"Free players will not be restricted in their progress through the game and will have constant access to the game servers and be able to progress all the way up to the game’s new level cap. The producers emphasized that players can still obtain their adventuring kit within the game itself. In fact, there are some high-level items that simply aren’t for sale in the store and will instead have to be earned through play. As players adventure through the world of Eberron they will also earn points they can spend at the store, meaning that it’s possible to reap the benefits of the store without ever having to get out their credit cards. "
DDO had some pretty major problems at release. Most importantly, it released post-WoW and forced players to group to progress to a degree not seen since everquest1. Secondly, it only had 10 levels, players maxed out their characters in under two weeks, and it didn’t have an endgame. Plenty of dungeons, but no dragons. Both of these issues have supposedly been addressed in the three years (jesus, it’s been 3 years?) since release, but players (including myself) never came back.
On the other hand, the realtime semi-twitch combat system is really neat and I like the tactics imposed by the rest system.
Has anyone played DDO recently? Would be interested in a “here’s what’s new in the past 3 years” post.
I really enjoyed my playing of this game. It was the most “active” MMO I had played in how it controlled. I loved the traps and secret doors and narration. My biggest problem is that it wasn’t really an MMO at all. Just a hub system and instanced dungeons like Guild Wars. Paying full MMO price for it is what made me quit.
I couldn’t stand how it was a min/maxers dream-game and if you built your character without prior knowledge of how exactly stats etc work or you chose to not go for one of the “main builds” you were out of luck for the first few months of the game, before they implemented a limited respec.
It’s still a game designed around a group of characters making their way through large, handcrafted adventures. They added NPC hirelings but I never really tried them since they seemed so at odds with the basic premise of the game.
Secondly, it only had 10 levels, players maxed out their characters in under two weeks, and it didn’t have an endgame. Plenty of dungeons, but no dragons.
I thought there had always been raiding to do for unique loot. The first major raid boss was a dragon too. There’s conservatively speaking at least 5 or 10 raids now, but I haven’t played passed level 14ish and the last area I remember really exploring was Gianthold Tor.
On the other hand, the realtime semi-twitch combat system is really neat and I like the tactics imposed by the rest system.
I think the only change they made here was to refrain from zeroing out your mana when you used a resurrection shrine. I haven’t played in perhaps a year but it was enormous fun with a steady group, especially going around and experiencing all of the cool design they managed to squeeze out the engine in each succeeding content release. Not to mention being treated to the late Gary Gygax’s unintentionally hilarious narration during one of the most popular story arcs.
do you still need to buy the game in a store or can you download it for free from their site? I couldn’t find a way to start an account without a product key so i’m assuming you still need to buy it.
Yup, FREE to download and play does not go live until later this summer, so right now the best you can do is signup for the beta and hope for an invite.
Once this does go free it could be another Guild Wars for me. It shouldn’t be difficult to find a small group of people interesting in playing through the content as a group one night a week, and with no monthly fee or even retail box costs there’s no downside if we all decide we don’t enjoy it.
DDO had a lot of innovative features. The original design was really quite radical, but was savagely cut back after pushback from WOTC. It’s just as well, I think, that the radical design was neutered, since I don’t think it would have actually worked, but it was at least interesting. As shipped the combat was fast-paced with action elements, but still basically familiar MMO-ish. It was originally going to be much more like an action/shooter.
They also came up with an extremely expressive but horribly ill-conceived property-based scripting system that made it very hard for designers to get anything done, and even harder to edit or debug things that some other designer had done. Really, a conventional scripting language would have made things much better, even given typically weak content-designer programming skills. But among other things the implemented system cut back on launch-day content by a regrettable amount, so people had to grind quests repeatedly to level, which was extremely unfortunate.
Then of course, the leveling system was problematic, as they had to insert checkpoint sublevels within the original very limited level cap to make progression feel good, but within the framework of the real D&D rules, these intermediate bits of progress couldn’t really be as satisfying as legitimate levels.
Tack on pointless PvP, and the mix of imperfect game system designs with inadequate total content spelled trouble from day -300 or so.
However, I gather that by the current date, they’ve been steadily adding content, so there is much more to do at least, and it might well be a fun free experience.
Bah, one of the things that I think is wrong with the industry is that scripters are basically not much higher on the totem pole then testers. Most designers don’t like to script or aren’t technically capable, and most programmers consider it beneath them-- and it doesn’t help that scripting isn’t as lucrative a position as programming. Which is funny, as no matter how much optimization is done by the engine and graphics programmers, it can all be for nothing if the scripter writes some terrible code.
I’ll give it a go when it goes live. Should be a nice diversion a night or two a week from WoW. I always was kind of intrigued by the stories of some of the puzzle/trap elements in the instances instead of just basically mowing through elite mob after elite mob.
Which begs the question, for those who are or have played, how soon after starting do you get to go dungeon spelunking? Is there still a basic tank/dps/healer setup or is it any different from the standard model?
I’d love to give this a try again myself, but I can’t help but think I’d need to start over since I wouldn’t be able to play my level 10 cleric to the satisfaction of veterans there and that I’d get showers of ‘noob’ for not knowing where every trap/script trigger is in advance.
