Customer Reviews

Dungeons & Dragons Online: StormReach

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(17)
1 star:		(27)

 

 

Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO) is an above average dungeon crawler that has the potential to be a lot of fun for a while with enjoyable instanced quests and lively gameplay. Unfortunately, there are a lot of little things that will likely make the value of the subscription fee here questionable in a month or two, and even early on many will have issues with forced grouping. Having actually purchased the headstart, I am having a blast - but take a star off of fun for the grouping issue, and two stars off of overall for the rule implementations, lack of PvP, and value proposition, leaving this at 4 fun/3 overall, or 3.5 stars.

With Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) having spawned literally tens of thousands of imitations at the top of the family tree of RPGs, MUDs, and MMORPGS, publisher Turbine has both the blessing of an eager audience and curse of a really tough comparison. The good news is that they've done an enjoyable job of implementing the heart of the D&D experience, which is the dungeon crawl. Unlike many MMORPGs, support classes like rogues are a requirement for almost all dungeons - there's no uber single class build here - and a well designed group and careful gameplay is a more important than any particular player, item, or spell.

However, the group aspect is double-edged. Outside of the first 5 or 6 early dungeons (even less for certain weak combat classes), solo play simply doesn't work - meaning your entire gaming experience will depend on finding a suitable group or guild. The support for this isn't bad, with ingame voice chat and being able to select exactly what you want in terms of a class and level in group search, but even players within a good guild can have significant waiting times while everyone gets ready. Turbine could and should have come up with a way for solo players to do something to advance. All adventure is instanced, which in this implementation makes sense but does mean like Guild Wars the only 'massive multiplayer' aspect of the MMORPG feel is when you're at the taverns.

D&D purists will probably not like the rule implementations either. Monks, druids, and several races are left out as are any number of skills, but the biggest wildcard is adding 4 class and race 'enhancements' which provide benefits far above even the best feats (like +5 to all skills or +3 in a certain statistic). Given how the game is set up, it doesn't really affect balance much - can't solo anyway - but between that and loot drops that rival the taj mahal (down a bit from beta, but not much), it does annoyingly throw traditional character builds out the window. Why bother making an especially stout fighter with high constitution if you're going to get 25 free hit points from the start?

More significant is longer term viability. Advancement is quick enough so the current level cap (10) was actually reached by any number of people in the 10 day beta. This will shortly be raised to 12 and eventually to 20, but the real issue is the lack of any alternative to the dungeon crawl - PvP, crafting, or anything else - that encourages people to stick around to pay the $14.95 monthly fee.

Don't get me wrong. I'm having more fun playing this now than any game in a long time. The issue is that I can also easily see not playing this in 30 or 60 days from now, which is a real shame. Hence, why this is rated 3.5 stars, and why I hope Turbine thinks carefully about how to improve it.

The expectations for this game were through the roof and a lot of people were dissapointed when it launched. One thing that is important to keep in mind is that it is an MMO and so the reviews that were drawn up the day this game launched may not be so relevant at this point (8 months down the road as of this writing). The game has grown in leaps and bounds in this time.


There is someone in another Amazon review who complained about bugs and lack of customer support. Its true that there were a number of bugs at launch (quest item decay, monsters not spawning correctly all the time, etc). These weren't common but were pervasive enough to be a problem. And at that time some of the customer service policies were not in place to handle these situations. But Turbine has ALWAYS had a good rep for customer service and they made good on that in the case of DDO too. They never were rude or uncommunicative in in-game support. They never had long wait times for support like other popular MMO's have had. And lastly they figured out ways to resolve some of the quest breaking bugs.

Turbine will have released three modules by the end of this month and a number of smaller content updates. All of the major bugs at launch have long since been addressed, major amounts of content have been added, the level cap has been raised, game systems have been added to reward playing through all content (not the the quests that were easiest / had the best loot), game systems for auction houses, pvp, and a mail system have *all* been added since the game launched. In short this game is twice what it was at launch, and all this without an expansion pack.

DDO delivered on its promise of delivering a Massive Multiplayer Online game with the basic game rules of D&D 3.5 (with real time twitchy combat mechanics to boot). If you want to storm an ancient tomb with your buddies and go head to head with iconic D&D monsters (mind flayers, beholders, etc) this game is for you... and with all the additions in the last 9 months now might be the time for you take a look.

There have been few games that could hold my interest. This is one of those.
I have been playing this game for nearly a year and a half. This is why I still play.

People. The people who play this game come from all over and from all walks of life. I have met people from all over the United States, New Zealand, Russia and Canada and a few I thought were from outer space. I have met people in IT, construction workers, military, and a few stay at home parents. The people make it great.

Graphics. The scenery, sound and effects, grouped with realistic avatars have been so detailed as to cause me to stop and stare in wonderment. I Have found myself staring at the elaborate dungeon settings and detailed elevations when I should be paying attention...

Tradition. This game follows closely to the original. It felt comfortable. It was the game that followed the D&D rules and ideals the most, to me. The lack player against player in normal play made it seem more community oriented.

I would recommend this game to anyone who played PnP. For me, it brought back he joy of playing without the pain of scheduling issues, need for hours of planning and deciding who was going to be GM. It is easy to get into, easy to learn the rules and easy to get addicted to.

I have mixed emotions about this game. On one hand, the graphics and sounds are very good. On the other hand, the gameplay is extremely repetitive.

There is a serious lack of content with this game. It has absolutely nothing for you to do unless you are grouping. The fact of the matter is, if you don't get a group of friends to play this game with you.. when you want to play... in the dungeon you want to play in.. this game sux.

Guildwars or later when Never Winter Nights comes out, those are the same type of Instance with some friends dungeon game and you don't have to pay for it each month.

I found the people I grouped with to be extremely obnoxious. Most of them just ran through the dungeons as fast as possible and there was very little DnD play at all. It was just a bunch of speed freaks running around crashing barrels.

There are people trying to defend the game saying all that other stuff the other games have is just time syncs and a waste of space. Bull. This is the cheesiest game I have ever seen.

Beware.. and I mean a BIG beware. The game is only 3 weeks old and people have already reached max level and done every dungeon in the game. People already complaining that its hard to find a group to play with. People complaining that when you can't find a group, there is absolutely nothing else to do. People complaining that there is no world to explore..at all, people complaining about all the dungeons that are closed because they are bugged, people complaining that the chat engine is busted....

Let's talk about that one.. they released this game with broken chat features.. you have no way to know if your friends are online, it's broken. That's so terrible I can't even explain what a waste it is.

I played the game for 2 weeks. I felt so strong about it actually that I came here on my Amazon account and wrote this review. My first one in the years I have been here.

Buyer Beware. Did I mention this is the same company that tricked its customers into buying and expansion for Asheron's Call 2 and then quickly after the sale of the expansion closed down the game?

I wish I had paid more attention to the bad reviews of this game. There were so many fans of the game talking it up, I just didn't want to believe they could all be this misled.

Played on 2.6Ghz with 512Mb RAM Nvidia 6200 video card and broadband connection.

The Good: It's D&D with close attention to the rules. Graphics are good and the user interface is well designed and fairly easy to use. There's a wide selection of quests and most of them are fairly interesting. The mapping is especially good. The penalty for dying is not too harsh.

The Bad: Unlike D&D you only get XP for completing quests or quest objectives. There are no random encounters so you are forced to repeat the same quest multiple times to get enough xp to level up and become strong enough to face newer, more challanging quests. You have to find and join groups to complete quests because most are too difficult to solo and there is no advantage to soloing (no extra treasure or xp). Finding a group can take a long time - together with the long login process I normally I don't get to adventure for at least 10 minutes after starting the program. There is an xp penalty if a member of the group is higher than the quest level. I just tried a level 4 quest where a level 7 rogue joined us for 5 seconds and left (literally). We all suffered a 35% xp penalty :-(

There are also some minor problems with some of the quests. If you don't do exactly what they expect sometimes you have to start again or can't even complete the quest. I expect these issues will be resolved soon.

The Ugly: Lag. There is terrible lag as you enter new areas that can stop you from moving for up to 30 seconds. This is especially frustrating when you're in a dungeon being attacked and you can't respond. I'm sick of dying because of it. At first I thought it was my box but I managed to connect to a server shortly after it was restarted after it crashed (two server crashes in as many weeks while I was playing) and I had almost no lag at all so I'm pretty sure the problem is partially at the server end.

I just cancelled my subscription. I'm wasting too much time waiting for the game.

I saw this in the store and thought it might be fun. I like online games and usually find them relaxing and fun to play with others. This game was not.

I checked forums to find a popular server so I would be able to start on one with a lot of people. I chose Ghallandra server. I logged in my new Wizard and for the first hour I was completely alone. There wasn't another person anywhere. At first I thought there were lol, but it turned out they were Computer people. So.. I trudged through the starter quests alone and eventually left the area on the boat for what I hoped to be the actual fun game. For the start, I will say the graphics are very nice.

I reached The harbor. The next area after the start quest. I saw people running around. This got my hopes up. Until I tried to communicate with them. During the entire time I was there, there was maybe 3 lines of text appear in my general chat. Nobody was talking at all. I found a tavern and asked some questions about where I should start. Nothing. not a singal response. Nada zip nothing. Now come on.. I was a pretty cute wizard. Somebody could have at least said Hi to me.

Finally I figured out how to get the quests started. I ended up doing a couple of the first ones by myself. Again. I died alot, since Wizards are evidently not supposed to travel the dungeons by themselves.

I asked people how to use the grouping menu. No answer. After a bit, I finally figured it out on my own and off I went. I ended up joining a group of 4 that said they were off to do the starting quests in the harbor. Said as in that's what was in the grouping menu they had up. Well, I have no clue what happened. They ran through the dungeons so fast I had no clue what was going on. The game does have a nice voice thing so you can actually talk to people in your group. It was nice that is till the person leading the group started yelling at me that I was holding him up. I was trying to read the description of some loot I got out of a chest and he started actually yelling at me. Well I just followed them till they were done with the dungeon, said I had to go and left.

I went to the forums to see if I could get some help. I messaged that I was upset at the lack of communication in the game and with the fact that there was virtually nothing to do for a new player other than walk around a deserted starter town and then try to group up with people for quests they obviously had done serveral times before.

The responses in the forum made my decision to quit this game pretty quickly for me. A group of more socially repressed, elitist, jerks you will never find. I have never had this sort of response from online games or the related forums before. I was basically told that it was my fault and that I should have researched the game I was buying before I got it. Told that I must have been lying and that there were lots of people on "their" servers. Told that I need to join a guild and that It was my own falt for joing a PuG (pick up group I am guessing that meant) and that maybe this wasn't the game for me and I should just leave.

So I did and I suggest you don't make the same mistake. Evidently this game is made for a small group of socially backward individuals that feel free to insult people wherever and whenever they like..... as long as it's behind the annonymity of the internet I bet though.

Pass on this game. It shouldn't be an online game. I didn't get an online feel from it. It seemed very dead actually.

Sorry to be so negative, but I dislike wasting 50 bucks and then being insulted for wasting my time trying to figure it out.

I probably was the only actual female playing the game. lol

This game puts itself in a risky position. I think a lot of people hate it simply because it doesn't meet their expectations. First of all, the game is not properly an MMORPG. Second of all, there is next to no single-player content here. Which is admittedly a pretty weird combination.

I bought the game well over a year after release, so I'm giving it a pass as far as not being latest-and-greatest in the graphics and technology dept. I don't think that's relevant anyway. I picked up Lord of the Rings Online for the retail price at around the same time, and thought it was lovely to look at, but cancelled my subscription after 2 days of play: WoW-clone, yawner.

And that's the most important caveat - I don't personally like MMO's. They're treadmills. You can't really play them "well" or "poorly" because the difficulty balancing is so pervasive and the penalties for failure are so neglible. They're more like video-toys than video-games.

D&DO is different. It's more like playing the first Neverwinter Nights game in little bite-sized chunks. Compared with any single-player RPG, the quests are simple, of course, but they are *real* quests, with actual dungeon designs, puzzles, traps, and even a voice-over narration reminiscent of a pen-and-paper DM. (There's also an action element to gameplay which you can use to your advantage, or ignore at a slight penalty if that's your preference.) You need certain character types to play certain roles, so you really have to put some thought into engineering your characters and grouping with other characters that complement them.

Which brings me to the only potential problems: 1) The game is hard. HARD. You can not play it alone in any real measure unless you're willing to grind away at a snail's pace. In a party of 2 well-considered characters it's still very difficult just scraping through content that's lower than your intended level. 2) The game is aimed at total D&D dorks, and much of the rule set isn't documented anywhere in the game itself. This is a pet-peeve of mine with CRPGs, and has been since the first Everquest - which assumed you'd pour over websites and forums just to learn how to play the game. A RETAIL GAME SHOULD BE SELF-DOCUMENTING. I know enough about D&D to kind of fake my way through it, but if you're new to this it will be a struggle.

For me personally, this game is a perfect match - it lets me play Neverwinter Nights some more, and it makes my wife happy, since she wanted me to go back to playing WoW with her. Which was just out of the question... This we both like. If you've got a friend/ friends who can consistently join you, this is some of the best online adventuring available IMO. (And I've tried just about all of the properly massively-multiplayer stuff: EQ, EQ2, AC, AC2, DAoC, WoW, LOTR blah blah blah blah blah. Can't tell them apart in retrospect.)

Ok here's the context. Never played MMOG because I couldn't bring myself to be one of those guys who just goes through the motions of hacking my way to the next level because that's the thing to do. I spent a couple of year back in late eighties playing PNP D&D and had fond memories. It's because of this fondness that I resisted the Everquests and such. Role playing and team play was and still is the catch for me.

Enter DDO. The promise was that the game (as much as possible) would deliver on the PNP experience. So with considerable trepidation, I gritted my teeth bought the game and hoped for the best. Several weeks latter, I'm very pleased to report that I'm enjoying the experience very much. Here's the skinny - good and bad. Character creation is cool as there is lots of customizable features - my one grip...enable sizing and weighting of the characters. This would allow a whole lot more customization. Having every male human the exact same size is a little unnerving if you ask me and this can't be a huge thing to do. Maybe add this feature when the Monk and Druid classes are added in. After creating your character you then do the tutorial which is decent, but it helps if you've played D&D before. Tutorials out of the way you then hit the real deal.

Re: game play, here are the high and low lights:
* the city of Stormreach is cool enough. Graphics are great and sections of the city are large enough. Could use a few more NPC's but that's a minor gripe.
* The questing experience - as other reviewers have stated, your enjoyment of this aspect all depends on who you link up with. Generally, at a minimum you need four players to do a quest. Here's a major gripe - if even one of these players is a guns a blazing, could care less about the exploration-side of the game kinda guy, you're in trouble. They run ahead, spring the traps and the monsters, generally die and in the process generally ruin any immersion you and your party had going. Fortunately, there seems to be a good community of players who "get" what this game is about - teaming up and methodically, strategically doing a dungeon. Get this kind of group and the game experience is top notch. Get a cowboy who's in for himself and it ain't that fun. My solution has been to kick them out of the party if they don't heed my warnings. But you can only do this if you're the party leader - more on that latter. If I had to guess, for every 8 good gamers on the server there's one not so good, so odds aren't that bad that you'll get a poor experience all too frequently. To remedy this, it would be interesting if the designers could incorporate a rating system in which your fellow players could rank your play - kinda like ebay. That way a person building a party would be able to see who the bad players are - it would also help to get the bad player to play better.
* Putting together a group - depending on which quest(s) and what kind of group you like to put together, this can take some time. While in many instances, I've got a team together in 15 minutes, I've been there for up to an hour scouring the server to find players to join my party. This aspect of the game can certainly be improved.
* More questing feedback - You know what I like? When you put together a good team, all is going well and you open a door and then your smoked. I like the fact that you just can't cake walk most quests and that you need to work together to win. This has happened on several occasions, and while it is frustrating at the time, it's also fun. My team and I being challenged to play well together. When it's all said and done and we go back and do it right, I feel a sense of accomplishment.
* More questing feedback - You know what I don't like? Targeting with spells and ranged weapons is a pain. When you start the game it tells you can dodge oncoming blows; the function is there, but I've never seen anyone use this tactic. There's too many shrines - in some case this makes it too easy; it also puts way too much mana into the game as spell casters never seem to run out.
* Alignment - Is not a factor what so ever. Want to be a bad guy? Not a chance. It should be mandatory for game designers to play both Knights of the Old Republic to see how alignment can be done right.

So in a nutshell, I'd recommend this game to people who want to work in a team and complete dungeons in a well-paced (but not slow) fashion. If your willing to put the work into searching the servers to put together a good team, then the experience of playing this game can exciting and rewarding. A final thing - thus far the updates and patches have been coming frequently, so the game appears to well supported.

DDO is currently in the DDO Unlimited state. Meaning, it's Free-To-Play. There is the option to buy Store points to spend on items. This has changed the nature of the game.
The game features are all free. However, if you want to enhance your experience you can purchase game items. This includes some content, classes and races (Drow, Warforged and Monk for example).

I played in 2007 and left the game only to return and I am hooked on this game. I have not played a MMO as good as this one since EQ1 and I have played many of them.

Here are somethings that have changed.

Starting Area - Korthos island is the new starting area. It is better then any tutorial I have played for beginners in a game. It has a great story line, eases people into the game and provides a better understanding of your character class. For people who are new to DnD, upon character creation you have more suggestions about how to best customize your character. All this makes the new player expereince great and immersive.

Another great addition are Hirelings. You can use in-game coins (gold) to purchase temporary hirelings to accompany you on quests. For most people, this means the inclusion of a cleric to heal you while you run around on Solo or Normal mode on quests. These hirelings are helpful even in group situations. The AI is really good and it add great depth to the game. More so, it makes it fun and content that was not solo able, now is. The DDO devs have hinted that the Hireling system will only expand and grow in the future.

Back to the DDO Store. You can purchase items from the store even while on a quest. You use points that you can earn, purchase for real cash or gain by being a full subscriber. You can purchase items, additional hirelings, XP boosts, items that allow you to resurrect during a quest, etc...Bottom line is that you do not have to pay a monthly subscription to play. What else could you ask for? This makes this game ideal. You can now download the client for free. If you do purchase the client, you do get some free-play time as a VIP - meaning all the game content and classes are open to you and you do not need to purchase them from the store.

The player base community is the most mature and helpful I have ever seen. Its almost uncanny. If you have a question or need help, ask in game or on the DDO forums. People are polite and more then happy to share what they know. This is a huge plus for a game that can be as complicated as this one.

Combat is fun!! This is not a click-a-skill-wait for timer and swing - rinse and repeat MMO. You can control your character, take swings and unless you cast spells, your combat ability is based on your class, weapons and how you play. It's a huge, refreshing departure from other games that still don't get it.


Bottom line is this game has come a long way in the past 3 years and is worth being checked out. I am a touch critic on many of these games and find most of the boring within 2 weeks. I am happily sucked into this title.

Dungeons and Dragons Online promised to bring the pen and paper version of the long-lived role playing game into the digital world. On all counts, it has failed its fans and its namesake.

Turbine was granted the unprecendented luxury of being able to develop a "lost continent" region of the Eberron campaign setting. It was really a golden opportunity to create a massive multiplayer game that would truly have broken the mold. However, Turbine instead offers up what is best termed a "sterile" (and infantile) version of both the D&D game system and the Eberron game setting. In fact, there is next to nothing about it that you can interact with from the setting outside of a single race -- the robotic looking Warforged.

Stormreach itself, the sole city on the lost contient, is supposed to have been the outpost and colony like city perched on the tip of the "New World", a 1,000 mile sea journey away from the "Old World", and sporting a vast and unexplored landscape available for players to forge their own way. Not only that, but the city itself was originally a pirate outpost, now turned trade center for valuable products eeked out of the nearby jungles, to be sent back to Khorvaire (the Old World).

As a player in D&D Online, however, you wouldn't have the foggiest idea that this Stormreach -- Turbine's vision of Stormreach -- actually had anything to do with the one mentioned above, from the campaign setting.

It's literally set up as a clean, even pristine city that strikes one as extremely well developed, sterile, underpopulated and without any sort of intrigue as the powers that be struggle to gain footholds in the only outpost on the whole of the continent. In fact, you have absolutely no idea that vast jungles are at the city edge, creeping their way into the players gaming lives with threat and mystery.

Turbine's presentation of Stormreach is so totally contrary to the campaign setting, and so vanilla and sterile even beyond, that it fails to draw interest or awe at any point. At it's very best, it's a quirky and oddly colored city that lacks any motivation toward immersive game play. It's a place where players drink "Yummy Milk" in the taverns (You think I'm kidding?!) in between their zerg fests to rush to the end of a dungeon that almost everyone has memorized and could play through blindfolded.

And, as mentioned, nothing from the campaign setting other than Warforged are included even aside. There are no spells, no feats, no skills, no races, no classes ... nothing whatsoever that is not related to Warforged to find as part of the players involvement in the game.

Even what you find for the Warforged race is slim and almost trivial. It leaves the impression that Turbine believed Warforged were what constituted the campaign setting of Eberron, and that the inclusion or additon of anything beyond wasn't necessary.

For the world of Eberron itself, it is summed up with a few important and central themes; Exploration, the all-present influence of Magic on society and the world, and Dynamic High Adventure.

Virutally none of these themes have been given a chance in DDO. There is no exploration, not even in the brief amount of dungeon adventures (above or below ground). Nothing is dynamic about the adventures -- they are all utterly static in virtually every sense you can think of.

The content is limited and wholly linear. There is only, ever, a single way to finish a dungeon; they are always filled with the same monsters, and the same puzzles, and the same traps, always in the exact same locations; there is very little or no plot or "module" like game play involved, just pure static "zerg" like dungeon crawling.

The D&D rules have been implemented in an extremely slim and haphazard manner. Turbine "House" rules are the order of the day. There was little to no attempt to stay close or true to the original game system. For example, all characters, at level one, receive an automatic +20 hit point increase. The concept of "flat-footed" has been eliminated, and rules for turning undead have been notably modified. A multitude of other game mechanics and concepts, they just don't exist, yanked or excluded from the game because, well I don't know really. Certainly someone will defend it as necessary, but I don't see why -- surely not on the scale or in the fashion Turbine has gone about things.

Many spells and feats do not work all the time (or at all) on some creatures, because the balance has been so out of wack due to an insistence on "House" rules, that they had to make "boss" encounters difficult by crippling players and buffing creatures in innane ways.

There is virtually no in-game or out-game information on what spells, feats, skills or even many items actually do. How much damage does a magic missile in DDO cause? Dunno. They don't want you to know. Referring to your D&D Sourcebooks (the PHB, the DMG, the Eberron Campaign setting) will give you little confidence that Turbine has implemented them in a similar fashion -- chances are they have not. Pleas for Turbine to include this information has fallen on deaf ears (and no reply from the staff there will touch the subject, among other things).

Currently there are a mere 130 dungeons to adventure in across all levels of play -- from 1st to 10th level. Many are brief, very imbalanced and not worthwhile to bother with. Some are simply broken and unable to be completed (they have removed at least 3 of the major adventures to fix them so far). Players are expected to run through dungeons roughly 6 to 9 times (3 on normal, 3 on hard, 3 on elite). Huge content imbalances appear across the varied difficulty levels, including combat imbalances, experience and treasure rewards.

Massive parts of the D&D game system have been left out entirely, or modified nearly beyond recognition. Two core classes didn't even make it into release; the druid and the monk.

Free content updates are promised, but their first will not even include the much hyped level cap increase (purportedly they would be raising the level cap by 1 or 2 levels every month or so). A *whopping* 15 dungeons will be included in the first content update for April. Keep in mind, we were told all through beta that they had many, many dungeons that were near completion that would be released within the first month of release. Do the math -- 15 dungeons, 10 levels of play, 1.5 new dungeons per level that you will still have to run, again and again, with the same exact content.

Key things missing from the game that should have been included on release:

Druids and Monks
Half-orcs, half-elves, gnomes
Eberron's Changlings, Kalashtar, and Shifters (playable races)
Eberrons's KEY character class -- the Artificer
Dragonmarks
Cleric Domains
Wizard specialization
Familiars and Druid/Ranger animal companions
Literally dozens and dozens of core D&D feats
Brew Potions
Scribe Scrolls
Craft Rods, Wands, Rings, etc.
The intergral Artificier related crafting and skills
Too many spells, Eberron and standard, to even think of naming
Evil alignments
Dynamic content of any sort
Mounts
Any sort of overland adventure/exploration areas
Anything from Eberron for players beyond Warforged
Trade systems, chat channels or auctions of even a minimalist sort
Spears and Polearms of any kind
A decent User Interface
A decent inventory system
A decent encumbrance system
More than 5 basic dungeon tilesets (if there are more, you'd be hardpressed to think such a thing)
Actual plots with any meaning
...
...
...

I could go on and on about what a dismal failure this game is, but if you don't have the point by now, nothing will probably convince you. It's simply not worth the money.

Already there are some complaints on the forums that server populations are dropping and are scant, so grouping on some servers is growing difficult. Very bad news for a game with ZERO solo content (yeah, yeah, you can solo if you don't mind blowing a ton of cash and equipment in the process ... but its completely counter-productive). At a minimum, a server merge may be called for down the line as a result.

In the end, the game will end up appealing only to a very small niche of players dedicated, not to PnP D&D or Eberron, but specifically to DDO itself.

DDO does not have a very bright future ahead of it. My urgent advice is to stay far, very far, away from this game.