Dungeons & Dragons Online

Hello all you mmorpg'ers out there!

Has anyone pre-ordered DDO, and tried the beta? I'm just wondering if this is going to be a bust or if the game is actually going to be good. I'm very tempted to try it, but still skeptical. Thanks for any feedback on this one.

Cypher

[Revrand]

Yeah, that's the problem with MMO's. Not alot of them give out 14 day trials untill the game is well underway and its to hard to catch the top players.

I'v given it a go and it all seems pretty real. The fact that you can get trip locked by 2 mobs can be alittle annoying and you spend alot of time just regening so dam slowly. Realistic seems to be what covers it.

[Sutenhotep]

I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I haven't done the beta, so I don't know much about it. I guess it'll depend on how many of my friends decide to get on the game. I hate starting a new online game without knowing people.

[Lord Byte]

Well I've played the stress-test and at first I was loathing it a bit, until I found a decent group... There's two ways to play through the dungeons : "The RUSH-RUSH bash, run to all traps go straight for the objective and get out" way, which most veteran "hardcore" MMO players seem to take, and I saw it as a perversion of the game (it doesn't punish the behaviour except for diminishing returns on XP for redoing quests) and the DND way, which at the last day of the stress-test I found a group for and when we played like that it ROCKED

We went through it searching every nook and cranny, strategizing our encounters, using the rogue, cover, sneaking past certain guards, etc,... and loved it (also you do get slightly more XP if you bash most crates, find most secrets, etc,... so it is rewarded a bit better)

[fallenpoet]

I wasn't really a fan of this game. The focus on party play - while cohesive with the PnP game - makes a low population game a bit hard to play. Party stuff is great, but people like me who really enjoy a good group, but also really enjoy solo play - were kind of left out. I liked the rule tweaking to the system though, with the way they worked action points into the game as sort of self-boosting (like talents).

[TheElf]

I think D&D online has a strong brand, so had a GOOD chance to become one of the top games and have high population, but it wasn't succesful. Why? Why most people seen it as a weak game?

D&D Online inherited the disadvantages of both D&D and the MMORPG world and also added new limits. Also it focused too much on instances.

[TheElf]

One more thing to add: The 4th edition looks for some MMORPG like values, I think D&D Online shows why that doesn't work.

In D&D online they focused on party adventures and dungeons, but to make it playable they had to cut the lenght of adventures so you can do them with one party, it made most adventures rather dull.

Combat, exploring, etc. in a normal Roleplaying Game is slower than real time for well known reasons, so there you see: You either cut down the adventure lenght even more, OR you have to continue the adventure in multiple sessions, and wait for your DM and fellow players, so you can't just hop in anytime. One of the goals for the 4th edition won't happen.

If an MMORPG can supply the values of MMORPGs anytime, with good graphic, and D&D 4th edition seems to focus on some of these values, and the playing style it designed for, and the limits on the system can kill some traditional advantages of tabletop roleplaying games, then it is hard to name a reason why one should choose a D&D product.

[zergnase]

if you look on the size of the usual dungeon sizes in normal adventures and the ammount of slayables (monsters) you will see that they aren´t that large and the number of opponents are pretty low
combat takes time in onthetableplay because ppl need to roll and the DM needs to admin the combat do all sorts of math counting etc, in a mmorpg you just click, 1 combat round takes realy 6 seconds (or less) not several minutes on the table a complete encounter will be done on a very few minutes at max, on the table multiply that with a pretty mentionable factor.

so adventures if not heavy RPGing is included wouldn´t take that long
remember after the 3e math you have 13,33 average encounters before you level up (group of 4 heroes) monst adventures let the PCs LVL up once and perhapse another time on the end (the big end boss fight is usualy above average LVL). you have usualy < 20 encounters 3 mins for the hacking = 1 hour combat + RPGing + LOOTing + exploring

sounds doable

[TheElf]

I think the time required is underestimated on your part, and doesn't include many preparations, and in my experience adventures often don't finish in one session