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Uzbeki
10-18-2006, 04:21 PM
Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach (DDO) is an online adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D). DDO is based on the D&D 3.5 Ruleset and set in the Eberron campaign setting. Wizards of the Coast, the current publisher of the Dungeons and Dragons pen and paper game, worked with Turbine during the game's approximately two years of development.


Developer: Turbine, Inc. (http://www.turbine.com/)
Platform: PC
Release date: February 2006
Status: Live


Offical Website: http://www.ddo.com/

Punchline
10-18-2006, 08:59 PM
One of the biggest "flops" ever. In my opinion, of course.

Onlis
10-19-2006, 06:39 AM
One of the biggest "flops" ever. In my opinion, of course.

I agree. Could have been executed in a much better fashion.

Uzbeki
10-19-2006, 07:06 AM
I had high hopes for this game but I got really turned off by the open beta, way too little content (no crafting, no PvP etc) :|

It would be nice to get a current players opinion of it though.

Latex Santa
01-21-2008, 08:32 AM
Hey ppl. First time poster. I was Googling "ddo punchline" when I came across this glum little discussion. Let me assure you, DDO is not crap.

From second-hand experience I know this; while I haven't played the trial yet due to unforeseen problems, my brother and sister have, and I have watched them both play.

This is one of the most accurate and enjoyable digital recreations of the feel of a D&D session with a good group and DM.

In short this is a niche game, one best suited to those who have some pen-and-paper Dungeos&Dragons play experience under the belt, like my siblings and I. It's true, DDO is at it's best when in a good group. But lately, the content has more than tripled in size, maybe more, a decent number of the bugs have been eradicated, there is an Auction House to trade stuff in, you can send money and items through the in-game mail system, and even transfer characters between the servers.

Each of the 15 servers since launch have developed their own unique feel and subcultures, and since the server merge which has left us with 5 big servers, things are more interesting than ever, with plenty of people on each server from all over the world.

The character options are pretty varied, and with a little skill you can create "multiclass" characters, that is, with levels in up to 3 different classes, preferrably covering each other's weaknesses and maximizing the strengths. All classes are on their way to being much more balanced in respect to each other as of Module 6, which is being released this January I believe.

The game's classes are Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Sorcerer and Wizard. The Monk and Druid classes posed some difficulties to implement at launch, and the Monk class may be scheduled to be released later this year, along with the Druid class, I hope.

More than 80% of quests can be soloed by people with suitable character builds, and now a great many have a "Solo" difficulty option.

The community, for the most part, is made up of friendly and mature people, always willing to lend a helping hand to a newbie, with the exception of the inevitable and rather rare jerk. There is also a reasonable number of player and dev-sponsored events going on each month/week/day etc.

Dev awareness and responses to the community's questions has also gone up as of late.

The combat system and way you get experience, alongside with the Looking for Group system are the best I've heard about or seen.

Much of the combat is twitch-based, meaning that you must actively block with your weapon/shield using the Shift key, attack with the right mouse button, move in and out of combat, and position yourself to best take advantage of a distracted enemy's flank or the terrain. Aiming, timing and movement are crucial, as well as the right weapon, feat or spell for the right job. The standard setup is WASD for movement, and it doesn't take long to get used to. Camera controls are also rather easy, just left click and move the mouse about to change your view.

The monsters here are not exactly stupid. They patrol their area, and only follow you a certain distance before returning to their patrol area. They use buffs and the terrain to their advantage, and if crowd control and management of aggro is not done well, they can wipe out a group if the monsters are not total wimps. They will switch weapons, attacks or spells if they're not working, and will seek to surround an enemy whenever possible. As always guys, protect the squishier group members.

The Looking For Group system allows you to find groups that need a certain class, of a certain lvl, that are running a certain quest, on a certain difficulty rating and it allows you to write a description of why the group was formed or even a message as simple as "newbie/s looking to run Water Works, 1st timer/s, no zerging". The game even has a reliable integrated voice chat system for when grouping or raiding, and includes special class icons next to each group member's name and health/mana bar, to distinguish which one's a cleric, wizard, fighter, ranger, rogue etc.

You only get experience for completing quests, either solo or with a group, not from killing monsters. So, no more spawn-grinding and no more kill-stealing asshats to worry about. Also you don't need to travel across the known world from the quest giver to an instance, as most or all instances are reasonably close when compared to other games.

Also, loot can only be found in chests throughout the dungeons and adventure areas, or picked as reward for finishing a quest from several or many different options from an NPC quest giver. When it comes to looting chests, you must roll a virtual die with 100 faces, in D&D parlance called "d100", in order to determine who gets that bright shiny new sword, suit of armor, wand or pile of coins. The highest number wins, as other players may roll for the loot you want too. Rely on trades and working out an agreement with players for an amiable gaming experience.

Quests are repeatable many times, with xp and loot decreasing from time to time until you get next to no xp and no loot (depending on how many times you've done a quest, ransacked a chest). After a week or up to 10 days in real life have passed since you squeezed a quest dry, the experience and loot rewards from chests and NPC quest giver will start to slowly increase back to maximum.

There is a largish number of quests and a small number of challenging raids available to play in enviroments as different as crumbling dungeons, temples, castles, to deserts, jungles, temperate forests, islands, monster fortresses, sewers, and even a demented woman's mind. All quests have a main objective to accomplish, and many others also have one or several optional objectives to complete, which grant you extra xp. Also all quests give a small, but not negligible amount of xp for killing all monsters or breaking all breakables in an instance (sarcofagi, crates, barrels etc). Also a decent number of quests have an engaging storyline.

Each quest is narrated by a professional in the business, simulating the role a Dungeon Master may have in the pen&paper version of the game. The DM's voice will describe to you what you smell, hear etc, whether your Spot skill picks up any monsters or hidden doors in range, and so on.

All adventure areas are private instances, that means, no standing in line or arguing with dozens of others over which group gets the boss or key spawn or to pull the lever. Your group, or just you if you're running solo, has/have the whole adventure area to yourselves/yourself. Even if someone wants to run the very same quest on the same server, a new separate copy, or instance, of the adventure area is generated for them. You CAN bring other people into the group even after starting a quest and entering the instance, though that person will take an xp penalty for doing so. A group can only have a maximum of 6 players at any time, except for a raid group, which can have up to 12 players.

Latex Santa
01-21-2008, 08:33 AM
You can set your respawn point to a tavern in Stormreach, the game's only true city, so that you appear there upon death or if you recall for whatever reason out of an instance. Many people do this and shrug off the xp penalty for recalling to regenerate health or mana. However, failure to return to the instance within 5 minutes of recalling results in the quest's failure for you.

Mana in this game isn't as easy to recover just anywhere. Or health for that matter. You can't just sit on your tush whenever you please in a dungeon to regenerate. You need to use special rest shrines, which are in short supply and scattered throughout an instance. Each rest shrine, or for that matter, resurrection shrine, can only be used once per quest run. This requires a good deal of strategic thinking and resource management on the group's part, and mostly discourages zerging as a viable tactic, except for the highest level solo-optimized characters.

When you die, you drop a soul stone which your party members can pick up and carry to a resurrection shrine to bring you back. Or you can get a cleric to raise you from the dead, IF they're of a high enough level.

Mana potions are rather rare and in short supply, they're also quite expensive, so mana needs to be used with care, and supplemented with spellcasting from scrolls and wands. All potions are reasonably expensive for a lower level especially, and if bought in bulk, say 100 of a type, can put a dent in your coin purse. Fortunately, potions are reasonably common as loot.

Money is often made in the game by "loot runs". That is, finding a quest with a chest that usually spawns good loot, running the quest up to that point, grabbing the loot and then recalling out to sell. Rinse, repeat. Or just run quests and manage your loot and finances more carefully.

There are many tightly-knit guilds in the game, each catering to a specific crowd. Powergmers, role-players, "perma-death" guilds (where you delete your character if he cannot be brought back by a shrine or the resources of the group in the instance), guilds that like to run certain quests above all, PvP guilds or raid guilds.

Raids in DDO are mega-quests which require the consecutive completion of a series of difficult to very difficult linked quests with a common storyline, with a big and very tough battle with many opponents or just one big critter at the end. Often, the option of weakening the boss during this tough battle is provided like a minigame, like turning on a trap what dispels his buffs, destroying a number of sacred pillars that power him up or activating an ancient beam turret to weaken them before sending in the melee warriors. Up to 12 players can participate in a raid. Raids are instanced as well.

PvP in DDO is reasonably fun but sadly rather lacking. It can only be performed in certain tavern fighting pits, arenas or free-for-all Tavern Brawls. In PvP, casters usually dominate the melee classes, and as the game is based closely on the D&D 3.5 edition system, this happens in the pen&paper game as well. As PvP was never a consideration from the start, it will take some time to balance. Until then, I suggest 1vs1's of melee or caster only, or go for team matches of Capture the Flag or Deathmatches.

Ranged combat and two-weapon fighting will receive an important boost in the upcoming Module 6 content update, its release scheduled for this January, as they were the runts of the litter until now, especially ranged combat. Module 6 will also bring 5 new dungeons and a new, bigger, badder raid, the first seeds of the crafting system and a number of useful class updates and rebalances to buff up some of the weaker game classes.

The level cap will be 16 come Module 6, and is achievable by powergamers in months of insane quest grinding, or even a few more months than powergamers by more casual players, with 4 action points for each level, which can be used to purchase enhancements for your character. Action points can improve various aspects of your character's skills, melee/ranged/magical abilities or racial abilities, or even grant new ones.

Each level will require much more experience than in the pen&paper variant of the game to achieve, and these action point thresh-holds essentially spice up the process, providing 4 mini-levels for each level you get, as you can spend action points as soon as you get them, or hoard them for a more expensive enhancement.

Enhancements can be aquired and improved by spending action points which you earn on the way to getting a new level, and naturally, have prerequisites in the form of a certain number of action points spent before aquiring it, or maybe you need to have a certain feat or enhancement, enough points in a skill, or to have a certain racial ability. Also, many enhancements are restricted to certain races or classes.

At 1st and every third level, you also receive feats - they are special combat, misc. or passive abilities which improve and widen your options, like being able to move and attack in melee without a penalty, shoot faster with a bow, wear heavier armor than your class would allow etc. Some classes gain bonus feats at certain levels.

At every level up, you get a number of skillpoints plus your Intelligence bonus to distribute to your various skills. Skills can help with many things, some with swimming, some with jumping, others with finding traps or secret doors, others with diplomacy, bluffing, intimidation, getting better prices in NPC stores, disarming traps, picking locks, magic and so on. Each class has their own list of class skills and receive more or less skillpoints at each level up. Some players may wish to concentrate on building up only a few skills they use often, others may decide to become decent at many diferent skills.

However there are some issues with the game. Its number of subscribers has more or less remained stable since launch, with an occasional player leaving due to various reasons or the occasional newbie drifting in. However, recently, on some servers there has been a noticeable increase in the number of new players, therefore newbies are not in short supply.

This game also suffers from an interesting plight. Since content, although admittedly excellent in quality, is released only every few months, people that play often and for many hours at a time often find themselves short of quests they've never done before. So they roll up new characters, run quests with understrength groups or solo them on high difficulty levels, or hit a player-run event or PvP match just to kill time.

Whenever a new module is released, it is usually followed by a few weeks of frenzied gameplay as the many fun-hungry mouths of DDO devour it with glee, followed by a post-feast depression and a return of boredom. That's why, after purchasing the game, I decided that I let this game mature and grow, so when I finally dig in, it'll have alot for me to do and it will keep me going until the next mod, and so on and so on. Only take care than you don't wait too long.

Latex Santa
01-21-2008, 09:02 AM
Some other issues in the game include typing lag, sometimes remaining in shield block mode even if you're not holding down the Shift key anymore, very rarely items and cash sent through in-game mails get lost along the way, some items vanishing and then reappearing in your inventory screen, and a User Interface which might seem clunky and inefficient to some. There is also the problem of spam sent by illegal currency traders. But most of those, if not all can be fixed, after all.

There might be alot of issues which I've forgotten to mention, but only those came to mind. Balanced against the good stuff, the bad stuff will soon enough be forgotten.

DDO is two years old now, has an established community, it has its own myths and legends, its own anecdotes and celebrities, its own LIFE. Dare ye embark on the TRUE D&D online experience? The city of Stormreach needs YOU!

Sorry for the mammoth posts, but I COULDN'T let your opinion of DDO be forever tarnished by a beta which you didn't like ^_^;; After all, it was ONLY a beta. Plus, I was kinda hoping you'd give the 10-day free trial over at ddo.com a whirl ^.^

WHEW, now THAT'S an exhaustive explanation if I ever read one. If you're gonna do something, do it right I always say.

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04-03-2009, 06:59 AM
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