I did Enjoy D&DO playing it for almost a year and I stopped playing about 6 months before F2P came in. But I truly despise the setting of Eberron, it just feels very dry and soulless both here and in the PnP version.

If they were really so hellbent on avoiding Faerun, then Darksun would have been a far more interesting setting IMHO and they could have achieved a lot more with it.

The Min/Max crowd did piss me off also, getting booted from a group because you had the audacity to make a Human Fighter/Cleric instead of the "superior" Dwarven Fighter/Cleric got very old very fast.

I am actually really hoping for another D&D MMORPG (probably the only thing that will get me back to playing fantasy genre MMO's) one day soon, but with no end in sight to the Turbine Vs Atari Vs Hasbro legal battle over the intricacies of the franchise rights I doubt we will see it anytime soon.

Originally posted by deathtripp

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

For the reviewer i must say please do not encourage people to build wizard/paladins. While you might feel that it is your time and money, which is fine if you solo, do not start whining when high level groups do not take you because your level split makes you a bad caster, bad fighter and bad character. Even a great player can build a character that is not much use.

 

You do not have to follow the "munchkin" group, oddly 5+ years of DDo and I never heard them refered that way let alone to the amount you claim they are. Might be a server specific term. But you should never tell people to build horrible characters that do waste that persons time and money.

 

 In my view, he wasn't encouraging people to make a wizard/paldin, but rather, he was encouraging people to play what is fun for them, instead of playing what other people tell them is "good". Personally, I don't make my character to be useful to other players or their party; I make it for me to have fun (which can indeed include being useful). Of course, if you are constantly dying, being slain by monsters, and/or being refused from a group because you don't have the class and skills a party wants then you may not have much fun. You claim one does not have to follow the "munchkin" group (I've never heard that word either, but I'm also no DDO vet) , but then you essentially state that unless they do, they will not be joining your group with their "bad character". It seems the reviewers point holds true. I think the review was solid, as I think DDO is solid.

Green-Widow said "the best character builds are on the forum" , and that's great, but I like to play the game for myself, deciding on what is the most fun for me, which may not exactly be "the best" build. However, I do agree that one should probably do a little bit of reading about how to build a solid character; I just don't think they should be given an entire build and told what to do. Overall, a good, seemingly accurate review.

 

 There are good reasons for not building a character that has limited use in parties. I have odd characters that i solo with and group with guildies who know what I am trying or know me well enough as a player to know that even my gimp might have a purpose. People should not expect pick up groups to group with and then carry through some 10 wizard 10 paladin that fails to be any use at high level content.

1. This is a team game, building for that is not a bad idea.

2. Poor builds lose their fun quickly, if you have not played to high level you may not have noticed that the game gets a little tougher and poor builds will not be able to perform their primary function well if they multiclass poorly.

3. You do not have to build according to the forums or what other people want, but if you build something that lacks synergy you will get refused from groups and will find most of those characters fail to perform well past level 10. DDO is a pretty easy game and especially easy until the early teen levels. You can make a horrible build and see no issues the first 10 or so levels and think you built the best character ever.

Originally posted by TheCrow2k

I did Enjoy D&DO playing it for almost a year and I stopped playing about 6 months before F2P came in. But I truly despise the setting of Eberron, it just feels very dry and soulless both here and in the PnP version.

If they were really so hellbent on avoiding Faerun, then Darksun would have been a far more interesting setting IMHO and they could have achieved a lot more with it.

The Min/Max crowd did piss me off also, getting booted from a group because you had the audacity to make a Human Fighter/Cleric instead of the "superior" Dwarven Fighter/Cleric got very old very fast.

I am actually really hoping for another D&D MMORPG (probably the only thing that will get me back to playing fantasy genre MMO's) one day soon, but with no end in sight to the Turbine Vs Atari Vs Hasbro legal battle over the intricacies of the franchise rights I doubt we will see it anytime soon.

 

 I agree the min/max crowd that boots for not having the right race(they think) for a build is silly.

Originally posted by GreenWidow

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

For the reviewer i must say please do not encourage people to build wizard/paladins. While you might feel that it is your time and money, which is fine if you solo, do not start whining when high level groups do not take you because your level split makes you a bad caster, bad fighter and bad character. Even a great player can build a character that is not much use.

 

You do not have to follow the "munchkin" group, oddly 5+ years of DDo and I never heard them refered that way let alone to the amount you claim they are. Might be a server specific term. But you should never tell people to build horrible characters that do waste that persons time and money.

 Have to agree with everything said here.  The best character builds are on the forums.  People have listed exactly what they took and more importantly, if you do a little reading, they explain WHY they made the choices they did.

With a small time investment of reading and educating yourself on the game you can make a character not only accepted by  groups but also be much happier with the character you play.

DDO is set using the 3.0 ruleset...partially.  But it is VASTLY different from pen and paper play.  There are reasons for this which only reading and learning the game will help you better understand. 

Barring that, come to the Orien server and ask for Heliotrope and if I'm online I'll be happy to hop in a dungeon with you and explain as much as you'd like.

I have to totally disagree with this post.

The best thing about the game is the character customization... by letting other, lazy and basically stupid players dictate to you how you should create your character makes the game just vanilla crap.

There are guilds without mindless drones seeking the easiest way to do everything creating characters and parties, but you'll need to find them to enjoy the game to the fullest.

Originally posted by grimfall

Originally posted by GreenWidow

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

For the reviewer i must say please do not encourage people to build wizard/paladins. While you might feel that it is your time and money, which is fine if you solo, do not start whining when high level groups do not take you because your level split makes you a bad caster, bad fighter and bad character. Even a great player can build a character that is not much use.

 

You do not have to follow the "munchkin" group, oddly 5+ years of DDo and I never heard them refered that way let alone to the amount you claim they are. Might be a server specific term. But you should never tell people to build horrible characters that do waste that persons time and money.

 Have to agree with everything said here.  The best character builds are on the forums.  People have listed exactly what they took and more importantly, if you do a little reading, they explain WHY they made the choices they did.

With a small time investment of reading and educating yourself on the game you can make a character not only accepted by  groups but also be much happier with the character you play.

DDO is set using the 3.0 ruleset...partially.  But it is VASTLY different from pen and paper play.  There are reasons for this which only reading and learning the game will help you better understand. 

Barring that, come to the Orien server and ask for Heliotrope and if I'm online I'll be happy to hop in a dungeon with you and explain as much as you'd like.

I have to totally disagree with this post.

The best thing about the game is the character customization... by letting other, lazy and basically stupid players dictate to you how you should create your character makes the game just vanilla crap.

There are guilds without mindless drones seeking the easiest way to do everything creating characters and parties, but you'll need to find them to enjoy the game to the fullest.

 

 If they were lazy and stupid they would not spend the time they do making all the characters they have. Sorry but you are 100% wrong to call players you do not know names. Makes me think you spent a lot of time in DDO being rejected for parties with your 8cleric, 6 fighter, 6 wizard.

Originally posted by Xero_Chance

As I have stated previously, due to lack of F2P content, do not expect to play this game for long without paying a dime. Getting to level cap without getting several adventure packs is completely out of the question unless you like running the same 3 quests constantly.

That being said, DDO is a good game and definitely worth a little investment. Just be smart about it, the item shop has the tendency to eat money. Stay away from the hairstyles, they look good in the front (exactly how the picture looks) but always look horrible in the back.

 

For $10/month you can open all content and get other perks. For a game where u can play unlimited amount of time, It's cheap. I started F2p, got bored with the repeating content-switched to P2P and have enough content to not repeat any-unless i want to solo more often. Much more fun this way.

Great game I'd recommend it to people but it is quite complicated in character customization. 

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

For the reviewer i must say please do not encourage people to build wizard/paladins. While you might feel that it is your time and money, which is fine if you solo, do not start whining when high level groups do not take you because your level split makes you a bad caster, bad fighter and bad character. Even a great player can build a character that is not much use.

 

You do not have to follow the "munchkin" group, oddly 5+ years of DDo and I never heard them refered that way let alone to the amount you claim they are. Might be a server specific term. But you should never tell people to build horrible characters that do waste that persons time and money.

 

The  paladin/wizard multi was probably tongue in cheek-at least I hope so-but it does highlight one reason people leave the game and population never gets too high. The higher you level the more snobby and elitist the gamers get and it gets hard to get in a group. Most quests on normal or hard can be easily beat without a min/max group-especially if people know how to play their character, but most groups you see forming on the social panel require vets/TR or all these other unneeded requirements. For example, I saw Waterworks quest at 4th level on hard accepting only TR's, byoh, etc. -Me as wizard and 2 fighterss easily did the whole thing on hard at 4th with no problem.

The unnecessary elitism turns people off the game because it makes it hard to get in groups and learn how to play better. Also Ive been on plenty of these min/max groups that have been wiped so many times half the group quits because they run through zerging with no strategy, to save 5 or 10 minutes-but end up costing more time or never finishing it-I'm looking at you Vile Apopcraphy quest. If the vets on the game would relax and be more inclusive many of these newer player would become p2p and become good players giving a better community and more income to game so they can make it even better.

Originally posted by grimfall

Originally posted by GreenWidow

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

For the reviewer i must say please do not encourage people to build wizard/paladins. While you might feel that it is your time and money, which is fine if you solo, do not start whining when high level groups do not take you because your level split makes you a bad caster, bad fighter and bad character. Even a great player can build a character that is not much use.

 

You do not have to follow the "munchkin" group, oddly 5+ years of DDo and I never heard them refered that way let alone to the amount you claim they are. Might be a server specific term. But you should never tell people to build horrible characters that do waste that persons time and money.

 Have to agree with everything said here.  The best character builds are on the forums.  People have listed exactly what they took and more importantly, if you do a little reading, they explain WHY they made the choices they did.

With a small time investment of reading and educating yourself on the game you can make a character not only accepted by  groups but also be much happier with the character you play.

DDO is set using the 3.0 ruleset...partially.  But it is VASTLY different from pen and paper play.  There are reasons for this which only reading and learning the game will help you better understand. 

Barring that, come to the Orien server and ask for Heliotrope and if I'm online I'll be happy to hop in a dungeon with you and explain as much as you'd like.

I have to totally disagree with this post.

The best thing about the game is the character customization... by letting other, lazy and basically stupid players dictate to you how you should create your character makes the game just vanilla crap.

There are guilds without mindless drones seeking the easiest way to do everything creating characters and parties, but you'll need to find them to enjoy the game to the fullest.

One does not have to follow the builds found in the forum. In fact, most of the builds suck. There are a few that are extremely powerful that someone, who I guarantee is not an idiot, found by way of research. Its better to follow the builds, because reinventing the wheel is silly, and most of DDO's feats are pure "newb traps" AKA useless.

A word of caution, one DOES have to make a functional toon. No group wants to carry a worthless lump, and its selfish to expect this. In fact, this is exactly the reason why most experienced players don't PuG at the higher levels. We're fed up with toons that offer nothing to the group.

To edit my above post, not talking about epic content, or needing a certain lev cleric or rogue, etc-or the high level quests that have secific needs-just the usual, n/h quests that just need full group. People in the game have been very helpful answering questions about building a stronger character, choosing feats or directing to good forum posts about class-but more inclusion of newer players would go a long way to improve their play and game.

Originally posted by ropenice

Originally posted by Rokurgepta

For the reviewer i must say please do not encourage people to build wizard/paladins. While you might feel that it is your time and money, which is fine if you solo, do not start whining when high level groups do not take you because your level split makes you a bad caster, bad fighter and bad character. Even a great player can build a character that is not much use.

 

You do not have to follow the "munchkin" group, oddly 5+ years of DDo and I never heard them refered that way let alone to the amount you claim they are. Might be a server specific term. But you should never tell people to build horrible characters that do waste that persons time and money.

 

The  paladin/wizard multi was probably tongue in cheek-at least I hope so-but it does highlight one reason people leave the game and population never gets too high. The higher you level the more snobby and elitist the gamers get and it gets hard to get in a group. Most quests on normal or hard can be easily beat without a min/max group-especially if people know how to play their character, but most groups you see forming on the social panel require vets/TR or all these other unneeded requirements. For example, I saw Waterworks quest at 4th level on hard accepting only TR's, byoh, etc. -Me as wizard and 2 fighterss easily did the whole thing on hard at 4th with no problem.

The unnecessary elitism turns people off the game because it makes it hard to get in groups and learn how to play better. Also Ive been on plenty of these min/max groups that have been wiped so many times half the group quits because they run through zerging with no strategy, to save 5 or 10 minutes-but end up costing more time or never finishing it-I'm looking at you Vile Apopcraphy quest. If the vets on the game would relax and be more inclusive many of these newer player would become p2p and become good players giving a better community and more income to game so they can make it even better.

 

 Most of the people you see booting are what vets call Fake Vets. They put up LFMs stating know the quest or no newbs or some other dumb thing and then when you join them you see why they want someone who knows the quest, because they never bothered to learn the game. Those people give knowledgable players, be they vets or new, a bad name.

They act elite to try and get one elite person in the group who can carry them. DDO in general requires 2 people for most quests on hard and even elite in most cases. The game is not hard, but poor builds will make the game less fun and waste other peoples time.

The reason you see TR only groups is they are trying to avoid death so they do not lose any % of their EXP, problem is so many TRs are people who got carried to level 20 that they add nothing to the TR group. I have seen more people who are TR not know what they are doing then I have run into newer players who do not know. At least the newer player will usually ask a question if they do not know.

Originally posted by ropenice

To edit my above post, not talking about epic content, or needing a certain lev cleric or rogue, etc-or the high level quests that have secific needs-just the usual, n/h quests that just need full group. People in the game have been very helpful answering questions about building a stronger character, choosing feats or directing to good forum posts about class-but more inclusion of newer players would go a long way to improve their play and game.

 

 A big problem with vets and newer players is game speed. Turbine is horribly slow at adding new content, this has led older players to playing the game at a speed that destroys the fun of new players. These days when i make a new character I rarely even group before level 6 or so because I know I can solo most quests faster then if I get with new players who want to experience it for the first time and they should be able to do so without a player zerging ahead killing everything and ruining the fun of doing it for the first time.

If there is a LFM that says "know it" or whatever avoid it. If someone can't do the quest because they think they need a bunch of people who know the quest - you're probably going to fail, imo. Most established players are able to solo the quest. If we bother putting up an LFM it may indeed say BYOH or be self sufficient, because there is no healer in the group. Not because we are trying to be elitist. No vet is going to sit there and wait for a healer on sub-20 content.

I will say this, DDO is not a game you just run nilly willy in. One has to do a little bit of research. You just can't take any class and/or any feat, level up and be successful. You have to plan your character out in advance.

I suggest making a cleric or monk as a first toon. Both are very new player friendly, and some vets will take a cleric under his/her wing if they the cleric isn't an idiot.

And CON is not to be ignored.

this post is nice it makes me wanna check out the game again. i came back to my other favorite LOTRO although it seems that some of the retarded WoW crowd has infiltrated the game it's evident in general looking for fellowship channel on the nimrodel server, but it's fun for the most part i love skirmishes i can do solo for points without the need for group. I would hope that DDO devs learned from this model at some point (its been a year at least since i played DDO) and made it possible for beginners to do the things that used to take whole groups to complete. It was a fantastic game, i love puzzles and traps and tactics (when i say tactics i dont mean class crowd control or multiple tanks thats boring)

Golelorn,

I see your point, but i think what gets lost is that there isn´t a black-n-white situation.  At what point do groups determine someone is ´too gimped´.  I have never played DDO, but i know in games like WOW all it takes is a couple talent points, an enchant, or a few gem slots and a raid or group leader will admonish you for needing to be ´carried´.  What you consider ´functional´someone else might say is too weak.

This game takes the boring aspects of mmo gameplay like combat and repetitive grinding, and combines it with a lobby game like diablo.  It's not really an mmo, it's just lacking good parts of both single player rpgs and mmos.  It's a lobby game, like guild wars 2. 

It should have been buy to play, it's ridiculous for them to charge money for any aspect of it, and always was, and if you are paying money for it, then I truly pity you.

bards can be other then chaotic.mine is true neutral. no one wants to run with a gimp wiz/pally it will be good at nothing.lori was no clue as to what ddo is and what it is not.

munchkins =3

Originally posted by adam_nox

This game takes the boring aspects of mmo gameplay like combat and repetitive grinding, and combines it with a lobby game like diablo.  It's not really an mmo, it's just lacking good parts of both single player rpgs and mmos.  It's a lobby game, like guild wars 2. 

It should have been buy to play, it's ridiculous for them to charge money for any aspect of it, and always was, and if you are paying money for it, then I truly pity you.

 

and lol did you just call Guild Wars 2 is a lobby game......when will people learn......

hopefully you got excited and typo the '2' :)

I do like DDO for popping in and playing the odd mission or two, and it's developing some complexity at long last with the crafting system. Not addictive like other games, but that suits me just fine for the occassional dungeon bash.