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I had this ordered from EBgames back in December...  just because.  Today I get a shipping conformation for Lord of the Rings:  Battle for Middle Earth, which I have no interest in.  I check my order on EB's website and it does say that I've ordered the EA thingy and not the Turbine thingy.  I KNOW this is wrong, because I've checked the order several times (they pushed the release to May, I think) and if I had ordered the EA game in December, it would have already been shipped, no?   In the mean time, Turbine's MMO has disappeared from eht EB site.  Did they dump it?

I'm so confused.   :?

Sounds like bait and switch, you should sue.  A nice law suit would probably keep you entertained better than some funky MMO anyway.

What's she going to sue for $50 and a free copy of Robotech? Get your local District Managers number, it's Maryland right? It should be Bruce Horowitz, I can give you his cell phone number if you like. You can rip him a new asshole if you want. He deserves it.

I just checked and they haven't charged me anything for it.  It's a free game I don't want and will never play.  Well, at least no charge yet, just a shipping confirmation.  I usually get charged at the same time or, sometimes, a bit before.  I still wonder if Lord of the Rings Online is still being developed.

Oh, and we're not moving to Maryland until July.  Do try and keep up!

The lack of buzz for this game is astounding -- Turbine may have even a bigger snoozer than DDO on their hands if they don't do something to generate more interest in this game pronto. They are also clearly not going to meet that May release date given that the game hasn't even gone into wide-scale Beta testing yet.

From what I've read about this game it sounds like they have hamstrung themselves so badly by sticking to the IP that it will be dead on arrival.  No mages, no PVP, can't play high elves and you can't even play evil races.

No one will be happy, people who only want to play it for the Lord of the Rings connection will be mad because you can't be a member of the fellowship, will have no impact on the story and can't play high elves.  People who just want to play a game will feel constricted by all the stuff they can't do so that the game will "stay true" to Tolkien's world.  Not to mention the lack of crafting, mounts and player housing at launch either.  Bleh.

I might not even buy this and I tend to buy all new mainstream MMOs just to try them, that terrible DDO game they just put out is still fresh in my memory too.  Or maybe they will learn from DDO's impending failure and delay release a year so that they can put in core features that people expect a game to ship with from the start nowadays.

I have never understood the allure of player housing. It doesn't really serve much of a purpose.

I understand player housing and it's on my list of "must haves" for MMOGs. The fact WoW didn't have it really hurt the quality of the world, imo.

Sure, why not?  Lot's of people make law suits a hobby, they're a fun if not very economical form of entertainment.

You get triple damages if you manage to work Jack Nicholsons soliloquy from A Few Good Men into your arguments.  Lights flash and horns blow, it's pretty cool.

Release date is 2007, Turbine have not stated a month.  I'm guessing they are aiming for a pre christmas release as with DDO, and like DDO it may be delayed a few months.

I was going by the EBgames release date from before the game totally disappeared from the site... but I think you know that, Arthur, my old son.

Sorry I should have quoted Trippy.  I don't have anything to add about EBgames removing it from their site, no clue what's going on there.

I called EB and sorted it out.  Well... being the wrong game and all.  They are linking the error to having just redone their website, including "My Account" and "My Orders."  The woman I spoke to suspects that Lord of the Rings Online has been cancelled and when it was removed from the site, there was a database error.  Actually, I led her in that direction.  I have awesome telephone persuasion skills.  She actually was completely confused by it all so I helped her make up the bits that didn't fit.  I bet I started in internet rumour, too!  (http://smiley.onegreatguy.net/jiggy.gif)

Whoa! Let's not gloss over this free copy of Robotech thing! Can we do that?! I'll take Season 2.

I meant this (http://www.mobygames.com/game/robotech-battlecry).

Mounts... eh.  Give me runspeed like in AC1, and I care not for mounts.  Make travel meaningful, and mounts aren't that important.  Player housing?  I want a game that puts player housing on the landscape, and not shunted off into a side zone either like in DAoC.  Crafting?  I've never seen the appeal, but I don't get why crafters expect every game to have crafting - would it be reasonable to expect every game to have unlimited PvP?

Crafting is by no means a 'standard feature' that a MMO is incomplete without.

Since I saw Calandryll logged in to this forum earlier and he didn't deny it, I will take that as confirmation of my internet rumour.   Sound as stone.  Without a doubt.  Solid proof.  Kind of.

I'm guessing it sucks then? I'm only interested because I've been looking at picking it up [cheap] for my XBox

I do like by mech games but I'm afraid Steel Battalion raised the bar higher than most mech games (including the bloody sequal) can reach!

OMG, they cancelled MEO!?  I've got to tell all my friends!

(Okie, I'm not quite THAT gullable...)

Yes.  This observation strikes me every time I log in  8-)

If my paladin had a house to store all of his PvP won trophies from the hordefolk, I might still be playing the game,

What's the appeal of housing, exactly?  Is it to show the world, "Look what I did!"?

I always thought that the cool part of housing was how it integrated into the world - that you can walk out your front door and realize you're in Interesting Location X, which is now your character's 'home', and thus that housing was only about as spiffy as the area that surrounded it - infinitely less so if the housing was instanced, so you step out your front door and you're standing with 50 other people who all own the same 'house'.

Reading the posts on this thread, it sounds like housing means some very divergent things to different people.

I've just always assumed people mostly use them for sex.  (not me, other people)

I don't think it's slavishly sticking to the IP so much as a convenient way to sell huge cutting back of the project to their pipeweedtard fanbase.  Before the big overhaul there was to be PVP and the forums weren't full of Tolkien scholars quoting why that'd be a horrible idea.  But there was to be loads of crafting, player housing and so forth too.

It's the book IP. The book was well known, but it's the movies that brought it to the masses. Those movies are old now though, in the eyes of the LCD, so unless Peter Jackson releases The Hobbit next year, there's not much in the way of IP cache Turbine can draw upon to prop up interest for the title. This has been my concern for it all along. LoTR is big and all for fantasy roleplay gamers, but it's all about the story, the story one won't be a part of in the game. And this genre has enough stock fantasy RPG sims already.

As to housing? Take it or leave it, though I don't believe for a second schild would still be in WoW if he had a place for his trophies  :mrgreen:

Not unless they give him free gametime.

I don't get it.

The currently scheduled release year is 2006 as stated on their forums:

http://forums.lotro.turbine.com/announcement.php?f=25&announcementid=7

Player housing has no appeal to me personally as well unless it has an utilitarian purpose like item storage (e.g. FF XI and Neocron) but then I'm an anti-social person so I don't feel the need to lure invite people over to my pimp pad tastefully decorated dwelling ("Look I preordered *and* bought the Collector's Edition!" "Ooohh!" "Aaahhh!") for some cybering stimulating conversation. On the other hand I do understand that it does appeals to *a lot* of people, and in fact there are millions of people around world that are paying money just to play this sort of housing "mini game".

As for "instanced" vs. "non-instanced" housing I understand the appeal of having your house actually be a part of the game world from an immersiveness standpoint but like other "virtual world" ideas UO showed just how badly things can turn out when players are given that sort of freedom. The urban blight in cities caused by playing housing in UO was just silly where walking through town required navigating through a maze of structures and vendors. Then of course the urban blight spread into the wilderness turning it into the suburbs -- and like suburbs in real life the wildlife disappeared since they were conveniently being captured inside player housing (oops). On top of all that seemingly every week or so a new housing exploit would become public, and who knows how many exploits were never publicized. In 3D games there are additional graphic issues with allowing players to place structures willy-nilly since you can overload an area with too many polygons and so it's very understandable that "instanced" player housing is the norm now.

I'm going to lie down and rest, I meant 2006.

It keeps the roleplayers from going fucking batshit loony.  If WoW had housing, I might...  Well no, I wouldn't still be playing.  But I might not have had to put up with Drizzt Ghey'elph shrieking "GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!" everytime I wandered into some unused building in Stormwind.  And I might not have been so afraid to walk upstairs at the inn.

How many shitty games can Turbine vomit out before people stop buying their games?

The answer would probably be "quite a few", considering the SOE example.

That said, taking your opinion as indicative of the norm is what makes this line of thinking fall apart.  AC1 was on balance a success, as is DDO.  Their "generally agreed to be shitty" game count currently stands at a big fat 'one'.

In a market glutted with MMOs, Turbine has released 3.  Two of them offered some of the most fun and unique gameplay on the market (IMHO) and were commercially successful.  One of them flopped.

How does that spell out "ZOMG Turbine should be doomed" in your mind?

Prove DDO has been commercially successful.

I remember seeing a number quoted on these forums as something like 60,000 subscriptions.  For a niche game that does its niche well, that strikes me as quite good.

By commercially successful, I don't mean "OMG blockbuster", or even hitting their own optimistic internal projections - I just mean that the game is operating at a profit rather than at a loss (i.e. AC2, Shadowbane), and can thus be sustained pretty much indefinitely for those who enjoy it (a la AC1).

10x 60,000 is 600,000, let's say DDO has 600,000 subscriptions, how much did it cost to make DDO? 

My point was, you don't know it's commercially successful.

He was actually claiming 60k subs, which would be a complete failure in most peoples opinions.

Hmm.  In that case, I'll bow out - you're right on that point, I don't know it's commercially successful.  However, I still think my central premise that Turbine doesn't have an unambiguously bad track record (and that one could in fact argue their track record is quote good) still stands.

Also, to respond to Threash, 60k subs for a niche game?  That's quite good, I'd think.  Asheron's Call has 50,000 and it's still going strong - nobody credible is predicting its shutdown any time in the next few years.

While the games may have cost them a pretty penny to initially make, I find it hard to believe that at 60k subs they're not operating at a profit month by month - and that's what counts to their players, as opposed to their venture capitalists, right?  The original question was "Why do people keep playing Turbine's games", not "Why do VC's keep financing them", right?

I think Turbine looks a lot better from a player's perspective than from an investor's.

Credible could be argued but check this out (http://www.g4tv.com/mediaplayer/index.aspx?video_key=10194), well worth a watch.

Their track record prior to DDO was one modest success and one failure. That's hardly what I would classify as "quite good".

I doubt Turbine's pitch to WotC was that they were going to make DDO a niche game.

Why are we going prior to DDO?  DDO has launched, and the people I know playing it seem to be having quite a lot of fun.  Even the Corpnews crowd is unusually warm to it.


Oh, I'll totally grant you that.  But again, how does that matter from a player's point of view?  See my previous statement about how Turbine looks very different from a player's perspective than from an investor's.

Cause you were the one who brought up their track record? Track record means the record of their accomplishments.

Fuck, that's really the first piece of so-called "gaming TV" that i've ever seen. I've seen clips here and there, but really nothing can prepare you for something that terrible.

Morgan Webb needs to die. And yes, i wouldn't know who she was if not for FHM showing off her football shoulders every month.

Yeah, but El Gallo was referencing their track record for LoTR - which would naturally include DDO.

Before anyone else says it, I'm going to point out the obvious. You make it very hard to have a conversation with you. You know exactly what he fucking meant. Stop being a moron.

Oh okay you didn't quote El Gallo so I didn't realize you were commenting on his remark. Even if you include DDO, though, I still wouldn't classify their track record as "quite good". It's still too new to say for sure but assuming that 60K figure is within the ballpark we're probably looking at an AC1 sized game with 100K - 150K subscribers. Given the fact they are using a well-known IP (though granted a crappy setting) and that we're in a post-WoW world now that would make it less of a success than even AC1 (which was modest even in the EQ-era) in my book. Or to put it another way they would've been better off making AC3 rather than spending the money and presumably royalties on the D&D license.

Uh, no, I don't.  This whole tangent started off when I was responding to El Gallo's comment - I quoted him directly.  El Gallo wrote:


Well, Turbine has 'vomited' out three games.  That means, when judging LoTR in advance (Which is what we're talking about here, and more specifically what El Gallo was talking about), we should take into account three games:  AC1, AC2, and DDO.  One could argue that we should also take into account AC:DM, AC:TOD, and AC2:L, but I'd just as soon roll those into the above three.

I looked at the three games Turbine has 'vomited' out and concluded that hey, maybe they're not in the business of 'vomiting' out shitty games after all.

If there's something I'm seriously in the dark on, please let me know - but to me this whole thing seems relatively simple.  Turbine's track record in the lead-up to DDO consisted of AC1 and AC2.  Turbine's track record in the lead-up to LoTRO consists of AC1, AC2, and DDO.  I honestly don't understand why you're flaming me over this.


Scroll back up - I did quote El Gallo directly.  It was his post, in fact (which I've also quoted above in this post for convenience) that launched this tangent.  But again, I disagree with using financial/subscriber #'s success as the primary judge of Turbine's track record with its playerbase.  See, for example, my backing off on that front in response to Arthur Parker's criticism of my assertion that DDO is a 'financial success'.

Also, as another tangent - what does it being a 'Post-WoW world' mean when we're talking about niche games?  (I would argue that DDO is a niche game, even if it wasn't pitched to WotC as such)

There are those that believe WoW did not in fact increase the size of the MMORPG marketplace -- that its success was derived from all the pre-existing Blizzard fanboys out there and these same people would never ever play a non-Blizzard game. I am not one of those people, so I believe the size defintion of what a "mass market" MMOG is has changed thanks to WoW and therefore what the size definition of a niche MMOG is.

Those people are crazy.

I totally agree that WoW has changed the definition of mass-market - as for niche, I'm not so sure.  I'm willing to be persuaded either way, but I'd like to hear some arguments beyond 'if the definition of mass market shifts, the definition of niche shifts too'.

DDO is not very good, and AC2 was incredibly awful. AC1 was pretty cool for it's time. That is their track record.

Well, there's the rub. IMHO, I would argue that DDO is very good - perhaps the most fun MMO since AC1. If there's one you enjoyed more than either of those two in between their respective releases, that's fair for you - but I've tried WoW, a bit of EQ, DAoC, AO, CoH, Horizons, Neocron, Toontown, RuneScape, Puzzle Pirates, Maple Story, and whatever other random shit I can get my hands on.  None of these games were nearly as fun for me as the DDO beta, though Toontown and Puzzle Pirates each came close.

As seen on CorpNews, there are other rather jaded types out there who enjoyed it as well.  I know that some legitimately dislike it, but a lot of the criticism of the game seemed to come from mainstream players who disliked it for being niche; for not having crafting or raiding or world exploration, for instance, as opposed to it being bad for what it was.

I'm not trying to rehash the hold DDO debates, I'm just saying - within the players that it was aimed at (i.e. judging DDO based on the opinion of people who like EQ/WoW probably won't get you anywhere), DDO entertained a substantial number of people.  There's no general consensus that it's a bad game, as there is with AC2 among pretty much everyone.

I suppose one's view of DDO, then, is relatively important to one's view of Turbine's track record - 66% vs 33%. 

Remember kids:  If it falls woefully short of it's subscription goals, it's not a failure, it's a niche game!

Subs? At this stage? Shouldn't it be more like box sales rather than subs? Give it a couple of months, say 6. Then you can realisitcally start to look at sub numbers.

And, yeah, that particular IP would suggest that they were aiming a bit higher than "niche game". Sounds kind of familiar, actually...

All it shows is the stupidity of trying to apply statistics to a set of three.

DDO is a shitty game.  AC2 was a shitty game.  AC1 was amateurish (even compared to the rest of the industry) and had a lot of shockingly asinine mechanics, but it certainly had its charms.  That's one for three, and the one is iffy and half a decade old.

Two demerits for linking to G4, Assclown TV.

Though the part about the AC NPC's telling you to buy other games was funny.

Turbine's best known for making mediocre performing MMOG's. 62,000 may be profitable on a non-licensed game, but I'm not sure the D&D license will make it profitable, if that number is accurate.

I have no clue what G4 is, so sorry if that's some whacky American channel or something.  I only linked it because I thought it was an amusing perspective on AC.  I really liked AC years ago so it's more difficult for me to judge it.

I don't know if the 62,000 figure is correct or not, I know one of the other rumours appears to be true, the Lead Designer of DDO, Ken Troop, has left Turbine to join WoTC.  I'm guessing Jesse "devilmouse" Kurlancheek  might have taken over, due to the April Newsletter (http://dndonline.gameamp.com/forum/showTopic/29510.php)

Layers of comedy in that link. Thank you. 

Can the people who just flat-out say "DDO is a shitty game" at least see why others might find it highly enjoyable?  And thus understand why El Gallo's original statement of "How many shitty games can Turbine vomit out before people stop buying their games?" was rather silly and asinine?

I mean, really, what DDO does well is intricate, well-scripted quests/dungeon crawls that integrate elements of games like Tomb Raider into the mix - puzzles, extensive use of the Z axis, relatively 'twitch' combat, all that loveliness.

To me, that's enough for a whole game, right there - Is there really another MMO on the market right now that does that so much better?

If there is, let me know, so I can play it.

If not, how is arguably the best game in a not-insignificant niche (Questers, who like their content as Zelda-esque as possible) classifiable as 'shitty', except to say that it fills a niche you're not interested in?

And again, caveat about how if I were WotC's money suits, I wouldn't be happy right now.

Edit:  Thanks for linking to the newsletter!  Man, the new content looks really good.  I can't wait until summer starts (early May) so I have time to subscribe.

How many demerits for a link to a thejeni post?  :lol:

Ok, who is thejeni?  I found the newsletter via google, they didn't send me one, or my email spam filter is more intelligent than I thought.

thejeni (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=5468.0)

About 100 if you link to one of thejeni's posts on thejeni's site. None if you link to thejeni thread here.

That thread loses a lot of its magic with all the edited posts, I wish there was a version with both her initial post and her alt account's haxxor threats intact.

It's too late to say I meant to do it, isn't it?

The two games I can think of that are most similar to DDO are Diablo and Phantasy Star Online, both of which are better.

I can see people liking it if they really really need a small-group oriented quest based game based on D&D. The point is a game like WoW was liked by people who enjoy playing games in general, or at least online games. To like DDO you have to have pretty specific criteria. You have to want group play all of the time, you basically have to run with a static group of friends, you have to like dungeon crawling almost exclusively, have to like D&D, etc.

To enjoy WoW you don't have to particularly like the WC setting, you don't have to like group play or solo play (you can do a fair bit of either), you don't have to run in a static group (although you can), etc etc.

If you made Hello Kitty fighting mech-fighting game I'm sure some people would like that too. If they like fighting, mechs, and Hello Kitty.

And Windup is right. Niche is something you try for, not fall ass-backwards into. Based on the license, the advertising, the team size and other things like that, it's hard to claim that DDO was intended to be a niche game. Second Life is a niche game. The all-text baseball simulation games for the PC are niche games.

A niche game isn't a game that isn't very good and didn't sell very well. We call that a "poor" game.

My apologies for splitting this post more than usual, but I feel that it's useful in this instance.


How so?  I played both of those games, and I don't see any similarities whatsoever.  There wasn't even meaningful Z-axis movement in either, as best I remember.


I don't see how "based on D&D" or "small group oriented" are really salient features of DDO.  I mean, sure they're features, but they're so tangential to the main thrust of the product itself that I don't see how they would significantly impact someone's opinion of the game.  With the exception of a select few "OMG must have 40 man raid" types and a few "Give me solo or give me death"-ers, most people I've met in MMOs don't seem to particularly care what size of group is asked for - they'll just go with it, and if the game's fun, it's fun.  As for the DDO license, you could reskin DDO as pretty much any other universe and it'd work fine.  Hell, if you made swords into lightsabers, I think it'd make a pretty interesting "Star Wars" game.  You could reskin Puzzle Pirates into Star Trek and leave the gameplay largely unscathed.


To me, WoW stands along with Myst and Deer Hunter as proof of the fact that if you go by purely populist standards, you'll end up with shitty games.  I hope this doesn't make me an elitist, but I think most players do have really poor taste in gaming; they want skinner boxes, which they then addict themselves to regardless of whether or not the game itself was fun on the merits.  In that sense, perhaps that explains why some WoW'ers often react to DDO with such vitriol; seeing others have fun in a game that doesn't need to addict you to keep you playing reminds them that they're hooked and makes them resent it a bit.  (I'm not saying that's everyone, or most, but it certainly characterizes some of the responses I see)  I saw the exact same thing in the batshit reactions of EQ'ers to AC1.


I really don't see how subject matter trumps gameplay systems.  I don't give a shit about Disney, but I really enjoyed ToonTown.


I wouldn't make that claim.


But a game selling well makes it good?  Name one major, substantive thing DDO does that WoW does better.

At least when I get a hard-on for my pet game that nobody else likes, they'll all agree that at some nebulous and debatable point in the past it used to be fun.

I disagree with what you said.

Was there some point where it operated on WASD?

Wait, "based on D&D" and "small group oriented" aren't even SALIENT features of an essentially group-only game called DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS online with a setting and character system directly ripped from D&D, but the motherfucking ability to swim up a tunnel (ZOMG Z AXIS !!!11!!!111ONE1!) is some mind-blowingly essential quality that separates DDO from every other video game in the universe?  If their target demographic was moronic trolls with no understanding of aesthetics, it looks like a direct hit.

To everyone else, it looks like a video game a retarded child made out of Popsicle sticks and leaves.  You can't yell at the kid Turbine, because they tried really hard and it's unfair to think that they could do any better.  So you just pat them on the head and chuck it in the attic.

Go play on a mediocre NWN persistent world server and you'll find a similar game made out of Popsicle sticks and leaves by a non-retarded child.

Uh, the tunnel swimming is perhaps the least important use of the Z-Axis ingame.  Z-Axis use adds:

1.  A whole new tactical dimension to combat.
2.  Another dimension of perception awareness - otherwise, you might as well be playing Diablo.  It better allows you to keep on your toes.
3.  The ability to design much more interesting dungeon layouts.

Really, is the value of Z-axis movement even in dispute?  I mean, compare Doom and Quake, for chrissakes.  Z-Axis movement via powers like flight and super-jumping was one of the cooler things about CoH.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't NWN click-to-move?  I don't play click-to-move games - if I were, I might be willing to give UO a fair shot.  I find that movement system impossible to enjoy, because your character isn't responsive as he should be.

Character movement is incredibly important - for instance, CounterStrike became so popular in large part because HalfLife's movement engine is so good.  It has everything to do with how the game feels.  Click-to-move games (usually with no meaningful jump skill) like Diablo just don't do it for me at all.

NWN, like all 3d games which default to click to move, can be configured natively to use keyboard movement.

And speaking of which, I'll be straight and admit that I don't "get" why DDO was made, and I don't get it for the reason listed above: NWN and its upcoming brother, NWN2. Yes, NWN didn't end up being the god almighty cure for cancer many people thought it would be years ago. But it's still solid, and most importantly, as El Gallo pointed out: if DDO's focus is small-group instanced stuff, then... there's a game that already does that with a far more popular and established D&D world. And it's free. And it has, at this point, reams of content that can be played solo or with parties. And it allows users to create their own content and share it with others.

And there's another game in that series, also free, that's going to do the exact same thing except it'll match DDO graphically.

As such, I don't get DDO. It's essentially competing with its own liscense, and it's VERY arguable as to whether or not its gameplay is superior to NWN, let alone NWN2. The whole thing just seems ill-concieved, from top to bottom.

And lol@the dragon newsletter. Yay, we managed to do in a patch one of the things WoW had at launch.

I was going to basically say the same thing but I started figuring that Tele is some sort of gimmick account or something. The fact that the game must be played in small groups, and preferably static groups, basically is the defining characteristic of the game.

As far as interesting dungeon layouts goes - huh? Use of the z-axis may give them "The ability to design much more interesting dungeon layouts" but they sure aren't taking advantage of it. The ranomly generated dungeons in Daggerfall really aren't much worse. When the entire game is dungeons that's a bad thing. They should have named the game Basement Quest.

Dragons? Come on guys. Don't tell me we forgot dragons (http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/01/13)

I fail to see how bringing DDO's use of the Z-Axis into the argument can help at all. About the only thing I saw it used for was jumping on barrels to keep mobs from hitting me, then shooting the shit out of them (and missing more than half the time) until they died. Occassionally one would get the idea and fire back at me or reach me, but most of the time COH did it much better and my character didn't feel like it was walking through quicksand.

And the interface was much better.

If their use of the Z-Axis is so great, how come I couldn't sit down on a chair in the inn?

Sacrilege! NO MMOG allows that.

Except SWG and WoW, of course.

SWG removed that ability fairly early by making everyone slide out of their chair after five seconds.

LIES.

Ha!  Now I want to play SWG.

In the interest of fairness (I do like DDO!), WoW does a few things a lot better.

Auctions.  WoW has them.  DDO, not so much.  And its a glaring omission in more ways then one.  Given that Stormreach was founded by the merchant-priince Dragonmarked houses and is home to uncounted masses of adventurers seeking wealth after the Last War, we should have an auction house. 

Clearly defined solo-vs-group quests.  In DDO, most quests are group quests.  Some especially hard ones warn you of that fact.  But what few quests can be solo'd aren't clearly defined.  WoW is much better at breaking down which quests you can do by yourself, versus which ones you absolutely must have help for.

Scale.  DDO has nowhere near the same sense of scale and the variety of settings as WoW.  Maybe that will change over time, since the first module hints at things like dreamscapes and planar environments, which are two staples of Ebberon.

PvP. DDO is purely PvE. People like PvP combat, and some sort of gameplay style or rule (if only something like 'monstering' from LARPing) should have been used.

DON'T DO IT!

But I can make my avatar look like a fucking tool and cause other player mental grief with ease....

There are some good screenshots to be gotten out of SW:G though. I always liked their bullshit lighting.

You have to grief yourself first by logging in.

Fuck you guys, I want to talk about Margalis' Hello Kitty Mecha MMO, that is an IP I could really get into.

Sure as hell would be better then DDO.

The only good thing about DDO is it doesn't string you along when you get to the end with a bunch of catass-centric raiding bullshit in order to keep pace with the Joneses in pvp.  Hell it doesn't even have pvp.  Instead it acts as a great example of the type of thinking I feel I hear a great deal of in the pvp threads.

DDO is the K.I.S.S. rule to the max, level up, get fat loot, re-roll, do it again.  No player created content, no meaningfull anything, no world, just a bunch of instanced loot hunts.  Oh fucking goodie.

I see WoW as the same thing just the following have been tacked on, which make WoW 100 times better then DDO but still nothing to write home about:

-pvp minigames (BG's)
-crafting
-catass-centric raid "endgame" for even bettar lewt

One is a blob-like shit monster (DDO) and the other is a blob-like shit monster w/ three arms (WoW) I think they both stink.

Again, sorry for sirbrucing, but I think the format fits when we're dealing with lists of features.


Hmm, this is a good point.  One could argue as to how important it is, but I can see how WoW does that better.  Then again, DDO does have pawn shops selling player goods... but not to the extent WoW has.


Fair point.  DDO's length indicators are good, but tell me nothing about soloability.


Agreed.  While I still think DDO gets a bad rap in that it's not all just 'shades of brown', I do prefer WoW's graphical style and overall variety of environments (Though I still think GW has the best of all - too bad the whole game is on tracks).


Fair, but again outside the scope of "things DDO does".  I think this makes more of a point regarding mass market appeal (or lack thereof) than a direct comparison between the two titles.

At least you had warm feet!

This shows a complete inability to think beyond ends - to how the playing of the game itself, crawling dungeons and whatnot, might be fun.

It's the equivalent of a burned out investment banker who's got the cash but realizes there's no endgame, and he should have picked a game to play that was enjoyable from the get-go rather than having you think in terms of ends, and the means as just chaff you plow through.

No "meaningful" anything?  The fun you have from playing the game (and watching a number rise or equipping a new weapons is not playing the game) is supposed to be what's meaningful.

In short:

Bad thinking - The dungeons/hunting/whatever is the means, your equipment/stats/level/loot are the ends.

Good thinking - Your equipment/stats/level/loot are the means, having fun at the dungeon/hunting/whatever is the ends.

By the time you start to care a whole bunch about what is essentially numbers on a spreadsheet, you've already lost.

Unfortunately for DDO, the means weren't really all that spectacularly fun.

Exactly. I have no problem with a simple fun game. Simple unfun game? Not so much.

That we can agree to disagree on - but I think Hoax's post was using the wrong criteria, so it doesn't even get that far.

Your defense would work better if you currently owned DNDO and were subscribed to it.  As it is now, you do not sell me on it.  How fun could it be, the defender of it didn't even play past beta?

Did you read what you quoted?

I'm past the point where spreadsheet numbers will ever equal fun.  The sense of accomplishment is dick when I pickup +1 chainmail.  I dont care, if that isn't going to help me kill another human player I just dont fucking care.  The only compelling thing DDO could ever hope to offer me would be interesting challenging dungeon crawls to take on with my buddies.  Getting loot so I can fight the next monster reskin that has +100hp IS NOT FUN.  Been there, done that, don't care anymore.


Beyond the fact that I dont find PvE to be compelling for shit anymore you have bigger problems:
I've watched people play DDO, it looks like ass.  For handcrafted dungeons it didn't look any more interesting then Diablo (but now with swtiches!!).  Oh the combat looks terrible too, worse the WoW even, versus smaller enemies it looks like people are swinging over them, the entire "feel" of the game sucks balls.  The only way I can tell people are hitting things is if they flash red and the speed most people attack at is too fast, it looks retarded and takes all "skill" out of their little revolutionary system.

If you had been around when we were talking about DDO's potential or lack thereof you might be aware of my thoughts on why that game was destined for suck.  They could have had an interesting successor/advancement of the Diabloesqe slash'N'loot genre if they had executed what they were trying to do correctly.  But for the same reasons I wouldn't pay 15$/mo for Planetside I would never pay $15/mo for DDO.  Sure they might be fun but there are other games I can have that kind of simplistic fun in for free.

Uh, we've been through this already - I want to play as soon as I can, but I have finals. 40 pages of original research due in less than a month. I'm performing in a Japanese hip-hop dance at the cultural festival this weekend (don't ask). A ton of stuff to handle. Even if DDO would fellate me while I played, I wouldn't have the time until summer begins in mid-May.

As such, my not being subbed right now says nothing about my lack of enthusiasm for the game.

As for having an accurate perception of the game, I played a month of beta, which is roughly analogous to playing from release until now.  In that time, I made it to level 4, which is where I'd be at right now.  It was late Beta, so everything was 99.9% stable and bug-free, at least as far as I saw.


Hoax:  Well, at least now we know which part we fundamentally disagree on.  I do find the dungeon crawls to be "interesting and challenging with my buddies".  Well, not so much 'buddies'; I play entirely pickup groups, and if I'm leader I have no class requirements (could run with no healers or whatever), so it usually turns out challenging and interesting.  But at least I now see where the fundamental disagreement lies.

I love exploring DDO dungeons - it gives me a feeling almost akin to Zelda 64, which is perhaps my favorite game of all time.

I am not sure what it is, and I think you are not doing it intentionally, but when I read your posts I become enraged.

There, there, Sunshine.  It's not like he's a real person.  He's just an internet thing.  When you look away, he pops out of existence.

You know those final exams, essays and Japanese folk dancing are incredibly important for your future.  In addition to not paying-for/playing games that you are a rabid fanboi of I would suggest you spend less time on the internet too, especially those timesink message boards.

I only care about your future, it's not like I just want to get rid of you because you are one of the few people I have managed to despise just based on reading their diseased thoughts via internet posts.

Believe me, I'm trying.  This place is my skinner box.  Workin' on it.

And not Japanese folk dancing.  Japanese hip-hop dancing.  (Which is kind of like hip hop plus fairies, but oh well)

Try not. Do.

That's odd.  Care to articulate that feeling further?

No more Tele-focus-group threads please!

Japanese hip hop is gay as gay can be. Everyone becomes enraged when they read your posts Mediocre. You're like a motherfucking virtual cheese grater - ON PEOPLE'S BRAINS.

The internet was so nice when Teledickrity was banned from the sites I frequent.

That's a rough nickname to pronounce out loud.

Can I get in on the argument?

I've never played a Turbine game ever* so I think that qualifies me almost as much as Telemediocrity seeing as how he doens't even really play DDO and all.




*The 2 days of AC2 don't count in my mind as I try as hard as I can to forget that ever happened.

I think I am gonna start denning threads that end up Mediocre-centric. Either that or edit every one of his posts to avoid all the shit flinging in the first place.

You could always just split off all his posts in the thread into a new thread that's denned.

You could just remove everyone's posting rights.

Hey, is it true that SWG had some changes?

Nope, lies. They only did some serverside housekeeping.

AC1 one modest success ?
It was confidential. AC1 has never heard of in Europe. Only a few knew about it. No wonder it never really sold here.

On the other hand, all the people I have met in AC1 have fond memories of it. AC1 had flaws but its world was overwhelming. You were part of something. Even WoW doesn't have that feeling.

Sadly, I think that Turbine will never be able to do another AC1. They don't have the necessary will for it.
They don't have the people with the vision nor the skills anymore either.

Good suggestion, oh Wise one. I will do just that the next time I become annoyed. Over/Under in Vegas is 4 minutes.

Genius.