Neverwinter put a spell on Me

I am not going to lie, I have been playing Neverwinter more than DDO of late, but that is not to say that I like one game over the other.
I find that at least up to now, I get something different from each.

DDO makes it way easier to group with folks so it has more of a party and D&D feel that Neverwinter which could be labeled just another World of Warcraft clone by some. Yet to do so would be doing the game a great disservice as I feel that it does utilize some of the D&D lore to offer a good mmorpg experience, especially now that they have partnered with Wizards of the Coast during the Tyranny of Dragons event.

As far as DDO is concerned, I posted this query to the forums the other day:

When I made my warforged Barbarian, I didn't pay much attention to things like feats and skills or even paid attention to a guide like this one
 
I  like my character and has advanced to level 9 but I am not sure he has the optimal feats and skills needed for best results, I never fully researched the requirements and I feel like rolling a new character and starting all the way from level one, except I don't much feel like going through the early content and quests once more.

Is it really necessary to acquire all the recommended feats and skills and what if I don't have them? Should I stop playing my character and re-roll??? 

I got varied responses from the very attentive and kind community but I decided to re-roll so that I could make the build correctly and named my new character son of Doomar (since my original was Doomar a warforged Barbarian.)

I read that a warforged sorcerer was a good build for someone new to the game, well I am not exactly new but I will be with this new character and since I am not used to playing casters, it will be a good experience for me.

I also wanna personally apologize to the folks at Cryptic when I said that DDO completely pawns Neverwinter. Actually, it is like comparing apples to oranges since each game is different and each one brings some good things to the table.

The main problem I have right now with Neverwinter is I transported to what appears to be a high level zone and unless I group, there is no chance of me surviving it. DDO leveling is slower than most mmo games by design so I feel pretty good about my progress in that game.

My goal is to reach level 15 before the end of the summer which I think is very doable. I may also purchase some upgrades so I can explore the Forgotten Realms content as I have restricted myself so far to the Eberron setting.

I also tried out the D&D 5th edition starter set last week with my friends. It was a very slow session with the pregen characters and module found in the box, but mostly because we were all getting used to 5th edition rules and trying to figure out spells. When you have a caster in the party, things can get a bit confusing, but I hope to sort it all out before our next session. Players still had a blast killing goblins in the city of Neverwinter which is all you can ask for.Maybe I will post a vid of one or our sessions, or elaborate on the pregens and the pros and cons of the starter set adventure for those of you yet to try it.

The eternal question: Sandbox vs. themepark

Lieutenant Morkag-Khor

First, my apologies for not posting sooner, grad school has eaten a large chunk of my playing time. I hope to blog more steadily now and into summertime. Second, I have been following the debate over what elements should be incorporated into the upcoming mmorpg Camelot Unchained by famed DAoC developer Mark Jacobs. In fact, the discussions over whether it's wise that it feature only RvR (3 faction pvp like in DAoC) and gloss over PvE elements has also sparked the old debate of themepark vs. sandbox mmos.

My inbox has been flooded of late from posts and bloggers who have weighed in on the issue, but that's one of the things that I love about playing ddo, Turbine has taken care of making the gameplay radically different than most mmos, but not too different that it won't satisfy a fantasy action junkie like myself. What makes DDO unique in the sandbox vs. themepark debate is that it doesn't neatly fit into any one category.

Since DDO is mostly composed of instanced dungeons with wilderness areas and no significant pvp to speak of, one would be tempted to say that it's mostly a themepark, you do follow a linear pre-designed pattern, i.e. starting off in the Korthos island tutorial and early level content before graduating to Stormreach Harbor. However, DDO has some sandbox elements. For example, you don't have to do quests in order, per se, although I suppose you do if  you want to progress onto capping a character, but seeing as you have relatively more freedom to quest in Stormreach either solo, with a party, or engage in other activities such as collecting, etc, DDO feels less like a linear quest hub to quest hub than World of Warcraft to me.

Last night I decided to finish some of the quests I had not yet completed in both the Harbor and House P. After unsuccessfully going after Lieutenant Morkag-Khor and party wiping in elite in the tear of Dhakaan quest, (we came ever so close) I managed to do a few more quests, including going back to the Harbor to run "Kobolds assault" in elite. Had a blast earning a few more ranks on my warforged Barbarian, which I seem to prefer playing over the spellcaster, mostly because I am still not as adept at wizard game mechanics in ddo. What can I say? I like to wallop stuff in melee.

So say what you will about DDO, but I don't think that I can firmly place it anywhere in the Sandbox-themepark continiuum with absolute certaintity, but I don't think that is at all a bad thing. 

Our party gathers at the Harbor after a long quest chain

DDO vs. Wow- Revisited

The Drow of the Underdark are a new area of exploration in DDO

Recently, while looking online for info on mmorpgs, I came across this old blog post talking about why DDO can never compete with World of Warcraft. This is not a new comparison or analysis by any means, but since I have played both games, and have been doing so again of late, I wanted to address some of the points against Turbine and DDO which the author made so long ago.

He writes, "There are a number of things blizzard got right with WoW that DDO just doesn’t. In theory DDO should be a brilliant online game- it’s got the power of the most popular and advanced RPG fighting system behind it, the storytelling power DnD is famous for and it’s got all this in an online game with enormous character uniqueness and customization capability."

So why doesn’t it work ? scale. He goes on to compare the games in terms of scale:

"In WoW you are questing out in the world – you don’t even enter a dungeon until level 15, as you quest you meet other players, some will help you with quests some will just pass you by but 90% of all the things you do happen outside in the world. You’re interacting with people all the time."
This may have been true 2 years ago when this post was written, but in the post-Cataclysm era, I find that it is simply no longer true. In fact, there may be more players now logging in daily to raid and do PvP content, but for a long time most will sit in capital cities, or queue for a dungeon and battleground, leaving most of the open world barren in comparison.

"In DDO every time you start a quest, you get cut off from everybody who isn’t in your party (so if you solo quite a bit while leveling to get used to playing your class – you may as well be playing diablo – the fact that it’s online becomes irrelevant)."
This is also untrue, well not the part about DDO being mostly instanced, but the fact about it being less mmorpg than wow as a result. As a matter of fact, a lot of the dungeons in DDO are simply undoable or too hard to solo which requires either using hirelings, or other players. Luckily, the social function built into the game by Turbine allows you to easily and quickly find other players looking for groups and looking to run dungeons with you, most of which will be divided by level, making it convenient to find a party. Once you do, it is nothing like a single player dungeon crawl, rather a fun interactive and co-op experience.

This is why, perhaps, I’ve yet to see a mount in DDO (I think they don’t exist) – while in WoW they aren’t just nice – they are incredibly useful. Because you’re traversing the world, what fantasy hero doesn’t ride on his quest ? Well unless you’re Tolkiens hobbits – nobody else wants to walk everywhere. It also means to get between areas you have to fly/take a boat. You can’t walk and explore because the city exits lead to combat zones – that don’t have another exit.

Well this is true, but as a guildie once said to me when I mentioned mounts a while back, "who needs mounts when you can just teleport?" This is really true, Stormreach is a huge city, but to see most of the content would take a really long time playing the game, and to traverse to other parts of the world, all one has to do is join a good guild with a functional air ship and use it to port in and out of places, at least that's what I and many others do. It would be cool to see mounts, but as DDO is based on Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 rule sets and that game is meant to be played as a collective of players in a party, they are not really needed in DDO.

Free to play done wrong
DDO because they don’t have a subscription fee pushes the store in your face all the time. True you can earn store points just from playing but that comes pretty slow and so far I’ve spent mine all on healing potions. If you don’t buy you will soon find you cannot compete with those who do. That ultimately slants the game in favor of those with the most cash to burn instead of those with the most skill – and it annoys the hell out of you – especially as a newer player.

I don't think this was ever true, although it is true that a f2p player would find it virtually impossible or would take forever to achieve the same gear or progress than a p2p using mostly the game's "favor" system, now that the game has more a freemium model, the online store is hardly "ever in your face" it is up to you if you want to buy adventure packs or locked classes, but if you prefer to play for free, there is a lot of free content that is still accessible and you can still have a ton of fun playing the game without dropping a dime into it. Is there a competitive advantage? Since there is no PvP to speak of, except for brawling in the taverns as a diversion, I don't feel that there is any significant advantage accrued by VIP players, they simply get parts of the game that are not available to the f2p, and since dungeons can be ran in different difficulty levels, there is content for everyone to enjoy even the newest of players.

Another knock on DDO is a perceived lack of lore, in comparison to the vast game world and overarching back story, but most of the wow players I know don't really care about lore anyway, don't more than half skip reading quest text in favor of going out to grind? Don't get me wrong, I like Blizzard games and I feel the need to play wow from time to time because it is a fun and polished mmorpg, I just don't feel that DDO is lacking in lore, or development of lore in the game, especially now that the Forgottem Realms have been incorporated into DDO, who knows what other DDO settings and staples Turbine will surprise us with next?