's not required unless you expect the results of being a power gamer.  Casual players feel like there's a grind when they want something without putting in the effort and this could apply to you. 

Evil - You can roll play an evil character.  Make it neutral, as a disguise, and use "/emote bellows with glee: Muahahaha...!!!" every time you kill something.   I would never have let you play an evil character in a D&D campaign and I've never played with a group of people were the DM had done so.

PvP - it's based on D&D.  What do you think would happen to a party full of fighters who went up agasint the lone high level caster?  It applies here as well.  Balance of DDO's PvP system is governed by the players who are making up the party to engage each other.  It's unwise to have all the casters on one team and splitting them up is one way to balance it.  The Capture the Flag and Death Match, not to be confused with tavern brawls, is some great fun in DDO.  Currently, there is no reason to do PvP other then personal "fun", and it's usually a lot of fun!

instance - just an instance? Not to be rude but if you're unable to see it as a personalized experiance then you'll probally want to look at games where camping spawns and kill stealing is common practice.  The Instance system in DDO is by far the best directed questing mechanism in the current list of MMO's.  The isntancing double as a way to balance game content so it plays well. 

I also played DDO back in beta and a little after and was not impressed. I liked the combat system and I love the D&D ruleset - but the mediocre graphics engine and the fact it's an Eberron game totally turned me off. Not to mention it suffered from new-MMO-itis. Like any new MMO it had plenty of wrinkles major and minor that demanded to be ironed out.

OK, so in the interim I have going on with my life and last year decided to get LOTRO at it's release largely due to all the praise it was receiving. Because of my experience with DDO I probably wouldn't have rushed into that one without it's glowing reception into the MMO multiverse.

So to make a long story short, LOTRO deserved it's high praise and continues to earn it to this day, which has caused my opinion of Turbine to go up quite a bit. So I've been on a D&D (mainly NWN) jones the past month and I decided to give DDO another shot.

My general opinion of DDO has been negative (I keep up in the news, so reading about the release of the auction house - how long after release? Like a year and a half? - stuff like this caused my general negative opinion). Also it seemed like there were quite a few, how-to-put, socially-challenged players. I mean there seemed to be a concentration of assholes, even for an MMO.

OK, rambling again ... Based on the esteem Turbine has earned from me with LOTRO, I decided to give DDO another shot rather than just re-install NWN1 or go through Baldur's Gate 2 for the n+1th time. And I was totally NOT DISAPPOINTED!

Good job Turbine! The game has been fleshed out very nicely. Even though I still find the graphics engine mediocre, the rig I now use can handle it at it's higher settings. Still a bit of stutter, but not as bad as LOTRO. And I am smarter also about my graphic settings now, so that helps.

My personal selling point was expansion of solo content. I just love soloing dungeons, what can I say? That makes it even more fun when I pick up one or two other people to explore with. Plus, I think I see soloing evolving as a meta-game within DDO which gets me even more stoked over it.

SO that was a long ramble. If you like D&D and are not a rule-Nazi (i.e. you won't be upset that it is not a 110% copy of PnP) you will like this game. Even Eberron has even been slowly finding a little space in my heart (but only a TINY one dammit - lol).

My suggestion is to do a lot of research on optimal builds first, even if you aren't the powergaming-type. Just reading through the forums on that topic will allow you to make better informed decisions when you create your character.

Also, to address an earlier-mentioned dislike of DDO I had, I re-established myself on Sarlona and have found a very low jerk-quotient. I don't know if that's because Sarlona is just a good server, most of them left the game or they just mellowed out. Or maybe I was just online at the wrong time during the game opening and got an unjustified bad impression.

yes,

  much more interesting content, raising the level cap makes the experience last longer, and a new cap raise is happening soon.  The revamped enhancement system is much better.  The combat engine is the best currently available.  No other game I've played even comes close except city of heroes, and DDO kills that.  The monsters move around constantly in combat, trying to gain positional advantage, and it causes combat to FLOW!

  The graphics are decent and will above games like WOW, and almost never experience any lag and I have a relatively slow dsl connection.

  The many classes that are all worth playing provides a great deal of variety to the game. The upcoming monk class adds to that list.

Rigghawk

I don't like how they added weapon's that you now have to upgrade. I think they call it a crafting system.

Basically, you need to run The Shroud quest over and over. It's another grind they added to the game.

Originally posted by Quintor

I don't like how they added weapon's that you now have to upgrade. I think they call it a crafting system.

Basically, you need to run The Shroud quest over and over. It's another grind they added to the game.

 

Except that it's 100% optional...and those weapons are far from "required" items to own.