D&D Online

Siro-

A couple of thoughts/clarifications:

1. I'll start with leveling. I just started to play in a "high risk, high reward" D&D game (my first game since 1989 when we did beer and pretzels D&D back in college,) and so yes, we get a fair amount of excperience, but it is definetly earned. The funny thing is, while we do earn a fair amount of experience, this isn't a Monty Haul campaign as there isn't much in the way of treasure.

My thoughts on leveling for DDO were more a comment on that the majority of MMO's out there do emphasize levelling and the benefits which come with it. While I think DDO has a good chance to succeed with the Pen and Paper folks, I think this will be a significant barrier to the casual gamer who's used to something like WoW or Evercrack.

2. My server overload comment was based on the last time I played the beta (about a month ago) trying to finish the book quest in the Lighthouse. There were 7 of us (all individuals, no parties) sitting around clicking on the entrance and we'd get an error message that said something to the effect of "This dungeon isn't available right now" and then one woould get in, and after about 5 tries another would etc. I played again last night and had no problem getting in, though there were only 3 people on the lighthouse island.

3. Since it had been about a month I did play again and was surprised by the new voiceover stuff. It wasn't there a month ago and I really think they need to ditch it. It's flat out a distraction and not neccessary, as well as being hokey.

4. My concern about the need to construct parties is more one of logistics for Turbine than anything else. If they want to cover the development costs on the project (and judging by the scope I suspect they are considerable) they do need to attract the casual gamer or the early adopted. And while you will get a fair share of people who have been gaming together in MMO's or in Pen and Paper sessions, I still worry that they will be hampered by the fact that if you can't get your gaming buddies/family together (which we all know can take some arranging) they should have smaller single or dual player side quests that can entertain while waiting for your party to gather or simpy to play on the group's day off.

Now, with all that said, if people are wondering whether or not I liked the game, the answer is yes. It is fun and definitely is the closest thing to pen and paper gaming on the market today.

So is the legion forming the 24th ?

24th is the preorder start date.
28th is the actual start date.

Xavier

I'm thinking about it.

It's sounding cool... may shoehorn it in bewteen WoW and SL.

Until then, enjoy this personal moment from the Valentines' celebrations in WoW. Durrnt is allergic to the damn rose petals, stop throwing them at him!!!

Sigh. I'm a lifelong DnD player, and a big fan of MMORPGs, but I think I might sit this one out.

Been in beta awhile and last stress tests, this game has some annoying things and positive (well duh), bit biased cause now i hate wow for all the stupid grind it represent : p

Things about DDO i liked/hated

Cons;
Instances wich isnt braindead slaughter evertything, and take hours to complete as they are in chapters (go play wow if you like that)

You actually have to think and spot traps , these will kill you sometimes like *pop* wops dead.

Can actually jump away from monsters trying to hit you, block with shield ect, not everything automatic math in background (does sooome +roll save checks)

NO Reptuation grind to get special items , i so hate wow for doing that to 60's so we have something to doe

NO farming 1 boss x100 times to get a item you know will drop from it (yes wow annoyance again)

Impossible to ninja , since a chest will give random items to everyone that open it, ok so you can take random potions and junk that drops from barrels/boxes, no biggie.

Ok game if you want to play with some friends. hey im a Eye of the beholder fan :> i love dungeon crawling games like this.

Im not sure about this, but you can play with other world regions not, local only (wich ticks me off with wow, as i have many american friends ~.~)


Annoyances;
After a few instances you need a group to do squat (not that annoying tho)

Lag is insane in taverns if theres alot of people, hit my pc like a truck :>

Outdoors seems crap made, going to another place outside city = talk to guy , bam youre there.

Monsters/npcs as smart as a rock, its very easy to get them stuck, kill them and they will just gawk at you, you can also see them if you spam TAB to cycle monsters even if they arent visible!.

Gui is as pretty as SL's ingame chat, and just about customizable, it kept forgetting how i set mine up all the time, hope they'll fix that.

I no longer have any desire to play it, but one thing that annoyed me a lot was the video lag. I have a pretty good system (Radeon 9800 Pro, 2 gigs of RAM, Pentium 4 3.00gHz) and after about 10 minutes every single time the lag would be so bad i'd have to restart, and then things would be fine. Until 10 minutes passed and it happened again.

This was on the mid-range settings, but even if I disabled most of them it still happened, just to a slightly lesser degree.

"just another time-burning MMORPG leveling-treadmill"

DDO is awesome. Best game ever. I was lucky enough to get selected for the beta, and it was incredible. The only thing that worries me about it, is the fact that I got to level 6 in two weeks, and the maximum level is 10. o_O However Turbine has promised content updates regularly, so hopefully that won't be a problem.
Peace and hair grease
zip