Oct 20
Dungeons and Dragons Online went live back in 2006, and a number of my friends took part in the beta, enjoying the game immensely. Then the product went live, and they never played again. The reason was simple: the game was $50, the monthly fee was $15, and for many gamers that’s a hard sell. Then suddenly, a week or so ago, everyone was playing again. A thread about the game popped up on our forum. Where did this buzz come from? Simple: the game was once again free to play.
Worth picking this up again?
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I started playing this just the other week… Haven’t really progressed much into lvl 3, but seems to be a good laugh, and the real-time combat engine is a mile away from WOW. It makes DDO an interesting break from the old routine of high-end raiding that I’m involved with 4 nights a week
Yeah, I forgot to tell you about this…
A friend of mine here at work (the CFO, actually) used to play D&D Online, but when he bought a new PC with Vista, the installer wouldn’t work. I switched him over to WoW and he loves it – better than D&D Online.
I’m checking it out now.
A bit annoying actually, that it’s NOT free here in Europe.
As someone with little previous MMO experience, I’ve been playing this with some friends for the last month or so and have found it quite enjoyable. I haven’t spent a cent, and I’m impressed by the quality and quantity of the free content. I’ve just hit level 5, and feel like I’ve seen just a tiny fraction of the free quests. Best of all, the ‘pay’ content is purchased with Turbine points that can be earned in-game (albeit slowly) instead of paid for.
I started playing a bit and it’s quite a lot of fun, especially if you play with friends.
One of the coolest things is that the dungeons are scalable so that you can solo them or run them with groups at various difficulty levels. In the ones I ran, there seemed to be less emphasis on the tank/healer/dps trinity, but maybe that gets more important at higher levels. (For a few of them, we went in with all DPS and it was fine.)
It was also cool to have puzzle-solving become a part of the dungeon experience — getting through them requires more than just finding your way around and killing things. The DM voiceovers are a nice touch, too.
I mainly play WoW still and I doubt this game will oust WoW from anyone’s gaming schedule (unless they’re dropping their subscription). If you’re looking for a little vacation from the norm (and a free one at that!), D&D is a fun escape. (I’m still clueless about the stats and gearing though. I imagine that’s more intuitive if you have actually played D&D, hehe…)
grrr … indeed, not in Europe
Isn’t Spellborn also a ‘free’ MMO in the USA ?
“We hates it”
@JaFO
That is annoying that you can’t get DDO in Europe (yet?).
Spellborn is indeed free in the US. (I played it a bit and really loved it.) I know some European players that play it, too — could be that you just have to make your characters on US servers.
I could play, but I’d have to pay 15 Euro / month … which is a bit steep compared to the ‘free’ version you’ve got.
I’m not sure if they’d allow non-american users in on the offer once a lot of us would switch to the ‘free’ US-servers …
If you can get some buddies together, its an absolute blast.
Me and 3 friends have been playing this pretty much non-stop for a couple weeks.
But be wary, without friends I find that I don’t even want to play. Every single thing you do revolves around a party (aside from the very few solo dungeons) and I’m not big on grouping with random people.
I’ve been playing a little bit. I might get into it a little more
If a $50 game and $15 month fee is a hard sell, then why do all these people waste their time a money on a game thats exactly the same thing (World of Warcraft).
You’re forgetting the millions of people already playing WoW.
Other MMO’s need to build that kind of an audience first and that’s pretty tough when the competition can guarantee a full server with real people.
if i had the time and if my computer was studly enough I would try out all MMOs.
for now, things like this take away from my WoW time.
I liked it, but the thing that puts me off of this game is that most of the quests including the premium stuff, really requires you to form a party. May not sound bad, but with people that do not have the premium stuff it can be very annoying to play any of them.
It’s definitely worth getting, i got it and i love it. The graphics are better than WoW and so is he combat. Me and 2 friends started playing together(me a wizard, my friends a rogue and a warrior) and it’s great.
Meh. Just started Aion, don’t think i’ll be giving it up any time soon either.
Don’t worry about UK servers, as you can just play on the US servers… The lag isn’t even that bad
Tried Aion for a month. Not going for another month. Tried DDO last month. I suppose all those people wanting to be uber the fastest (or be Drizzt) and paying $$$ for it supports all the rest who play for free. Even though it’s free, there’s just not enough there to keep me interested. (The new intro also reeks of AoC.)
i think ima get some friends to start this with me. so far most comments have been positive and well its free to try out
ffxi still FTW
I hate this game for two reasons that really have nothing to do with the game itself. #1 the game uses the D&D name but feels nothing like D&D (of any edition really). #2 I wanted to kill myself when I saw they made a game set in EBERRRON (my favorite WotC setting) but the game fails to emphasize any of the elements that makes Eberron Eberron – Swashbuckling, Pulp Noir with a lot of Indian Jones going across the map with the little read dots scenes.
But I did play it (again (I bought the game when it came out)) once I heard it was free but, alas, it is still just a game with a licensed name…
Gave it a try… I like NWN better.
Have to agree with all the points Charlie made above. Being a fan of D&D (PnP) and Eberron, I hopped on this when it initally came out. Left after two months, disapointed with the rules and the fact that they did not really do justice to them, the setting, or the city. As a former player they offered me a free week a couple months back as a primer for switching to the free model. Hoped on to see what, if anything, had improved but not much had. Wondering now if it will go the way of Tabula Rasa.
There’s something about the ability to buy ‘points’ in the game with real money and then use those points as in-game currency that really rubs me the wrong way. I think it stems from the fact that the more I play a game the more I realize how/why the different ways to advance and improve my character are cool and the more I want them. If there is a real world price tag on gear / character upgrades it completly trashes any system they have in place that explains the adancement and therefore progressively becomes more annoying for me until I just stop playing. I really enjoyed duels.com for three days until I realized that if I just dropped $500 I could reach a state that would take years otherwise.
Nice. I might try it out. Currently playing EVE and EQ (yes EverQuest – been doin’ it since 1999)…