Dungeons and Dragons Online

[dragon wench]

As some of you will know, DDO has recently gone Free to Play.
I had read about this and, at the time, I had no interest at all. A couple of years ago I played LOTRO for a while (like DDO, a Turbine game), and while I had quite a lot of fun, eventually I grew bored of the repetitious grinding, and mindless killing. So, when a friend started trying to talk me into trying DDO I was highly sceptical and took a fair amount of convincing.
Finally, just to shut him up, I decided to bite the bullet and download the client...
I have to concede, I'm significantly more impressed than I had ever expected to be. It actually does evoke a D&D feel, there are puzzles, and grinding is far less at the forefront than LOTRO.
Also, while fun, it's not terminally addictive, and it's very casual friendly. Dungeons vary in length and you are informed up front roughly how long the instance will last. This means if you only have an hour or two, you can easily complete a couple of instances and then log out.

Anyway, the reason I created this thread is just to make mention of it to people who aren't already aware that DDO is a surprisingly decent game; it requires a certain amount of intelligence and appreciation for more traditional D&D-based games.

Not only that, while you can spend money if you want to, the core game is free to play, so the price is right.

[Loki[D.d.G]]

Interesting heads up. Thanks.

The system requirements look low enough to be of interest to me. I may just see about trying this after my exams are over.

[Stworca]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Loki[D.d.G] Interesting heads up. Thanks. The system requirements look low enough to be of interest to me. I may just see about trying this after my exams are over.

Same as the person above, it might be worth a look.. All in all D&D is a great rule-system

[gaminging]

yes ,it is a game that is worth playing.

[swcarter]

Back when I played (over a year ago), DDO was fun enough, but it didn't have a lot of content, and you could build a max character and see everything in about a month. That's just bad news for an MMO.

SWC

[dragon wench]

Quote:

Originally Posted by swcarter Back when I played (over a year ago), DDO was fun enough, but it didn't have a lot of content, and you could build a max character and see everything in about a month. That's just bad news for an MMO. SWC

Hmm... well I'm still at the beginning of the game, so I haven't hit "end game" syndrome yet.. They did just add quite a lot of new high level content in a recent patch though. We'll see, I do tend to be cautious about these things..
However, even if the content lasts about a month, from the POV of the average gamer who is just looking for some quick, inexpensive entertainment, it's much cheaper than some of the alternatives.
Also, since all of the dungeons are instanced, it often feels like a single player or co-op (such as NWN 1) game anyway.

Obviously though.. from Turbine's perspective, they do need to do something to retain players. Hopefully they'll keep adding content; considering that they just went free to play, I doubt they have much choice, really.

[mr_sir]

I tried the trial just over a year ago, and although it was fun to play, I didn't think it was worth the money subscribing to it. I might give it a go again now that its free Thanks DW for letting us know - I had no idea at all that they'd even been considering making it free to play.

[Ulfang]

I played the original game when it came out and it was fun but not fun enough to keep me paying a sub for it. I heard about the Unlimited game and gave it a go when it came out and now being free to play I have it installed but haven't had much chance to play it with all the other games I have. Generally all free to play MMO's were pretty terrible until lately. I rather enjoy Runes of Magic, Alganon (Wow clone but hey it's free) and Chronicles of Spellborn. I probably would pay for any of these if there was a subscription but as long as they are free they are good entertainment.

LOTRO is still my main MMO and doubt that will ever change (due to the setting). I tried Aion recently which looks nice and is fair enjoyable but doubt I'll stay with it for very long. Another favourite of mine as far as subscription MMO's go is Vanguard.

I don't forsee much time for MMO'ing at the moment though as I just got Dragon Age Origins....

[hedgewizard]

I played DDO through a good part of 2007. The sole problem I had; which ultimately lead to my unsubscribing, was the lengthened time that it took to complete a dungeon/instance as your character got father in level. One dungeon may take three to four hours, plus the added time of slower progress due to party member deaths, choosing Hard/Epic difficulty, and what more have you.

Of course you've got an epic dungeon ahead of you, a good time with your buds, a sense of completion and fat loot, but attempting to run a few dungeons during the night with guild mates lead to getting to bed at five or six in the morning. Successive months of that and you're tired as hell! Too time consuming for my tastes. This is given, as with delving deeper in a game and gaining higher levels follows longer gameplay time.

Though, with dungeons being the almost only way to have progressed in the game (PvP having only been tavern brawls and crafting not yet implemented) it became troublesome to log on with a time constraint and try to get something done, when you could not have. I also could not have let the game rest for awhile until I had ample time to play, because I was under the pressure of a subscription fee.

Now, having become free to play, there is more longevity in DDO when considering how often I'll be able to log on (I would probably keep the game installed with the knowledge in mind that I could log on whenever I wished), though I wonder whether or not the problem persists of dungeons being too time consuming.