Dungeons and Dragons Online now Free to Play

[Asher]

Anyone been following this? I'm not a big D&D geek but the SO is, so he jumped on this.

It's in beta currently, releasing very soon. If you hurry you can get a key for free here: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/71163

DDO launched in 2006 by Turbine, has been continually improved since then (including, recently, a new DirectX 10 mode -- it shares the same game engine as LOTRO). It never really took off, for reasons I don't know, but it was reviewed well.

To revitalize the game, they've made it free to play. You can still subscribe and get all the benefits all the time, or you can play for free only, or buy certain parts of the game (premium content/dungeons/classes/races/etc).

A pretty neat idea, I think.

Wiki with game info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dungeon...ne:_Stormreach
Website: http://www.ddo.com/

And attached is the table displaying the differences between the free-to-play mode and subscriber mode.

[Asher]

Haven't played it yet, but been reading about it. I love the concept of hiring NPCs, I wish more games provided this. There's sometimes I just need 1 more person in the group but I don't want to try to find a random person to fill it out.

http://syncaine.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/ddo-hirelings-nicely-done-turbine/

DDO Hirelings: Nicely done Turbine!

Last night I tried out the somewhat new hireling system in DDO when my fiancé and I ran into a tough level 3 quest and came away very impressed. It’s not exactly like having a real player, but its close enough, and adds another activity to manage during the dungeon crawl that adds to the enjoyment of the overall experience.

Since I’m currently playing DDO as a duo with my fiancé, the ability to bring two hirelings along is great, as a party of four is the ‘recommended’ number of players to complete an instance on the normal setting. (DDO vets correct me if I’m wrong on that, but I believe I’ve read that someplace) In addition to just providing the right number of players, the fact that you can pick from a selection of classes also solves the “we need a healer/tank/dps” issue that can arise. Since the fiancé is a fighter, and I play a rogue, we can grab a cleric and a wizard and bam, perfect group. Or we can mix it up and go heavy on the dps, bringing say a wizard and sorcerer, or go all melee with a paladin and barbarian. Point being, it adds more variety to the game, and since you control your hireling through a pet-like hotbar addition to your UI, what class you hire determines what abilities you control from that bar and how you should direct your hireling. The fiancé was having a great time just watching the spell effects from her hireling wizard fly, and managing my cleric allowed my rogue to also have access to healing when the group needed it.

The AI for the hirelings is good enough. When you set them to ‘attack’ mode, they will use their abilities to their best judgment, so while a wizard will cast some spells, he won’t mana-dump as fast as possible. In defend mode the hireling will follow after your character and if a mob attacks them they will fight back as normal. On the pet-like hotbar you also get access to four of the hirelings skills and can use them as you would your own. So for the cleric, I simply select someone and click the Heal spell, and my cleric casts away. Very handy, very easy to use, and again a nice layer on top of everything else going on. What’s really nice is if a battle gets really hectic, you can put your hireling on attack mode and forget about them. They won’t be perfect (but then again PUG players are far from perfect as well), but they will do a good job and hold their own. An interesting side bonus, it seems hirelings will move to any area technically reachable by ‘floating’ up to it, so if you have a mob on a ledge that would normally require you to jump 2-3 times to reach it, the hireling will float up and attack the mob. (Not sure if this is intended, but it happened last night, and I figure it’s the solution implemented to prevent the hirelings getting stuck on tougher jump areas or falling down a ledge and becoming unusable)

In any other game the addition of hirelings would be a nice but overall meh improvement, but in DDO’s group-only environment it just opens up the game for those unable to field a full party, and makes what would previously be an uphill battle possible and more deep/entertaining. A great addition to what has so far been a really enjoyable experience.

edit: My only concern with hirelings is their cost. I’ve yet to do the math, but I’m not sure if buying one or two hirelings per instance (the contract is a one use / one instance only item) is feasable long-term. If it’s not, we might get into a situation where we first try to 2 man something, fail, and then hire help. That could lead to some frustration on the longer missions. The counter to this is that as a duo, perhaps we can attempt ‘hard mode’ on shorter quests after completing them on normal, which would yield more gold to pay for future purchases. Currently at level 4 I have just over 2000 platinum, so I’m not hurting for money atm, but it’s something to keep an eye on.

[Asher]

Preview: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/70586

[ZEE]

goes back to that effort thing...

[Asher]

...

[DrSpike]

Anyone been following this? I'm not a big D&D geek but the SO is, so he jumped on this.

It's in beta currently, releasing very soon. If you hurry you can get a key for free here: http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/71163

DDO launched in 2006 by Turbine, has been continually improved since then (including, recently, a new DirectX 10 mode -- it shares the same game engine as LOTRO). It never really took off, for reasons I don't know, but it was reviewed well.

The reason it didn't take off is that it was all instanced dungeons/play areas and there weren't very many of them. Some people liked the gameplay but it ran out much too quickly so even though some reviewers gave it decent scores from a quick play it was pretty widely regarded as poor. The usual (partially fair) critique was that it was Guild Wars but pay to play.

I always thought it was a shame because I don't think paying for almost solely instanced content is a no-no provided that content is good and there is enough of it. Most MMO players don't interact with 99.9% of the other players anyway, and the best fun I've had in MMOs is in small groups........ in instanced dungeons.

And they've had a while to make new content. So I think I'll check this out when I get chance.

[DrSpike]

Hmm, from checking Asher's links looks like it might not be free in Europe.

[DrSpike]

Haven't played it yet, but been reading about it. I love the concept of hiring NPCs, I wish more games provided this. There's sometimes I just need 1 more person in the group but I don't want to try to find a random person to fill it out.

It can work well - the Guild Wars henchman system was good, and became even better with the introduction of heroes in Nightfall (where you could actually choose skillbars).

[Asher]

Hmm, from checking Asher's links looks like it might not be free in Europe.

Yeah, they don't publish the game in Europe. I think Codemasters does.

They get similarly screwed in LOTRO stuff in Europe.

[Dis]

it is a good game. I have played it on my brother's computer. The only thing that hampered it in the beginning (and even now) is the low level cap and small amount of content. But it's a solid D&D experience.

[Proteus_MST]

Have also joined DDO now.
Maybe I also will go VIP for 1-2 months, when I have more time.
At the moment I do a lot of soloing, maybe 80-90% of the time (despite being in a guild), but it looks like my Main Char (Elf, Ranger 3, Cleric 1, Rogue 1) is slowly coming into the range of quests which are difficult to solve on solo (or solo +1 hireling), modules like Shan-To-Kor for example.

[OzzyKP]

I signed up, and got bored quite quickly.

[Asher]

Well, it's no youth rights rally but I find it pretty fun to play with the SO.

[OzzyKP]

We need some youth rights video games.

[self biased]

which edition is it? 3.5 or World of Fourth edition?