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If you ever wanted to try out DDO or LOTRO, you could try it now …
Hello,
the company behind DDO and LOTRO has just announced that both games will be open to everyone who has to stay at home because if the current crisis until later in April. As I understand them, they do it so that everyone stays in good humour meanwhile the industry, districts, towns etc. gets closed. Here is the announcement : https://www.ddo.com/en/friends I respect their decision to help to not let people fall prey to the current hysteria. Quote:
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Congratulations to Standing Stone LLC, great initiative on their part! :)
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Come to the DDO Hardcore server and see if you can survive these trying times. Say hello to Graylander if you see him. Lvl 16 Favored Soul who hasn't died yet but has been close a couple of times. :blush:
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If I only had patience for these games (MMOs) …
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The only MMO I played (and even so, for a very few moments) was Funcom's Anarchy Online long time ago. When I uninstalled it, it was like "I'm done with it!". I never touched WoW, Everquest, Ultima Online, etc. Yes, I have both Albion Online and Black Desert Online installed in my Steam library, but it's my kid who plays them :) Anyway, I once again commend Standing Stone LLC for their initiative :) |
Don't forget that the Watch has a Guild on the Khyber server for members of the Watch to play together. We have a regular session on Friday evening USA time. I think it's 7 pm east coast time. Everyone from the Watch is welcome; lots of help available too. :)
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Almost all quests are instanced. Only raids are group content, and a few quests with certain mechanics (like 4 persons standing on pressure plates). I very often wish people would do games like DDO these days. Edit : Doing quests with members of the Watch has its own kind of fun ! ;) |
There is an important update : https://www.ddo.com/en/news/free-que…ng-stone-games
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The above link points you towards in an-game DDO Store coupon code which gives anyone access to all Adventure Packs until August, 31st, 2020
Until that date you can get as well "the quests from" the two Forgotten Realms DDO Expansions for 99 DDO Points, which is quite a steal, considering that these two Expansions themselves - which include these quests - must otherwise be bought extra. The only drawback is that this offer contains only the quests ("the playable content"), and no bonus of any kind. Quote:
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This is the last weekend to get the quests for free, apparingly permanently !
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Quoted from there : Quote:
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There is an important announcement regarding DDO :
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They did it again ! : https://ddo.com/en/ThankYou
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I don't know - I have heard they have the same strange system of armor sets upper level restriction like in LOTRO. So you come to Moria too late and you cannot wear Moria armor sets and they even stripped players from armors when they implemented it - some of the armors you had to buy quite expensive for in-game currency given from instances - this is how much they don't care about their player base. And now they cater everything in the game for the group of very hatefull tryhards/pvp players who are known for destroying other MMOs for casuals.
Things like that is what gives you depression, so it is better to stay away from that for me. |
I enjoyed DDO when I played it, but it's one of the most predatory games you could design. They shove in your face all kinds of real cash transactions at every turn. You die in a dungeon? Instant button to pay to resurrect. You need to get to a far away dungeon that is deliberately designed to be far away? Instant button to pay to teleport. Do you need healing/mana/inventory slots/anything at all? Instant button to pay to buy it.
Most of the content is locked behind paywalls, races, classes, dungeons, you name it. The VIP suscription bypasses some of it, not all (tons of stuff you need to actually buy the expansions to actually be able to play them). Also, unsurprisingly, the expansions have more elaborate dungeons with better loot than the "free" or even the VIP ones. And that's not even the worst of it, there is a system by which you can "reincarnate", keeping bonuses from your previous character and increasing the stat points you get in general when creating the character. Each reincarnation costs a fair amount of money (I think about $10?) and of course, since the game invites you to go through this loop of level up - reincarnate, you want XP boosts for real money to get there faster. Also, for us Europeans the lag is unbearable, since either they never bothered to put servers in EU, or they just can't figure out lag. Animations and collisions are all out of sync, sometimes by seconds. All in all, good game, but way too many ifs and buts to make it playable for me. |
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That is not to say that DDO can't be expensive if you throw caution to the wind and go full-on pay to win (which there is most certainly an element of in the game), but there is hundreds of hours of content freely available these days (much more than, say, ten years prior). If you're looking for a casual MMO you can play around in maybe once a week, DDO offers a lot with little to no cost. If, however, you are the type of personality that wants it all! Wants it now! NOW NOW NOW! And will be playing the game as a second job, well then it can be a dangerous game for you, monetarily. |
My point is that it doesn't require a "NOW NOW NOW!" mindset to feel extremely limited and getting "pay now to get this" prompts shoved up your face 24/7. There are games that do this gracefully. DDO isn't one of them. Any cool race or class you may want to play, for example, is behind a paywall and then "pay 35 shards now to resurrect" is one of the most predatory things I've ever seen in a game, makes EA and Ubisoft look charitative grannies in comparison.
But then, everyone can try it and decide for themselves. |
What prompts 24/7? The resurrect example you've cited is a one-time thing that you disable with a checkbox. Only 3 of the 15 classes are limited to store purchases (a 4th, druid, can be had with access to the Underdark expansion - which is $1 right now). The races, I will grant you, can feel claustrophobic, as there are only 4 in the free to play portion of the game.
While there are many examples of the game catering to the pay to win crowd, the majority of what you've mentioned is not it. I'd say you're either misinformed or being disingenuous. |
Never ever have wanted to try out either of them, but I hear they're pretty desperate for players. If I was forced to play any MMO it wouldn't be one where the property was commercially owned outside of computer gaming I think. I'd prefer something that was public domain so it could be added to by anyone.
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I don't need to convince anyone, really, I just thought this thread is being either dishonest and misleading, or just happily ignoring the most predatory monetization system I've seen in a non-mobile game. Genshin Impact is a joke compared to DDO, and as I said earlier, EA and Ubisoft appear as actually kind, giving companies in comparison.
I'm not trying to convince anyone, I don't care where you spend your time or your money. Just giving a heads up but in the end anyone can check it out without taking my word for it. |
The only MMO I played recently is Star Wars - The Old Republic. You only have to sub once to get all the games content. You only get small penalties after unsubscribing.
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I did play the ESO and Fallout 76 games since I like the parent games so much. I still think a group doing their own thing from the very beginning would be best. I was going to give Kingdoms of Amalur a shot before that went sour quick.
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As someone who plays DDO every week (we have our own site guild and several regular posters play often) I think someone had a bad experience several years ago and needs to re-visit the current game. I rarely spend any real money and what I have spent over many years has been worthwhile; the value is there. If anyone wants to join our regularly scheduled games just post a message in our Team Corwin thread and we'll share all the details. :)
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I tried it back in the day. DDO.
I'd rather sell everything I have and go broke by buying lootboxes on the phone than pay a single dime in DDO. Thanks Corwin but I had much more fun with LoL where I didn't have to schedule anything, just enter and go blind matches. It is in the past now though, mmos are just not my thing. |
I'm sure the old folks home that plays DDO together have a great time, but I don't do other people. I'm in the isolation unit at the RPGWatch old folks home ;)
I have never really had a bad experience personally. I do remember playing an MMO that was indie way back in the day but I don't remember anything about it at all nowadays. Not even the name. I played ESO for a couple hundred hours and same with Fallout 76. Might go back to one of those at some point. |
I never did try DDO, I guess none of the people that I gamed with ever gave it a shot. I spent most of my mmo time bouncing between both EQ's.
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Well if the resurrect is the same like in LOTRO, I don't remember if there was a prompt, but in a lot of cases you have 2 options to pay for anything - paid currency and golds. It was added a few years back. But I didn't play DDO recently, so I don't know how it does feel there.
But I think Neverwinter with lootboxes popups was worse - I was trying again if I could play it and it was so desperate, I did uninstal really fast. All MMOs except a few examples (for some reason those MMOs are doing well) are very abusive. Turbine was doing quite fine, but then it was sold to Daybreak Games the balance is more and more broken, but still I believe that those examples with armors are actions of unfriendly management/marketing department rather than a publisher - because later it turned into buy a new expansion or don't have a good armor set with a top level character. Which feels so desperate… Why they cannot make players happy and let them buy what they like? Instead they just make more and more strange decisions - btw those armor sets without procs (explained originally as OP for higher levels - how that does make sense?) had randomised armor score, so the heavy armor piece you acquired had suddenly lower armor rating than light armor - because of RNG. They did it after demand of certain group of players for "balance". How balanced it is? Everyone knew they cannot do it in that scale. And so on - another decision was changing Beorn from medium armor to heavy, because certain group demanded it to be a tank, so not only they got rid of an interesting alternative, but also I'm not sure if Beorn would wear iron. And aswell suddenly it was possible for them (they really did all the hard work) to change stats of all medium armors, so you couldn't wear it with beorning because they made it useless … They really made sure you cannot RP medium armored. It is more unfriendly than market predatory. But I had the impression the management do understand and like DDO more, so I thought it is better there. |
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I play DDO for its setting, which I find unique. That's the only reason for me why I had been buying all of these "adventure packs".
There is little - far too little for my personal taste - of real social interaction with NOCs, though. It largely plays as a hack & slay game - wit the exception of the traps. To have a trapper in a group is a "must-have" in higher difficulty settings. Except when the own character has so great reflexes to be faster than any trap, so to say … As I always say . "Nothing is as satisfying than being able to disarm traps …" My favourite example regarding Eberron is the fact that there are elven, halfing, dwarven etc. pirates in it ! Plus the so-called "living constructs", which boil down to be some kinds of robots, but they are - in this setting - living beings, based on the fact that there partly consist of "ölifewood", which is wood which lives on even after being chopped off a tree, or so I understand that. Their body models within the game are imho ugly, though. I can see the argument that it is a "selling game", though. As an F2P, without having bought any of the so-called "adventure packs", any questgiver pointing towards not-yet-bought packs has a red s<ymbol overhis head, indicating that this adventure pack has to be bought. Regarding the reincarnation : As with most things, one can grind that as well, without having to pay too much money. And . Not everybody does it, in fact. Most do it, because they have been playing the game for so long, but I didn't so far, for example. There is a noticeable power gap between those who never do this and those whose characters did that several times over, though. Regarding F2P, by the way : Since somewhen this year or last year, F2P playewrs playing SWTOR can FINALLY give in bug tickets, too ! |
Until December, 31st, the quest packs are still free/gratis with this code : https://ddo.com/en/ThankYou
Expansions are very cheap right now. |
Last chance :
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The two earlier major expansions are at a reduced price until March, 6th.
https://www.ddo.com/forums/showthrea…=1#post6503976 |
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