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Not worth the money, clumsy interface, expensive subscription

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 7 / 15
Date: May 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Amateurish interface, this game is just plain bad. but the worst thing about it is that it'll take you at least a week to realize that you've just wasted a week trrying to "advance" a level. Seriously, the keyboard movement interface is terrible, I'm surprised they released this game without running it through some basic testing. If they had done any level of user acceptance testing they would have quickly realized that they were employing the wrong game developers.

You'll find yourself spending too much time backing up and realigning yourself because movement is challenged. In addition to that, you'll be spending half of your time breaking boxes to find hidden items, and when you finally fight a beast, you'l end up running around in circles frantically hitting the right mouse button. I can't imagine anyone is particularly proud of this game, I figure this, the developers probably are not that bad, but the corporation that produced it started to freak out about how much money it was costing to develop this game. I'll bet anything that some suit decided to cut his or her losses and forced the technical team to wrap up early. This whole game just reeks of inadequate testing.

Spend your money on something else, this one is a dud.

Not so good

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 12
Date: March 12, 2006
Author: Amazon User

If you want an MMORPG this is *NOT* the game you want; you should look to World of Warcraft (still). This game is only 'massive' when you are waiting around, other times its pure instance based. Partying is certainly encouraged, its encouraged so much that you effectively cannot solo, so make sure you find a good group.

If you want a literal interpretation and very good implementation of the D&D rules in a game this *NOT* the game you want; you should try NeverWinter Nights or the forth coming NWN2. This game totally screwed up the rule balance, throwing in random things like '+5 to all skills' and a Mechanoid race in an effort to maintain balance.

The requirements for this game imply that it should be graphically very advanced. Guess again, its kinda far behind the current crop of games from a graphics perspective.

Overall this title could have had *HUGE* potential, but it really failed. Its a mediocre at best game with an 'offical' license attached to the box. Save your money and wait for NWN2 to hit the shelves

Save your money it's buggy and small

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 8
Date: March 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This is the worst save your money
Hello all just a note to tell people to stay away from turbine this game is bad buggy and very little content and they want 14.99 a month to keep playing and playing the same dungeons over and over. I played the beta and thought there would be a lot more content in the game when it realeased there was not and the bigger dungeons that are in the game have been closed half the time since the game was released because of bugs. Also I tried to sell the game on ebay to help recoupe some of my money and turbine complained to ebay and had my game listing removed. Well I hope it was worth it turbine I will never by any software from you or atari again. To many companies release games that are not done and stick us with them with no recorse/return policy I will wait next time and not listen to the hype.

Avoid the expensive subscription, just download the Trial

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 4
Date: November 25, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Why pay Turbine when you can play for free and get the same (LAME) experience

Buy with caution

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 3
Date: January 06, 2007
Author: Amazon User

J&R does not update their stock on this site. We purchased this over five days ago; said was in stock and avilable to purchase; just got an email from amazon stating J&R did not have this in stock.

I can't say buy this.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 12 / 17
Date: March 09, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I am a big fan of Dungeons and Dragons, however this game has some serious problems that make it worthless online. There will be fans come along and rip me up about saying so and claiming that this is a niche game and like arguments. It's just filler arguments to gloss over the fact that the game is seriously lacking in content.

I played all through beta and headstart and am now into the first free month. I won't be subscribing to the game and here is why.

The game had maxxed characters after the first 3 days of release.

The dungeons are repeating. You have to continually re-do the same dungeons over and over if you start new characters. There is no path difference between races. Ever race, every character starts in the exact same spot and levels up through the exact same dungeons. BORING.

There is no world to explore. This game launches from one city where you gather and try to find a group to quest with and then you launch into the dungeon. Fans will say yes thats good.. no time running or porting around.. blah blah blah. What it really means is boring time spent sitting in one place forever. Waiting to find a group to quest a certain dungeon with.

Which brings up the worst problem. The first few days it was easy to get a group to do the dungeons with. As the days go by though, it is getting harder and hard to find good people to quest with each time you log in. Most of the idiots I have ended up grouping with have now desire to run the dungeon as it was made. They only want to rush through the dungeon and get it finished as fast as possible. Rushers.

Another really big problem is that the experience you gain isn't assigned to you as you go along in the quest. Only at the finish. So there are tons of messages (happened to me 3 times so far) from people on the official boards for the game where they have wasted 2-5 hours trying to do a quest, only to have it bug up at the end and not get credit for doing it.

All in all.. the game is fun for what it is. Unfortunately what it is right now is a stand alone game. It's fun the first few times throught the dungeons. Then you find out the problems and the glitches and the repeat content and slowly you realize, this game isn't worth the money.

Sorry to have to put a thumbs down, but this game is really not an MMORPG.

Don't let the fans of the game tell you to just wait and Turbine will bring more content or fix all the problems. That's exctly what they said about Asheron's Call 2 and after people put a lot of time and effort into their characters.. Turbine closed the doors on that game. It wasn't profitable enough for them.

My advice... check out the official forums at ddo.com and pay read what actual players are saying. Pay attention to the tech forums and see all the problems they have. Then wait 6 months and see if it gets any better. I canceled my subscription and will do just that. Wait 6 months and see if they can do anything to make this game better.

Worth the free trial, but not much more

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: April 25, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Bringing D&D to an MMO is an interesting concept that is amusing for a while but has some serious shortcomings.

THE GOOD
The dungeons are quite fun. I like the interplay of the classes. I like having the rogue scout for traps, the strongman being needed to bash down certain doors, the wizard activating glyphs. D&D is about teamwork and the uniqueness of each class. I'm not sure if this is inherently fun, or just a breath of fresh air from the monotomy and homogeny of every other MMO.

I liked that health and mana didn't regen in dungeons except for discrete one time only points. In other MMOs stopping for 5-10 minutes between each battle to rest up got really tedious; IE in WoW, 90% of your time in an instance was spent resting up between each micro encounter. It only served to artificially inflate an instance from 20 minutes of content into a 3-4 hour ordeal

The grouping interface seemed a little clunky to me, but with some improvement would be great. It's nice to have a bulletin board so to speak to look for a group, and to be able to say what you're looking for.

I also have to applaud turbine for putting out an MMO without any PvP. I can't say enough how much I hate PvP influence in an RPG and its inevitable effect on attempting to balance the game for both PvP and PvM (ie it doesn't work, and you end up screwing up both of them). I was told City of Heroes was the same way, but I never got around to trying that one.

Last but not least, thank you for putting in a group-based voice system. Counterstrike had this YEARS ago. It's about time an MMO put it in there.

THE BAD
Some of D&Ds strengths are also its weakness though. D&D is sort of like football in that playing alone is pointless; you need a group of people, each with different roles. After the first 30 minutes of the game, you will need to be in a good balanced party in order to accomplish anything. You'll only be able to solo dungeons much lower in level than yourself. It gets boring trying to put a party together without being able to do much in the meantime. In P&P it's only the cruelest of DMs who intentionally designs everything to take advantage of any weakness of the party (no rogue?..then we'll go through a dungeon without monsters, just trap after trap after trap), but almost all of the dungeons in DDO seemed designed to punish you if you don't have the iconic party (rogue, wizard, fighter, cleric).

Also, as much as I hate to admit it, character advancement isn't frequent enough for me. In P&P, fighting, killing, and gaining XP is only a small amount of the game, so not leveling up frequently is just fine. Plus, leveling up frequently is tedious without a computer-based system to do it for you. Keeping track of dozens of random modifiers bogs a P&P game down, where on a computer system it's nothing at all for it to keep track of for you.

In an MMO, fighting, killing, exploring and gaining XP/equipment is pretty much it. RPing is waaaaay to much to expect from an online game that is not actually policed for it. And so, for a CRPG, it just takes too long to really feel rewarded.

The treasure seemed a bit too random as well. When I played a wizard I would receive magic weapons/armor left and right that my fighter 2 levels higher would kill for, but that's all I'd find. When I played my fighter, I found scrolls and wands like no tomorrow, but was still using mundane armor and a MW weapon at lv 3 because of no luck with treasure.

OVERALL
Overall, I don't think the game is going to really take off. It's fun and refreshing for a week or so, but then grows stale.

A game as heavily based off of D&D isn't really good for an MMO (though if other MMOs would cherry pick some of the good things from DDO that'd be a plus for them) and belongs more in the single-player realm ala Baldur's Gate, where you can make and control a well-balanced party. Either that or Neverwinter Nights style, where you just get together with a bunch of people you know and run through some dungeons for a few hours that your DM created just for your party in particular (ala a LAN party, or played over the internet).

could be better

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 4
Date: July 06, 2006
Author: Amazon User

grouping is a pain. it takes forever to put a group together. I hope that the game gets better with more updates. It is fun, but needs work.

I really Really wanted to like this game

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: November 23, 2006
Author: Amazon User

I sounded like the perfect blend of the Challange of an RPG and the Online Community of a Massive Roleplayer. Unfortunatly from a Roleplayers point of view it's just another massive multiplayer repeating the same quests over and over, grinding, farming, ect. ect. The only thing is it does have a nice D&D "Feel" about it with all the newly trademarked monsters, it's also got solid graphics and such but in reality it's not close to an RPG and the tech support for paying a monthly subscription service is terrible.

unless you are an ad&d freak, don't bother, this is a boring waste of time and money

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 2
Date: November 27, 2006
Author: Amazon User

i wanted to like this game. i can't.

the graphics are stellar. there are some bright people working on dungeon designs. i wish they had set this team loose on an actual MMORPG implementation; this simply isn't one.

pretty much all the criticisms you've read here in other reviews are spot-on.

also, the default mouse controls are bass-ackwards and need to be remapped from the moment you start playing -- if you've spent any time in just about any other mmorpg.

i would not recommend this to anyone who does not *already* belong to an online rp/gaming guild and have a group of people you know you will be playing with.

forced grouping is fine. not having anything to do while you wait for groups to get themselves together is just boring.

instancing the few "outdoor" areas is a serious design flaw given how little interaction there is between non-grouped players already, though i have to say in my time i never saw a city zone get instanced -- that's how empty the servers are.

some areas that should not be instanced, are (the main market for example), and this is a pain in the butt, because traversing instances results in a lot of delay. segmenting a city into instances is basically taking us back to the days of EQ1. there's really no excuse for this in a modern online rpg. stacking instances to deal with crowding detracts from sociability and there's not enough of that to begin with. also, i have never seen enough people in any one place to justify it, unless the back-end server/network code *really, really sucks* -- and there have been some extended (and unplanned) periods of downtime to suggest that perhaps it does, or did.

there's not the feel of anything resembling a persistent, interactive world here. this fails as an mmorpg in the simplest and truest sense of the term, and sould not be marketed as anything but a group-oriented online dungeon crawl, which it does a good job of.

the graphics are worth paying for about one month for, to check out, as you run a character up to level 10 or so, and enjoy some interesting quest/instance/dungeon designs.

i did, then chucked my subscription and went back to playing WoW.

it would surprise no-one to see turbine ditch this the way they did AC2, especially with their upcoming Lord of the Rings MMORPG now in beta.

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