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Posted: September 26, 2008 05:27 am  | |||
      IRC Nickname: Wayne|Eregion2 Group: Emeritus Posts: 3087 Member No.: 156 Joined: January 25, 2008 Total Events Attended: 8    | I played DDO months before getting around to World of Warcraft, and now I've settled into a nice routine of switching between the two whenever I get bored.  I think DDO is worth quite a bit more than most people give it credit for, so I figured I'd make a post about the basics. As far as cash goes, the game is around $20 with monthly charges of $12-15 depending on your payment plan. Now for the fun stuff!Dungeons and Dragons Online If you're a diehard WoW player, DDO graphics will take quite awhile to get used to. They tend to be less "cartoonish" and more realistic, which is really, REALLY odd after playing WoW for a couple months straight. Anyway, you've got your six races (human, elf, halfling, dwarf, drow, and construct) and your ten classes (fighter, paladin, barbarian, monk, rogue, ranger, cleric, wizard, sorcerer, and bard). Obviously, each race and class has it's own checks and balances, with humans being the most overall versatile race.  Your character's appearance is also highly customizable, much more so than you can manage in WoW. My favorite classes would probably be rangers (gets martial weapon proficiencies, which includes two-handed weapons which are SO MUCH FUN) and clerics (not sure why I like clerics so much but they're probably my favorite class overall).  Your character's abilities are calculated using your: 1) ability scores, such as strength and intelligence, 2) skill scores, such as hide and pick locks, 3) enhancements, which are very similar to WoW talents but not as restrictive, and 4) feats, which allow for a wide variety of customizable features including bonuses to existing skills, new special attacks, boosts to your armor class or hit points, etc. I'll try and get a picture of my character sheet up here sometime soon.  Something else I REALLY like about DDO is that the combat is more interactive. You don't have to highlight an opponent to deal damage to it, you can just wade into a bunch of kobolds and start bashing the living daylights out of them! This is also true for ranged weapons, which is a bunch of fun as well (no bonus for headshots though, blah). Some spells can be cast in this manner but others require a selected target, either offensively or as buffs.  In true D&D form, there's only 20 character levels available in DDO (actually 16 currently, they add 2 every once in awhile during major updates; we'll get to 20 eventually and maybe beyond into epic classes). However, each is divided into five ranks, where you gain action points (used to get enhancements from a class trainer) so 20 character levels is actually more like 100. There's also a very heavy reliance on group play in DDO, which is intentional. It's pretty easy to solo your first three levels in the first evening of play but by level 6-7 almost all solo content is phased out and you'll be relying heavily on groups (often PUGs, which are not nearly as horrible as they are in WoW) to get your levels. Clerics are in high demand, as you can see from my chat log.  The one thing that I think sets DDO completely apart from any other game I've heard of though is your ability to multi-class. You can branch into a combination of three different classes, as long as your total level doesn't exceed the level cap. However, level choices is practically the only thing you can't go back on in DDO! You can reset enhancements and swap feats (painfully expense at higher levels) but you cannot renegotiate character level choices. What else ... there's no enemies in the general map in DDO like there is in RS and WoW. Everything fightable is inside an instance, either for a quest or a zone. There's also not nearly as much ground to cover, the entire game mostly takes place in a single city (Stormreach). Weather conditions are pretty cool as well; supposedly a dragon flies over the city randomly every couple of hours but I've never seen it.  That's me sneaking around the Cerulean Hills with my ranger; they're sneaky. If they got progressed through the list of divine spells as quickly as clerics I'd just play rangers, but they only get new spell lists every fourth level instead of every second level for clerics.The zones are seriously loads of fun; time actually passes so if you go out there at night, you're more likely to find wolves and hobgoblins close up to the walls, while during the day they're farther away and there's more fiendish lions hanging around. I'll try and get a screenshot of dawn breaking over the Cerulean Hills, it's quite a sight.  And one other thing; while you're in an instance your hit points and spell points DO NOT REGENERATE! There's usually 1-2 rest shrines where you can go to heal up but besides that you're dependent on effectively budgeting your spell points. That's another reason everybody likes clerics, they have an enhancement line that allows them to use their turn undead ability to restore spell points to a caster class player. I rarely get to PUG right now so I'm just playing around with low-level builds, having fun. I'm working on a new cleric that I'm really liking (used a feat to get him proficiency with great axes and hopefully soon I'll get another one I can use for composite bows; I don't like crossbows they're too slow for me). Anyway, I just felt like writing this, I'll add more screenshots as I take them. If you do happen to get a trial for DDO, you'll find me on Thelanis (out of six possible servers, lol). --------------------  | ||
Posted: September 26, 2008 07:52 am | |||
| IRC Nickname: Lego Lamb Group: Guest Posts: 152 Member No.: 1228 Joined: July 21, 2008 Total Events Attended: 9 | WOW looks better. --------------------
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Posted: September 26, 2008 02:02 pm | |||
| IRC Nickname: Wayne|Eregion2 Group: Emeritus Posts: 3087 Member No.: 156 Joined: January 25, 2008 Total Events Attended: 8 | WoW also has a billion-dollar annual budget, lol. Honestly I don't like either of them enough to play them indefinitely; WoW is simply huge, while DDO is almost infinitely customizable at every level of the game. Switching between the two is a good way to keep things entertaining. Plus, in DDO, all the caves don't look exactly the same. WoW is incredibly better when it comes to raids though, DDO evidently doesn't really understand the concept yet. -------------------- | ||
Posted: September 26, 2008 10:18 pm | |||
 IRC Nickname: Sithofwookie Group: Ex-Member Posts: 2842 Member No.: 815 Joined: June 11, 2008 Total Events Attended: 48 | Diablo 3 is going to be the best imo, I can't wait for it to come out. Ima buy it ASAP. Theres a new class of person called Witch Doctor and the Barbarian got some new stuff its ganna be freaking exhilarating --------------------  | ||
Posted: September 26, 2008 10:49 pm | |||
| IRC Nickname: Kero2|bryan Group: Guest Posts: 1302 Member No.: 91 Joined: January 2, 2008 Total Events Attended: 26 | Diablo are epiclly fucking good games Diablo 2 hammer paladin ftw -------------------- Best pure f2p Guardian  Post here http://www.wildernessguardians.com/forum/i...owtopic=20&st=0  | ||
Posted: September 26, 2008 10:50 pm | |||
 IRC Nickname: Hyperion Group: Ex-Member Posts: 1636 Member No.: 978 Joined: June 23, 2008 Total Events Attended: 141 | wow, it actually looks better than wow for me. --------------------    Dragon boots:29 Whips:2 | ||
Posted: September 26, 2008 11:52 pm | |||
| IRC Nickname: Wayne|Eregion2 Group: Emeritus Posts: 3087 Member No.: 156 Joined: January 25, 2008 Total Events Attended: 8 | Btw, I forgot to mention that DDO doesn't have a handy name generator attached like WoW does ... if anyone has some good elf names let me know, I'm stuck.  // edit // Nvm, got one I can run with. -------------------- | ||
Posted: September 27, 2008 12:28 am | |||
| IRC Nickname: Sithofwookie Group: Ex-Member Posts: 2842 Member No.: 815 Joined: June 11, 2008 Total Events Attended: 48 |
pshh you can't take me and my Lightning Sorceress -------------------- | ||
Posted: September 27, 2008 01:56 am | |||
 IRC Nickname: Final Heaven Group: Ex-Member Posts: 157 Member No.: 399 Joined: March 30, 2008 Total Events Attended: 0 | it looks kinda shitty for the same monthly fee, you might as well play WAR or WoW -------------------- Currently playing Warhammer Online http://realmwar.warhammeronline.com/realmw...7519&server=168 | ||
Posted: September 27, 2008 03:06 am | |||
| IRC Nickname: Wayne|Eregion2 Group: Emeritus Posts: 3087 Member No.: 156 Joined: January 25, 2008 Total Events Attended: 8 |
It kind of is, but I like it anyway. I'll take a look at WAR when 1) they have a free trial, or 2) when I have time to make it worth while. Right now neither exists.  -------------------- | ||
Dungeons and Dragons Online, RAWR