Author Topic: Dungeons & Dragons Online Unlimited (Read 2348 times)

Eroz · « **on:** September 09, 2009, 07:59:44 am »

http://www.ddo.com/playnow/

Starts today. Pretty fun for being free. I've been playing the game for a few days now (since PAX.)

I'm playing on the Thelanis server as Lotier.

Saint · « **Reply #1 on:** September 10, 2009, 02:15:38 pm »

How come no ones talking about this game? Ive started playing it and so far its not bad...

Erathaol · « **Reply #2 on:** September 10, 2009, 06:55:32 pm »

I played this game starting in Beta. It's actually tons of fun, ESPECIALLY if you stick with a consistent group throughout your play experience (y'know, like real D&D). It's instanced, but that's pretty much the only way to capture the D&D feel. Luckily, there's a huge variety in quests and they're by and large well done and interesting.

Broin · « **Reply #3 on:** September 10, 2009, 07:07:02 pm »

So it's free now?

Erathaol · « **Reply #4 on:** September 10, 2009, 09:23:49 pm »

Sorta. It's switched to a kind of micro-transaction system where you pay for individual quest-chains and certain races/class, like the Warforged and Monk. It's a nice idea, but it ends up being cheaper if you just subscribe and pay monthly.
On the upside, it is a free download so you can subtract the cost of actually buying the game. Also, it makes for a lovely demo, since you can play the game for free and then subscribe to gain access to all the really cool higher-level stuff.

To me, it seems like a super-demo. So... hurray!

Eroz · « **Reply #5 on:** September 10, 2009, 11:12:31 pm »

But their is a lot of content that is available for free, and other parts of the content can be brought with in game gold or finding lucky loot drops. A lot of people complain that you have to by a leveling sigal to be allowed to level past 4 (in terms of the game level 4 is more like level 20 in your standard MMO), but that not completely true. If you take the time and grind out some quest one of the quest rewards will be that leveling sigal, so you can level for free.

The game really has a few different flavors of play
1. Play for free, take you time and you can access a lot of the content for completely free (even without putting in credit card information) either by quest/loot drops or paying for it with in game gold.
2. Play for free, but pay for the micro-transaction fee for content. So pay for only what you want.
3. Mix the previous two.
4. Pay the subscription free, get access to all game content while you pay.

Personally I'll be aiming for 3.

Certain things to note, if you pay the subscription fee you will get access to all the content, but once you stop paying you will lose access to that content. So lets say you paid the sub and made a Monk character, and stopped paying the sub, you will lose access to that monk character until you a) pay for the sub again or b) pay the microtransaction fee for the monk class. Also you don't get bonus points for paying for microtransaction items then start paying for the subscription.

I'm at level 3.2 (levels are broken in 5 ranks) and about 15 hours of gameplay in and haven't paid a dime. I also got a quest team together in about 3 minutes today too. that was insane.