Hello everyone, i want to tell you about Dungeons and Dragons: Online.
I have played a lot of MMO's, but one of them stands out in the crowd.
Dungeons & Dragons: Online is in my opinion the best MMO out there.

First of all the character customization is awesome, i can talk about so many different builds i still want to try out because the possibilities are really numerous. This game makes WoW's, EVE's, EQ's or Lineage's characters look like cookie cutters, anyone that has ever played a D&D game will know what it's like.
If you have played any D&D game and you've liked it but you've never played DDO, i say sign up for the trial right away! DDO is a dream come-true for D&D fans.

Dungeons & Dragons is different, takes a while to understand the concept if you've never heard about it, but it's perfect.
DDO is a real-time team-based game filled with dungeon crawls that can be played many different ways with monsters and traps. DDO is essentialy based solely on the fun parts of other MMO's.

DDO is all about fun, you dont have to walk for hours to get to the quest you want to play, yet there is a huge amount of items and gear to collect and countless diverse quests to play.

I'm not going to explain any more about the fun of DDO, you should experience that yourself.

However, chances are you've never heard of DDO. The community is not as large as it should be, it has become the underdog of MMO's.
DDO USA has about 25.000+ active subscriptions. There is absolutely no lack of players. Currently everyone is awaiting a new MOD, the 9th one, raising the max lvl from 16 to 20 and adding new content.

However,

I suggest you check out the website of DDO: http://www.ddo.com/

Especially note the Atari symbol on the bottom of the website.
Yes, Atari owns DDO.

Did you ever see this game listed on their website?
Just look at the Atari games list on there and notice DDO is not on there!

Sadly, Atari does not advertise DDO at all. No one knows why. The pubisher Turbine cannot promote DDO to some extent due to legal issues.

This saddens me because the game doesn't get the respect it deserves.
Without any real advertising the amount of players will only get lower because of the tough competition on the games market.

Looking back at my time with WoW, i feel like i have wasted my time on the WoW servers, doing stuff that is absolutely addicting, but strangely enough, not much fun when compared to DDO.

Any feedback about this issue would be great!

I do not work for Turbine.

Everyone reading this, I suggest you check out the website and try out the Free 10-day trial of Dungeons and Dragons Online, its one of the best MMO's out there!
(i play on the Khyber server which i know has a good and active newbie help channel)

Forgive my crappy english, it is not my main language.

Sorry, you just can't sugar coat a turd.

Elaborate on your discontent or be gone.

Originally posted by jybgess

Sorry, you just can't sugar coat a turd.

Sure you can, but I wouldn't recommend it, I never felt so sick in my life. Oh wait I see what your doing there Jyb.

If you are not an employee of Turbine how do you know that this zergfest has 25,000 subscribers?!

I would say DDO has some of the best Dungeons and Quests its just to bad its not a open world even if it was just zoned it would have been better than instancing pretty much everything.   The only thing that I didn't like about the game was people wanted to grind the same dungeons to get gear.  I know its not the games fault but they should have made it so that you can't do a dungeon again once you've completed it once.  Just like in PnP DnD you can't do the same quests over and over again.

I really enjoyed this game about 2 years ago, I even played for a good 1 1/2 years. Then the devs started with the nerfs, it became where many of the spells were no longer true representations of their pen and paper counter parts.

I returned about 6 months ago to give this game another try and found that many of the spells in game had been nerfed even further. With a game that is quite far away from pen and paper already it's not the best of ideas for the devs to keep making changes that push this game further from its roots.

I will say in this game's favour though that it has quite a unique style of play and isn't quite the go fetch me 5 pig skins type of MMO. DDO also has a pretty good AI, compared to many other MMOs I have tried the AI seemed more intelligent. In the end for me they pushed this game too far away from true pen and paper, if you don't give a whoot about pen and paper D&D you could very well enjoy this game.

Originally posted by Blackice09

DDO is a real-time team-based game filled with ...

Nah, you lost me there.  I loathe games where you have to team or group.  Way too many players are utter asshats, and I gave up trying to sort the wheat from the chaff about 8 years ago.

Atari does not own DDO, they own the D&D IP that is all.  Turbine has to consult with them when it comes to rulesets differing from the D&D design, but that is Atari's only connection with the game.   Next time get your facts straight.

Despite criticism above, the game is not bad and well maintained by Turbine.  Shame more people don't try it, it is well done considering the limitations of the D&D ruleset.

Since theres no persistent world, 1 stupid city and eveyrthing is just instances, its not worth a fee.  Add in forced grouping and is it any shock the game didn't do well?   Besides, for a game relying on instances, the combat sucked.  Sure, its real-time, but its not GOOD realtime.   The roling/dodging system was moronic looking anyway.  It just wasn't an immersive game.  Again, I cant play any game where I HAVE TO group, unless its an online FPS where I can get in & get out.  Still have to deal with the a$$hats though, which makes things difficult;)

WTF Robots!

Just a terrible game setting , or implimentation of it.

Lack of content at launch ( Only so many times you can run water works )

Turbine did not learn to overcome the horrid AC2 game engine till LOTRO, hence all the instances ( nothing like not being able to go into a building , because the game engine wont support it )

Robots!

I will admit that DDO is a better game than it's lack of success indicates it is... but I would take the OP's opinions with a grain of salt.

For example, he compares DDO's character building to EQ and WoW. Of course EQ and WoW's characters are cookie cutter compared to DDO. EQ characters are the DEFINITION of cookie cutter, and WoW followed in EQ's footsteps. Eve though? There is a lot of depth in that game's character building.

He goes on to say that DDO is a dream come true for DnD fans. DDO is not a dream come true for DnD fans. It's more like "a reasonably entertaining adaptation of DnD's style/feel into an MMO." And you echo the truth of MY summary of the game by being excited about there being a ton of quests to do, items to find, and monsters to kill... that's what an MMO is. If it really was a DnD fan's dream come true, you wouldn't be bragging about that stuff, you'd be bragging about how alive and deep the game world is, or something similar, instead of just about how many leet magical items you get.

But that aside, I say again that DDO is underappreciated.

The high points of DDO are:

Amazing dungeons - NPCs seem to have some intelligence in their attacks (or flight); little events spring up on you when you aren't expecting them (ambushes, traps, secret passages, etc.); the dungeons just have a really nice feel (one dungeon that I recall was basically a multi-level, underground city).

Pretty nice advancement system - you earn experience, but not just by turning in quests and killing stuff. Dungeons have different objectives, and you earn experience for completing the final objective in a dungeon (and for other side-objectives along the way). For example, rogue doesn't necessarily have to kill everything in a dungeon to finish it, and in some cases he gets bonus experience for being sneaky.

DnD feel - there are dice rolls, the names you know and love from DnD, and so on.

     I tried DDO in beta and there was simply not enough content or variety to keep the game interesting for very long......Like others here have said the world needed to be alot bigger with alot more to do.......I played about a month in beta and felt there wasnt much more to do than I had already done.....Overall I was pretty disappointed as I thought a game with the D&D ruleset could have great potential.

Lord help us if this is a "diamond" in the this genre we all love/hate. 

I'm not sure there was a more disappointing game for long time D&D fans, or even fans of the computer D&D games (me).  I can't point to a single thing I liked about this game, so honestly, I can't relate to this thread at all.......

If the game had a large open world set in Forgotten Realms, it would have been a much bigger success.

Originally posted by andmiller

Lord help us if this is a "diamond" in the this genre we all love/hate. 

 

I'm not sure there was a more disappointing game for long time D&D fans, or even fans of the computer D&D games (me).  I can't point to a single thing I liked about this game, so honestly, I can't relate to this thread at all.......

 

 

I could not agree more. BUT despite experienced a HUGE disappointment over the D&D aspect of DDO or lack there of, in hindsight it easily belongs to the better spectrum of games I've tested. It's very good quality MMO but rapes the D&D ruleset more than one way. All in all everyone should give this game a chance. I've always thought this game was at it's best when played in LAN with a full party of friends.

Dungeon grinding with DDO vets pretty much ended my playing - that and the expiration of the trial. I'd be happy to get back if I could muster up 5 irl friends (full party) to play it once through.

Anyone who says this game sucks must really hate instancing and zoning because this really is, with it's flaws, a very good quality game in the end.

Originally posted by andmiller

Lord help us if this is a "diamond" in the this genre we all love/hate. 

 

I'm not sure there was a more disappointing game for long time D&D fans, or even fans of the computer D&D games (me).  I can't point to a single thing I liked about this game, so honestly, I can't relate to this thread at all.......

 

 

Could not agree with you more. I Been an old school PnP player back when DnD first surfaced and was considered satanic and occultish. They not only burned rock -n- roll records at the local baptist churches, they torched anything DnD related as well (by the way in my 40's). What a disappointing game and as usual they did not listen to thier beta community and I know I was a tester.

I was so hyped to finally have a PnP version on MMO and what a sad, sad disappointment....

The lesson to learn here is never give Turbine a well known ip, they just tear it to shreads. Dungeons and Dragons is an awesome IP and look how it turned out ? The same goes for LOTR, great ip and Turbine turned it into a yawnfest. The books and movies for LOTR are far more appealing.

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Originally posted by Blackice09

Dungeons & Dragons: Online, a diamond that's been forgotten.
 

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I invite you to read a full review of DDO clicky

In resume:

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DDO is really a half cut gemstone. It's shining but on a few sides and very rough on others.

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D.

Originally posted by wizitdry

I really enjoyed this game about 2 years ago, I even played for a good 1 1/2 years. Then the devs started with the nerfs, it became where many of the spells were no longer true representations of their pen and paper counter parts.

I returned about 6 months ago to give this game another try and found that many of the spells in game had been nerfed even further. With a game that is quite far away from pen and paper already it's not the best of ideas for the devs to keep making changes that push this game further from its roots.

I will say in this game's favour though that it has quite a unique style of play and isn't quite the go fetch me 5 pig skins type of MMO. DDO also has a pretty good AI, compared to many other MMOs I have tried the AI seemed more intelligent. In the end for me they pushed this game too far away from true pen and paper, if you don't give a whoot about pen and paper D&D you could very well enjoy this game.

But keep in mind, one can "nerf" anything in D&D. People keep forgetting that Gary Gygax said that the rules were just guidlines. They could be changed, altered, added to or just discarded.

If people go into DDO with the idea that this is just one "dungeon master's" campaign then it becomes a lot more palatable.

To me, DDO has a lot of great things. However, there are things that I don't like.

I hate the map. finding anything is a pain in the neck for me. I don't really like the art direction nor do I like the avatars (in my opinion Turbine just has a problem in general with avatars).

I like the quests but unfortunatley there is a level of quest burn out that leads to players mindlessly running through them. If someone wants to take their time or they are new they need to request that everyone go slowly. Of course then everyone has to wait around while you read all the quest text.

I was invited to a group for "something" as I still to this day don't know what it was.

In the end they didn't even need me they just mowed through everything. I just followed along trying to help and running to the same quest givers as they did every time we left the dungeon.

Still, there is a lot here for someone to enjoy.

I see a lot of comments that seem to be based on Mod1 or Mod2 and even Beta(!) experiences, the game changed so much since that and you really cant have a good opininion about DDO when you can only relate to your Beta experiences.

Atari gets a major share of profits from this games subsribers, it has a contract with Turbine that is totally reaping Turbine of its money. Turbine cannot pay for, and is not even allowed to, doing the advertising. In this way Atari owns DDO. When Atari pulls the plug DDO is done for. There has been a thread on the DDO forums that explained this in more detail, but you are not allowed to do that and the thread has been deleted.

Also i know this is far from Pen & Paper. Im not an oldskool D&D fan. Im from Holland and ive never played Pen & Paper.
But an online digital game should not be like a pen & paper game, it's impossible to recreate pen & paper in a fun online game, it's also impossible to copy every aspect of a single player game into an online game. You have to understand these differences. This is, and will be so in the future, the closest multiplayer thing to a singleplayer D&D game.
I loved every D&D game on the computer, and i always wished i could play those games together with real people.

When you compare this games players to any other MMORPG you'll find that DDO has a far superiour player base in every aspect.
I do not have any real life friends playing this game. I would be surprised if anyone here in Holland knew about the game anyway. But DDO is played by a mature audience, i have seen very few kids playing this game. Mostly everyone is serious about it and its very rare to be in a pickup group that F**s it up totally. I can't remember the last time that happened.

The map will have many fixes in the upcoming MOD9

Originally posted by Blackice09

I see a lot of comments that seem to be based on Mod1 or Mod2 and even Beta(!) experiences, the game changed so much since that and you really cant have a good opininion about DDO when you can only relate to your Beta experiences.

You don't get a second chance to make a first impression.

I trialed it a while back - it just felt way too much like a single-player game to me.  No open world, all the dungeons had a solo setting and since I was new that was pretty much all I had available to me.  And the combat was way too twitchy for me.

But I might try another trial just in case...

I have recently resubbbed after going through the trial.  I do enjoy the experience of going through the dungeon crawls solo.

However, the zuergs I have experienced in doing the group quests ( albeit with PUGS mostly ) is extremly repetitive and not fun.  You get players who are going through the same quests over and over again to get the extreme set and it becomes a see who can run to the next mob faster.  Completely ruining my experience with what I originally thought was a good game with a few minor flaws.

I am now concidering cancelling before the 30 sub is up.  Just for the fact that while the game really has some shining points, the fact that the newb experience is boiling down to finding PUG's that zurg through the level just to farm and do it again.  Very little communication in these groups and RP is pretty much out the window.

Originally posted by cukimunga

I would say DDO has some of the best Dungeons and Quests its just to bad its not a open world even if it was just zoned it would have been better than instancing pretty much everything.   The only thing that I didn't like about the game was people wanted to grind the same dungeons to get gear.  I know its not the games fault but they should have made it so that you can't do a dungeon again once you've completed it once.  Just like in PnP DnD you can't do the same quests over and over again.

DDO isn't a gem. I tried it. I agreee with the post above. Doing dungeons on easy, medium, and hard, is not very fun. Also did not like the clickety clickety combat that didn't really add anything, except tired fingers from clicking the mouse.

I did like the way treasure dropped. One chest, and everyone in the party got a pull from the chest. No ninja looting, no platemail for the wizard, or magic wand for the fighter, no "need before greed" arguments, it was a great solution for loot IMO.

The Dungeons And Dragons 4th Edition was supposted to have an online component, where you get an online map, a Dungeon master that could control monsters, 3d monsters and player characters. You played with a DM, the software calculated the damage, and the DM tells the story, you play with voice chat, or typed chat.

Now THAT I was looking forward to, but I don'tk now what happened to it.