Author Topic: Are any of us playing Dungeons & Dragons Online?  (Read 6257 times)

JRVthatsME

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Are any of us playing Dungeons & Dragons Online?
« on: November 13, 2013, 08:07:13 PM »
I've started taking another look at it recently since I wanted to get back into fantasy gaming and also I want to try and get my dad playing it since he's not well and doesn't go out much and we used to play a persistent world on Neverwinter Nights for years. We tend to like RP gaming and I was thinking it would be great if there were some CoH people who like RP playing DDO we could meet up with in game and maybe join an RP guild, or create one.

eabrace

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Re: Are any of us playing Dungeons & Dragons Online?
« Reply #1 on: November 13, 2013, 08:20:48 PM »
There are at least a few people around that are playing DDO.  I'm playing, but I'm not a RPer and I only play on Saturday nights with some friends I initially met through CoH.  I know there are others who play, though.
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eabrace

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Re: Are any of us playing Dungeons & Dragons Online?
« Reply #2 on: December 20, 2016, 12:15:35 AM »


Interesting things are afoot over at DDO and LOTRO.  The current teams for each game are spinning off to form their own studio and taking the games with them along with new licensing agreements to continue their development with a new publisher.

In other words, they've managed to reach the agreement with Turbine that Paragon Studios could not with NCsoft.

https://www.ddo.com/en/news/standing-stone-games-%E2%80%93-message-rob-ciccolini

https://www.ddo.com/en/news/standing-stone-games-transition-faq

I honestly thought this was going in a much different direction when they announced that Turbine was going to be focusing on mobile app games a while back.  This seems a rather pleasant surprise by comparison.  It should give the developers a little more freedom and room for growth moving forward.
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Tahquitz

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Re: Are any of us playing Dungeons & Dragons Online?
« Reply #3 on: December 20, 2016, 01:17:52 AM »
It's worthwhile necromancy... I've played DDO off and on over the years, but stopped altogether after Neverwinter came out.  Might have to dust off my monk and get back into it. :D
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Thunder Glove

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Re: Are any of us playing Dungeons & Dragons Online?
« Reply #4 on: December 21, 2016, 04:20:44 PM »
I played it for a while, but then found myself stuck on one of the early-game quests, and got bored.

Castegyre

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Re: Are any of us playing Dungeons & Dragons Online?
« Reply #5 on: December 21, 2016, 05:28:18 PM »
DayBreak Games is involved. What could possibly go wrong?

eabrace

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Re: Are any of us playing Dungeons & Dragons Online?
« Reply #6 on: December 22, 2016, 12:17:16 AM »
DayBreak Games is involved. What could possibly go wrong?
I don't think I've ever even heard of them before.  What else have they been involved with (he said, realizing he probably could have just Googled that in less time than it took to write this.)
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Castegyre

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Re: Are any of us playing Dungeons & Dragons Online?
« Reply #7 on: December 22, 2016, 12:56:25 AM »
Sony sold SOE to an investment firm called Columbus Nova. Columbus Nova renamed SOE to DayBreak Games. The first thing they did was make a statement claiming how everything would be business as normal and how this was the best thing ever for the titles since they'd likely be able to invest more into them in the future. Literally within days they'd fired about half of the company. They kept big boss, Smedly, who many very much disliked, so he could restructure the business. With his track record it didn't take long for Smedly to make an opening to get himself fired as well. Smedly's successor left a while ago and now there is a guy running things from CN who apparently has no experience running a gaming company, but apparently has a lot of experience tearing companies apart.

They lied about the state of Next, actively worked to alienate the fans, and cancelled it several months later.

Meanwhile they also lied about the state of Landmark, kept it limping along, and eventually launched it to avoid paying back the early backers. At this point the game is a broken ghost town. Don't believe the pretty pictures, you can't build most of that stuff any more.

EverQuest and EverQuest 2 have been in a state of steady decline since the take over with an increasingly worsening series of half-hearted updates and expansions that seem to have impressed no one leaving bugs and incomplete content in their wake.

The company does seem to care about half of H1Z1, DCUO, and sort of PS2, though, so maybe it's not all bad?

Also, their method of interacting with the customers has either become non-existant or sometimes even adversarial. It's not uncommon for them to outright lie these days and they don't even seem to care when they get caught. They might even punish those who point it out.

As someone who has been following and playing almost all of these games since EQ was in beta, I never had the highest opinion of SOE to begin with. DBG, however, has managed to actually go lower than my worst expectations. Some people will say that DBG is just SOE with a different name, but that is simply not true. DBG is a mask CN wears to do business through. Almost nothing of SOE actually still remains. For the first time in years I'm not supporting or playing any of their titles and haven't been for many months. Right now I view it as a slow motion train wreck I can't help but watch in horror while waiting for it to end.

Noyjitat

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Re: Are any of us playing Dungeons & Dragons Online?
« Reply #8 on: December 22, 2016, 07:04:29 AM »
SoE was kind enough to keep it's games running even when most of them were close to death. They even let fly lab studios (think that was the name) have complete owner ship of pirates of the burning sea instead of closing the game down. Infact the only games I can think of that soe ever shut down were due to licenses- lucas arts wouldn't allow another mmo to compete with swtor, and warner brothers said no to renewing The Matrix Online.

Planetside 1 was recently shutdown in July which I never really expected and im sad to see it go. It's a way better game than that shit they call planetside 2 which is nothing more than a mmo style battlefield - call of duty rip off in terms of combat / class. Most of the unique elements that made planetside 1 great simply do not exist in 2, 2 just has one element which was unique to planetside 1 with ps1 being the first mmofps.

I really am sad with all the recent mmos from the 2003  - 2004 time line suddenly shutting down all at once. Because nothing new has come close to replacing any of them.

themichigami

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Re: Are any of us playing Dungeons & Dragons Online?
« Reply #9 on: July 31, 2017, 07:40:15 PM »
DDO is still alive and functioning at least, I play on rare occasions with some people,  we have a tiny guild made of local friends that meet up once in a rare while when schedules permit between jobs, kids, and actual in-person tabletops a couple of them are running right now.

the game's still okay, turns into grindy repetitive fun time if you're a low level in some places, and of course has the "give us real money for extra quests, inventory space, and all sorts of cool stuff" part tacked on, but I've played worse.

Castegyre

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Re: Are any of us playing Dungeons & Dragons Online?
« Reply #10 on: July 31, 2017, 07:53:08 PM »
I did try DDO again about 2 months ago. The experience was very much like I remembered it, which was not bad except for the odd connectivity problems. I have no idea why after all of these years playing on different machines and through different providers that game doesn't seem to like me staying logged in. Sadly, the game was never good enough in my opinion for me to tolerate the headache.

eabrace

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Re: Are any of us playing Dungeons & Dragons Online?
« Reply #11 on: July 31, 2017, 09:21:54 PM »
Recently got my first character ever to the level cap.  Then I spent a few weeks playing around with leveling epic destinies.  Got sidetracked for a bit by the free VIP weekend in ESO and stuck with that for a few weeks.  Then they had character slots on sale in the DDO store, and I've been waiting for that so that I could pick up a new slot and create a Dragonborn character.  Spent the last week or so playing with my new Dragonborn Favored Soul.  Holy snot, that breath weapon is a game changer...

The experience was very much like I remembered it, which was not bad except for the odd connectivity problems.

I have those once in a while.  Maybe not as bad as what you're describing, though.

Sometimes when I first fire up the game, it'll take forever and a day to load my character, and then it'll come up with a broken connection to the server that can only really be fixed by quitting out of the game and starting over.  Then it works fine.

Of course, for a long time now, there's been some sort of cumulative (feels like a memory leak) issue that really becomes apparent if you cycle through a few of your characters (like if you're dropping things in the shared bank.)

And last night I hit a pocket of latency in The Black Loch quest.

But probably 95% of the time the game plays without any noticeable issues for me.
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Xev

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Re: Are any of us playing Dungeons & Dragons Online?
« Reply #12 on: August 01, 2017, 12:14:37 AM »
That's hard news that SOE was sold. I never have the urge to play the toon I put more hours into than any, ever, that's sits in EverQuest. But it always felt good knowing he and SOE were still there. Lots of memories. In EQ. Lots of really good times, good friends.

Now that I think about it I never got mail on any of this. My mail's not changed since I played. I bet I can't even access my EQ account anymore.

You really have to 'check up' on your gaming accounts once in awhile. In my experience the ones you don't use tend to get hacked.. or are in some other way harder to access. Like, when another company takes over. I used to do this yearly (that's how I accidently got back into gaming and CoH) but haven't since CoH went down which was about the same time I got on data limited Internet.

Anyway. Poo.
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Castegyre

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Re: Are any of us playing Dungeons & Dragons Online?
« Reply #13 on: August 01, 2017, 10:41:30 AM »

I have those once in a while.  Maybe not as bad as what you're describing, though.

Sometimes when I first fire up the game, it'll take forever and a day to load my character, and then it'll come up with a broken connection to the server that can only really be fixed by quitting out of the game and starting over.  Then it works fine.

Of course, for a long time now, there's been some sort of cumulative (feels like a memory leak) issue that really becomes apparent if you cycle through a few of your characters (like if you're dropping things in the shared bank.)

And last night I hit a pocket of latency in The Black Loch quest.

But probably 95% of the time the game plays without any noticeable issues for me.

I would get disconnects zoning or logging a lot. In the past I also would often get disconnects that were oddly related to video issues. I can't find it now, but according to some posts I read I apparently I had a series of nvidia card the game didn't like. The last time I played it seemed like I was getting disconnected virtually every time I zoned, and that's just annoying enough to be too annoying.

themichigami

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Re: Are any of us playing Dungeons & Dragons Online?
« Reply #14 on: August 01, 2017, 03:00:01 PM »
my connection problems have all been rare and usually when i go from area to area, so i figure its some sort of loading lag on their end, (or it really hates 64 bit windows like everything else seems to.)  since i don't play that often i've just gotten used to restarting and being mocked by my friends for a bit until it happens to one of them, and the cycle continues.  it just seems to be a thing for the game anymore and no one knows for sure what's causing it or why some people are harder hit with problems than others.


and on "checking up" on your gaming accounts, that's how i lost a screenname i had for over a decade in a game, i was out for two weeks due to convention prep and attendance, just long enough to count as an inactive player in their system when a name release from dead and inactive accounts was made and someone stole my name.  i came back and was more than a little upset, but thankfully could register a knockoff of my own name with one letter difference.  it's not the same, but someday i will find this person and invite them over to the pvp area for a little chat about the rudeness of taking an ACTIVE senior player's name.

cmgangrel

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Re: Are any of us playing Dungeons & Dragons Online?
« Reply #15 on: August 01, 2017, 03:03:54 PM »
my connection problems have all been rare and usually when i go from area to area, so i figure its some sort of loading lag on their end, (or it really hates 64 bit windows like everything else seems to.)  since i don't play that often i've just gotten used to restarting and being mocked by my friends for a bit until it happens to one of them, and the cycle continues.  it just seems to be a thing for the game anymore and no one knows for sure what's causing it or why some people are harder hit with problems than others.


and on "checking up" on your gaming accounts, that's how i lost a screenname i had for over a decade in a game, i was out for two weeks due to convention prep and attendance, just long enough to count as an inactive player in their system when a name release from dead and inactive accounts was made and someone stole my name.  i came back and was more than a little upset, but thankfully could register a knockoff of my own name with one letter difference.  it's not the same, but someday i will find this person and invite them over to the pvp area for a little chat about the rudeness of taking an ACTIVE senior player's name.

Be a real shame if that person had only just started playing the game...

Thunder Glove

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Re: Are any of us playing Dungeons & Dragons Online?
« Reply #16 on: August 01, 2017, 09:04:10 PM »
I was about to say I went back to it recently, but then I realized that was Lord of the Rings Online, not DDO.  The two games feel so similar to me that I forget which is which.

themichigami

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Re: Are any of us playing Dungeons & Dragons Online?
« Reply #17 on: August 02, 2017, 12:37:49 AM »
I was about to say I went back to it recently, but then I realized that was Lord of the Rings Online, not DDO.  The two games feel so similar to me that I forget which is which.

well they're both Turbine games and run on pretty much the same engine, with essentially the same playstyle and game structure and mechanics and, well, everything but the lore.  from what i've seen i think they've recycled some of the textures between them too, so it's not really that hard to get them mixed up.  ;D

Nyx Nought Nothing

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Re: Are any of us playing Dungeons & Dragons Online?
« Reply #18 on: August 02, 2017, 03:42:23 AM »
and on "checking up" on your gaming accounts, that's how i lost a screenname i had for over a decade in a game, i was out for two weeks due to convention prep and attendance, just long enough to count as an inactive player in their system when a name release from dead and inactive accounts was made and someone stole my name.  i came back and was more than a little upset, but thankfully could register a knockoff of my own name with one letter difference.  it's not the same, but someday i will find this person and invite them over to the pvp area for a little chat about the rudeness of taking an ACTIVE senior player's name.
Does the game have a pop-up that goes "Warning! You are about to take an active player's name! Are you sure you want to proceed? Y/N" when someone goes to register a name that's already in use? Setting aside for the moment that it's slightly insane that the game allows people to steal names from other active players in the first place.


Say, on that note, why don't you just steal it back?
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