Recently, Turbine deployed Update 5 to all Dungeons & Dragons Online servers. Update 5 features some impressive changes including airships. MMORPG.com's Jaime Skelton had the opportunity to tour Update 5 and she has a lot to say about the new changes to DDO in Update 5. Read on!

Of course, the biggest part of the new guild system is the rewards. Rewards are spread out across all 100 levels, but are deliberately biased toward the first 50 levels so that functional rewards (including the much touted airship) are unlocked in the early part of the game. Later rewards are focused more on prestige, offering a chance for players to show off on their server and have friendly competition between other guilds after securing their benefits at lower levels. The early rewards for guilds are guild chat, the ability to invite players to the guild via the mail system, and vendors.

Read all of Jaime's findings.

Updating as I type this, looking forwards to seeing the new updates.

1st! :)

While i love D&D, i've beta-ed this and tried it on 2 separate occassions, i just cant seem to get ino this game.  I dont like the magic points and rest shrines, then again i never really like the P&P way either.   The need to add some more prestige classes and races.  I'm not hating on DDO, i wish them all the best of luck.

An enjoyable game with good replay value.  The thing I like most is the ability to create entirely unique character builds that other players may neer think of which is an extremely rare feature in MMO's. 

I played in beta and early release but I left due to the lack of content back then. I've just come back to the game again to see how the free play system has worked out for the game and I must say its revitaliased the game. Theres obviously years of updates since I left so theres loads more to do but the best bit is the player activity levels, its easy to find groups and make friends now!

Guild achevements are a nice addition to the game. With all the fresh money theyre making now I hope they plough some into updating the UI a bit, its still functional but getting a bit long in the tooth.

Originally posted by EveJunkie

I played in beta and early release but I left due to the lack of content back then. I've just come back to the game again to see how the free play system has worked out for the game and I must say its revitaliased the game. Theres obviously years of updates since I left so theres loads more to do but the best bit is the player activity levels, its easy to find groups and make friends now!

Guild achevements are a nice addition to the game. With all the fresh money theyre making now I hope they plough some into updating the UI a bit, its still functional but getting a bit long in the tooth.

 

Agreed.

Honestly, this game can't get any more broken or bad.

Initially when the game came out 4 years ago it had "a lot of potential"

With each passing year the game "had potential" but never realized it. There have been way too many nerfs, numberous exploits that are resolved at an embarassing rate, and nullification of build validity. (Ever played a weapon finesse/ac build in other D&D games? forget about it in DDO unless you never plan on running an epic quest! all of the epic monsters have DR -20 and are immune to stat dmg! you can throw away your rogues too, wizards with 2 rogue levels can disable all the traps in the game)

Everyone has put up with lack of content and low level caps that increased at a rate of 1.5 levels per year resulting in the lvl 20 cap we see today. Turbine's idea of "new content" is taking old quests and putting level 35 mobs in the same quests and calling them "epic" and then churning out a bunch of lackluster mid to low level trash quests that contain nothing worth doing to someone who has a capped toon.

If you want to complete an epic raid get ready to shell out for some mana potions to feed your clerics because they are made to intentionally not be completable by legitimate means. You have to pump cash into the game now because the business model for the game has taken precedent over it being fun and rational.

If that wasn't enough, I hope you enjopy the dungeon alert system. That's right, if anyone in the same dungeon you're in runs past 5 monsters you being to be slowed and the monsters gain levels killing everyone in your party for something that wasn't your fault and also is ridiculous. The reason given for this crazy piece of code was it should "solve lag."

Unfortunately, lag isn't "solved" and if you enter a quest that your raid party has to beat on portals (portals that spawn monsters in raids like shroud) you will not get a packet for 60 seconds at a time. Not only does it freeze all action in these broken quests, it begins to mess up people who aren't even in your instance. So enjoy this high quality game, folks. It's the worst rendition of D&D ever made.