Turbine might be challenging their publisher Atari to a bout of fisticuffs about the fate and funding of Dungeons & Dragons Online, but such conflict has not delayed the re-release of said formerly underpopulated MMO as a free-to-play affair. Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited, as it’s now known, can be had for the princely sum of no-pennies from here. There is, of course, a catch. Two in fact, but one of them might be my fault.
I can’t download it. I CAN’T DOWNLOAD IT. WAaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!, to coin a phrase. Every time I try to sign up for an account and to reach that near-mythical download page, it tells me there’s an error but refuses to divulge quite what it is. Perhaps it’s because I’m a Britisher, but it would be nice if it at least told me that was the problem. After a dozen different tries, I’m giving up until someone pays me to continue. You may have better luck than I, in which case I will hunt down everyone you have ever loved…. and then congratulate them on what a fine, industrious friend/relation they have.
The second, more pressing catch is less than surprising – micropayments. Or “an innovative new pricing model”, if you speak marketingese. Specifically, that means purchasing gosh-wow items and, more interestingly, ‘adventure packs’. Does this mean the best content is withheld for paid DLC, as with, say, Rock Band Beatles, or is it more about there being a slow trickle of new stuff to ensure players remain interested? Well, if I could bloody get in maybe I could tell you.
Personally speaking, DDO doesn’t much appeal, but that’s just me and my current boredom with more traditionally-structured MMOs (edit – by which I mean fantasy settings and chasing experience points. I’m aware this isn’t a WoWlike monster-grind). Far more important is that there’s a good chance this might be the first grown-up-trousers MMO to really make the free-to-play thing work. Where other troubled MMOs have opted for unsuccessful fanbase-infuriating overhauls or have simply put up the white flag, this is taking a massive risk, and I applaud that. As long as the game isn’t constantly dangling paid content I don’t have over the free players, I don’t see why it couldn’t be a super-fun time. Not entirely sure Turbine’s claim that DDO has “the industry’s best combat system” rings true, but horses for massively partisan courses and all that.
Here’s a couple of videos to show you what you’re in for: first, character creation, and then the game’s first quest.
Sign up/download/scream at ludicrously unhelpful webpage here.
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Hm… the ddo.com is under maintenance.
This is actually really fun, since you can get a few mates together and dungeon-delve once in a while without needing to make use of a regular sub. As someone said, it’s NWN2 without the niggles and with more content.
This is nothing like NWN2 (and I would reckon it has less content O.o) but it is a lot of fun and I believe it even has voice of IP built into it. Some of the levels are even voiced over by Gary Gygex himself (I may have spelled his name wrong, I don’t care )
Nothing like NWN2? In NWN2 the story is just a cosmetic dressing over what is essentially discreet ‘map’ completion with a D&D ruleset – that’s exactly what this is. Sure, some of the mechanics are different (spells for instance), but the feel is essentially the same, albeit with a faster pace. How far have you played Serondal? There is a ton of things to do…
Skipped ahead in an attempt to see something other than swords being applied to crates, and ended up randomly at 7:22, where one accented voice over says to another:
“Hah, I’ve got plenty of stamina…I can go all night long.”
Hah indeed.
I had loads of fun with this when it originally launched. It’s much more of a tactical party dungeon romp than a standard MMO- as said above door-blocking was encouraged, also thieves were actually useful (have they randomised trap locations yet?) and most party members had something to contribute on most quests. Playing a bard that could do a bit of everything was awesome at lower levels, especially if you had a repeating crossbow.
It was great with a group of 6, and even better if you were short of a class or two and had to find other ways to get round traps and enemies (sneaking through quests was a viable tactic if you were into that sort of thing).
Not sure what I think of the FTP approach, but a few of us are going to do some casual dungeon bashing on a LAN and see how we get on at the weekend.
The US servers seem to be buckling under the strain for signup, but I’m downloading the client at good speeds direct from their download page for now and I’ll sign up later. This page might take a while to render but you can get teh client installer from here:
http://www.ddo.com/ddosupport/download-ddo
I’ve played NWN2 all the way through and I’ve played D&D Online about halfway through (at that point mind you, which was when it was first released not now) The rules are the same yes, but I don’t see anything similar aside from that.
One is a pointy clicky role playing game where you can freeze time and take your time to work out a battle and has meaningful character relationships ect (And you get your own castle! Hehe)
The other is an action RPG built ontop of D&D rules. They’re even totally different campaign settings. Sorry I just don’t see anything similar other than they’re both D&D games.
I can’t say I like one more than the other since they are two different types of games. One action adventure rpg and the other a more traditional Baldur’s gate sort of RPG (though stream lined from that a bit)
“meaningful character relationships”
In NWN2?
Yes I quiet liked the character relationships in NWN 2 , they weren’t as good as KOTOR IMO but there were worth stopping and observing as the different characters reacted to each other in dialog that wasn’t exactly related to advancing the main story line.
Oh, yeah, it was interesting but what stuck me as “character interaction” was when I figured there is no way I could prevent the tiefling thief from joining my party as an aasimar paladin.
I played as an Aasimar Paladin too, I guess that is an obvious choice ;P
I really liked the newer Temple of Elemental Evil for its hardcore type game play as well would like to see more games like that. Blood Bowl is a good example of a computer game sticking the rules of the board game without seeming like a board game itself. (That being dull and dry)
The best part about D&D is the interaction between the players over the table and you can’t really get that in a computer game, at least not yet. Who knows maybe someone will find a way to get that feeling back, maybe adding voice of IP with optional web camera feeds into the game itself so you can see the other players faces lol.
Just a quick question – I got the Atari pack recently and it had D&D Online (the original) as part of it. Would installing this mean I wouldn’t have to download the 3+GB to play the free-to-play game, or is it essentially entirely different?
Getting error messages, too.
When/if this works out, anyone fancy an RPS cohort to romp around Eberron?
What drove me away from DDO, and continues to ward me off, is that I tend to end up with the sorts of folks who want to turn the diverse array of quests and wonderfully designed, atmospheric dungeon, into a horrific grind to get to max level / get the best loot as fast possible.
So I’d quite welcome playing with some Rock Paper Shotgun folks, hopefully people who actually want to play and enjoy the game rather than zerg through the same dungeon over and over again like every pick-up group I ever found. :)
I’m in as Brok Bronzehammer (Cleric) or Strozen Scriblor (Wizard) on Cannith (the new server).
Will: Also, the new client has a weird sort of doohickey where you can start designing a character pretty early on before most of the game is downloaded, and then it loads up the tutorial dungeon and so on first-thing, so you can get started playing pretty quickly actually.
Streaming content to you as-needed makes the comparisons to GuildWars even stronger, though the two games play as differently from eachother as two MMORPGs could. It’s about as close to Guildwars as it is Champions.
Tried to play it so many times, each time i hit level 1.1 i cry.
@Weflyspitfires – It doesn’t make a difference, you can play on US servers easily and without issue.
I tried it again recently.
I originally bought it when it came out, but I chose not to subscribe.
The reason being, when I bought DDO, I had been a long-time Guild Wars player already, and DDO is identical in structure to Guild Wars. I honestly couldn’t see how they could charge a monthly fee for something that wasn’t even a “proper” MMO.
I had enjoyed it, so with the news that they planned to go free-to-play, I reactivated my account in anticipation.
Unfortunately, I found that playing on my own just wasn’t fun, and the cookie-cutter design that I was willing to forgive a few years back is horrifically intrusive; at a low level, every dungeon looks the same. Let alone which, where Guild Wars had taught me that it doesn’t necessarily have to be about levelling, and that the secret was plentiful content upon reaching top level, DDO now is as painful to level as in the more traditional MMOs.
I also don’t like the whole idea that the character you start with essentially becomes irrelevant. You see, as you build favour, you eventually unlock characters that get more ability points at character generation, so eventually, you end up abandoning the character you used to unlock that advantage.
And to top it all off, you have to grind gold to afford respecs. Again, Guild Wars spoiled me in this respect, and having to grind it out now just rankles.
It’s kind of a dillema.
As that article TotalBiscuit linked to points out, most MMOs have very little actual gameplay or RPG in them. Without the other players there’s not much there.
The most interesting sounding MMOs DDO, KOTORO, Star Trek Online, etc…. are all adding that kind of gameplay… but they are doing it by instancing everything and making it into much more of a traditional SP/MP experience.
And then at some point you have to wonder if it’s worth paying a monthly fee for a traditional SP/MP experience. Maybe Guild Wars / Micropayments is the way to go… but the reason every dev under the sun is better their studio on an MMO is that they want a part of the monthly subscription model.
The most fun I ever had playing DDO was with a perma-death guild. If your character died it could no longer play with the guild and you went and created a new character and started over. My first character with that group was a bard and made it to level 5 or 6. It’s a really intense way of playing that’s pretty rewarding. A group of us killed some challenging vampire or another without any of us dieing and the feeling of accomplishment was huge. Of course then my character died almost instantly to a minotaur the next day when I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have. But so it goes.
Now that DDO’s free I’ll likely try this play-style again.
Hmm. I live in Sweden and had no problems signing in and downloading the game. 1 hour left till i can start the game. Will report back then.
Over and out.
Well, i can confirm it works in the brave, socialist state of Sweden! So , by deduction i assume it will work in the rest of Europe.
Cheers
If anyone is still having problems getting the installer working because of the generic “error” message, all you have to do is go to this website and follow the trouble shooting steps.
http://www.pandonetworks.com/games/help
once I did the top procedure, the installer worked perfectly.
The account signup page seems to have issues with Britisher Virgin broadband connections, oddly, as several of us have signed up fine on alternative internets. Download of the client worked fine on Virgin, however.
Maybe they’re doing some coarse-grained IP blocking of signups or something?
I do love the art style. And the gameplay concept appeals to me. I’ll be giving this a try.
I finally got around to trying this and I have to say, it’s not bad. I’m not sure how the pay stuff is going to end up working into things, but I appreciate all the instancing, the presense of hirelings, and the ability to warp out of zones and such. In short, it’s about halfway between Guild Wars and World of Warcraft. Consequently it’s better than WoW but not quite as good as Guild Wars. Still, for the price I can’t complain. I’ll keep playing until either 1) the pay scheme gets in the way substantially or 2) it becomes necessary to have more than 2 people playing to advance.
What if you tried to live your life with Dungeons and Dragons dice determining all your decisions? The Dungeons and Dragons Dice Experiment
Or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dice_Man
thanks
Resurrecting this article to let folks know that Turbine is opening a NEW, high-capacity server tomorrow. They say paid subscriptions are UP 40%, and of course the income from the micro-payment in-game store.