Dungeons and Dragons Online
 

I am currently downloading it. Anyone have any reviews?

I am enjoy it immensly right now! I'm on sarlona if you're interested. It is a pretty fun game and its free too! :D

Word of advice is if you dont want to rerun same quests over again to level up you may need to purchase a few adventure packs

Downloading Free as I post this. Will probably pass out and come back tomorrow to try it.

Was alright when it was a paid game. Not spectacular, but the traps are fun and interesting, and combat is a bit more involved than in most MMORPGs--if terribly terribly unbalanced, due to some entirely unnecessary changes to the way damage works compared to the tabletop game (when it first came out damage and health were much different--and the game was better for it). Protip--don't make a spell caster of any type unless you're going to have someone to be grouped with always.

After looking at some of the MT stuff available after the change to a free game, however, I'm thinking I'm probably not going to want to deal with it ever again.

Really? When does the difficulty for casters jump up? I'm still in the first town, but my wizard is having little trouble soloing. <3 Sleep.

My favourite MMO of all time. But then I reached cap in 6 months and cap activities were, at the time, boring.

Now I'm too busy for MMOs. But I will always have fond memories of DDO.

note: I played it when it was subscription-based, so I'm not sure if they changed anything drastically during the free-to-play switch.

They start harder than warriors and get harder from there.

The reason being that DDO started with health/damage ratings pretty similar to actual D&D, and you had to buy the feat for heroic durability or whatever if you wanted to have more. Then they buffed weapon damage, for some reason I can't quite fathom--fighters bitching they weren't as good as mages or something maybe. Then monsters started dying too quickly. So then they buffed monster health. Then players started dying. So then they buffed player health. So now everything has ten times the health it should, and it's absolutely no problem for anyone who uses weapons (rangers, warriors, etc) because they can just keep beating on enemies forever.

However, for wizards/sorcs/whatever, any of the larger dungeons become quickly impossible, as that you'll run out of magic before you run out of enemies--and wands suck. Further you're so squishy that anything that makes it to you will generally annihilate you.

Before all the 'balancing' it was fine. Weapon users took a few blows to kill enemies, while a wizard or sorcerer could usually just blast enemies into hell with one or two spells, so if you were careful about your spell usage you'd be fine. They were still a little more finicky than non-magic classes to keep alive in longer dungeons where running out of magic was still a risk, but with the lower health wands were actually somewhat useful and they could go further if they were careful.

Also--the magic system is stupid. Spell memorization + mp system. Ugh.

Edit: Really, if you're planning on playing the game at all it's best to figure out a team, because your fighter type classes are great for tanking and DPSing, and a thief is actually necessary in some areas to take apart traps that can one-shot anyone who's not exceedingly over leveled and there's even one dungeon on newbie island that a sneaky thief can complete without fighting anything until the very end when you get two NPC fighters who help you, while a healer is always good... but sorcs/wizards... I guess at higher levels they're good to have along for damage, but at lower levels I'd just assume not even bother grouping with them. Not that I ever turned one down for a group, but if I had to choose between a mage class or any other class, I'd chose the any other class.

.....Wow, the arcanists were hit over the head with the nerfstick hard in that case. Druids and clerics should still be able to buff themselves and outshine the fighters and barbarians, but damn.

Edit: That just means I'll have to make sure to shoot for save-or-die spells. Do you know if Flesh to Ice is in DDO? I can't recall any save-or-dies of lower level, though save-or-suck spells will proably end up my bread and butter.

Honestly, summon spells are your best bet. As that summons can both tank and DPS for you.

I never got a mage very far, though, because... well, I don't play a D&D mage so I can summon a metal dog and watch it beat things up. I play one to launch fireballs from my hands and incinerate my enemies with gouts of flame.

I made a Ranger and a Wizard. The Wizard was just to see what you guys were talking about firsthand. I think I work with the Wizard a little more to see where he goes