DDO goes F2P. - (DDO Unlimited)

[Ingmar]

Your pact doesn't actually force any choices on to you but your 2nd at-will; they put a pact name on the PHB powers for flavor, but you're not obligated to take powers from your pact. There's actually a little note about how they regret doing that in Arcane Power, because it confused a lot of people into thinking that you had to take powers from your own pact; they left those pact names off all of the new ones in AP.

It does sort of behoove you to pick powers that match your primary stat (charisma or constitution for warlocks), but with Arcane Power and the dark pact stuff in the Forgotten Realms book in the mix, warlocks actually have a ton of choices now. I think they have 5 or 6 pact choices, which is more choice than anyone else currently gets.

[Lantyssa]

I've only seen the core book, and I know it doesn't force the choice.  However you don't get the bonuses if you choose out-of-pact, and you get so few choices that it doesn't feel like you really have the luxury of doing so either.  (Warlock's first at-will is also pre-determined, so they don't really get to choose there either.)

That's where 3.x feels superior.  More choices and flexibility.  At least on paper, since as I said, I have not played Fourth.

[Bunk]

Part of the reason for less choice is obvoiusly the vast difference in the number of available books, but as someone else said, I'm not encouraged to buy 30 new 4th books to replace my 30 3.5 books.

I like the unbalanced sillyness that is 3.5 - admittedly you need a good DM to reign you in sometimes. My current 3.5 game, I'm playing a Bard 3/Duskblade 4, with his top skill being sleight of hand. Bags full of scrolls, wands and potions to cover every scenario. Feats in weapon finesse, improved disarm, and battle dance. At 7th he ends up with + 17 on disarm rolls with his whip, if he's moving and singing. Completely silly, but it all balances out since he rolled like shit on his hps, and can't do crap all to monsters that don't use melee weapons. (1d6+2 damage!) - though getting the Duskblade's channel ability to use with Chill Touch will improve that.

Try building that guy in 4th.

[Montague]

Part of the reason for less choice is obvoiusly the vast difference in the number of available books, but as someone else said, I'm not encouraged to buy 30 new 4th books to replace my 30 3.5 books.

I like the unbalanced sillyness that is 3.5 - admittedly you need a good DM to reign you in sometimes. My current 3.5 game, I'm playing a Bard 3/Duskblade 4, with his top skill being sleight of hand. Bags full of scrolls, wands and potions to cover every scenario. Feats in weapon finesse, improved disarm, and battle dance. At 7th he ends up with + 17 on disarm rolls with his whip, if he's moving and singing. Completely silly, but it all balances out since he rolled like shit on his hps, and can't do crap all to monsters that don't use melee weapons. (1d6+2 damage!) - though getting the Duskblade's channel ability to use with Chill Touch will improve that.

Try building that guy in 4th.

I think that paragraph kinda sums up why 4th edition was necessary.   

[Bunk]

See, that's just it. It's neccessary to prevent me from making a character like that in a computer game - but it should not be an issue in PnP. Anyone whose ever played RPGs with me knows I'm going to make a totally off the radar concept, that will likely be a useless toad 90% of the time, and a total god in the 10%. My group and whoever is GMing simply works with that. In 4th - everything is so balanced out, I just feel like the creativity is balanced away.

Doing something like setting up a Magic Mouth to shout a warning is something you can do if you're going through an area you're likely to get flanked from another tunnel.  But it becomes absurdly impractical with a 10 minute casting time and a 50 gold piece material cost.  4E tries to boil the system down to the level where a computer could be the DM, in a way.  2nd Edition gives you just enough to base your game on and leaves all the details up to the DM.

This is exactly what I am getting at. 4th has rules in place that balance and restrict some things down so far that there is little room to be creative - and then at the same time, has no rules whatsoever to cover other things, even as a guidline.

One scenario I've often discussed in 3.5 is the Sorcerer with Improved Invis and Fly. Based on experience, this is a really game breaking combo in 3.5. If I'm running a 3.5 game and have a character keep abusing this, I'll adjust encounters to compensate. If the player doesn't get the hint, I'll do something creative to nerf that combo. I fully expect the character will come up with something else to frustrate me eventually - but that's ok - that's part of the game to me, that back and forth between the player and DM.

In 4th, the answer was just to make any sort of overpowered combo like that - just not exist. 4th really comes accross like the rules were written for a computer to run. Now of course that will never happen, since that would require WoC to actually successfully finish writing a computer program...

[Slyfeind]

One scenario I've often discussed in 3.5 is the Sorcerer with Improved Invis and Fly. Based on experience, this is a really game breaking combo in 3.5. If I'm running a 3.5 game and have a character keep abusing this, I'll adjust encounters to compensate. If the player doesn't get the hint, I'll do something creative to nerf that combo. I fully expect the character will come up with something else to frustrate me eventually - but that's ok - that's part of the game to me, that back and forth between the player and DM.

Things like that are a huge point of contention with everybody. It's hard to make an interesting campaign for invisoflight characters. Either they sail through everything unharmed, or everybody they meet can see the invisible and also fly. You can either be an awesome DM and deal with it creatively, presenting new situations where invisoflight is recognized yet doesn't affect the challenge either way...or just change the rules so this never ever happens again. WotC felt that players wanted the latter.

I once ran a campaign of all mages. It was spectacular. The players went to stop a political marriage that would have set dangerous people into power and risk freedom in the entire campaign world. The presiding priest got to "If there is anyone here who feels this couple should not be married, let them speak now or forever hold their peace."

Oh yes then the invisoflight mages laid waste with fire and ice and storm. BOOM.

[Rendakor]

It's a balancing act regarding how much freedom you give the players (and DMs). The greater amount of customization available, the greater possibility of abuse. However, D&D isn't about BALANCE or any of that bullshit, it's about roleplaying interesting characters and having fun with your buddies. There's no PVP, and no DPS meter running to make sure every class parses well. The 3.5 ruleset (with all its splatbooks, of course) is versatile enough that you can create virtually any character. When I used to read the WotC boards, there was a thread there where people were statting Anime and Video Game characters as 20th level 3.5 characters. You just need an effective DM to step in and allow or disallow combinations of classes/feats/whatever that don't work in a particular campaign.

[Stewie]

My current 3.5 game, I'm playing a Bard 3/Duskblade 4

Not any more! one confusion spell and the main fighter took him out in 1 attack. lol

Although this was pure win for me, I just doubled my loot, and I will get a new less gimped companion in the group 

[Mrbloodworth]

NDA lifted.

The game is penciled in for an August 4th, 2009 launch.

Source.

[Lantyssa]

It's been a lot more fun than when I did a free trial years ago.  The controls are more responsive and, at least through level 4, completely possible to solo.

Without putting any money in it looks like you'll be fairly limited.  Monks and Favored Soul (new class) are locked, as well as Drow and Warforged.  I'm not sure Monk or Warforged can be unlocked any way besides being a subscriber or buying them.  Drow is reasonable to unlock, but Favored Soul will basically require a lot of work.  The only people unlocking them through gameplay will be those currently with maxed characters or those who simply aren't interested in playing them.

DDO Points are not currently a 1:1 buy.  It looks like if you buy VIP for a month you may go from two to four character slots without having to purchase more.  Excess characters (if VIP) will be unplayable, but you'll get to pick the 'active' ones at the end of your term.  (No idea if it's a one-time choice or not, should you re-up/lapse.)

If you've played recently I don't think the core gameplay has changed much beyond adding Favored Soul.  You choose a path at first level which gives you a weapon proficiency and determines some abilities down the line.  More limited spells than a Cleric, however you can cast them frequently and you have better combat abilities.

[Numtini]

I just joined last night on the fileplanet beta. My Goddess, even with DX10 and everything maxxed out it looks horrible. Is this game really something that came out after WoW and EQ2?

I'll give it a shot. I'm Numtini Lightheart.

[Yegolev]

I can't remember my char name.  This game makes me feel like I need to schedule an appointment with an eye doctor.  I also don't have much of an idea of what the hell is going on in combat, although I think I actually managed to trip an enemy once.  Mostly it's just whackwhackwhack.  I have only just managed to get out of the starter town and I think that's where the grind starts, or something.  It's not terrible but seems like I only play it while waiting for LotRO to patch.

[Lantyssa]

I cannot see it as a game which will hold my interest.  It'll be something to play for a bit when I'm bored, or if I could get a semi-regular group of people together.  It's definately not something most will play as their primary game for long.

Even though it allows surnames, for communication and mail purposes only use the first name.  That confused me for a while.

I'm not playing much, however anyone is welcome to add Lillia and/or Kylantha in case I do show up.  I can at least answer some questions if I'm around.

[Threash]

One scenario I've often discussed in 3.5 is the Sorcerer with Improved Invis and Fly. Based on experience, this is a really game breaking combo in 3.5.

Don't forget the all important zombie dragon.

[Goumindong]

That's where 3.x feels superior.  More choices and flexibility.  At least on paper, since as I said, I have not played Fourth.

In the end, its not. 4 may have less RAW choice, but it has more choices that are actually effective. This means that there are many many more real character choices that you can make. Considering different item enhancements, power choices, and feat selections i could build probably 5-10 different Dwarven fighters which were all about as effective as each other in 4th edition. You can build maybe 1 or 2 in 3.5.

As someone who has DM'd and played both 3rd and 4th editions quite a lot, 4th edition is pretty superior for the DM in every way. Its easier to make monsters, easier to create fun and interesting encounters, you rarely have to worry about save or dies dropping enemies and you can create large battles that would otherwise be either boring or overwhelming in the prior edition. You never have to worry about ridiculous non-combat spells ruining an encounter, nor do you have to worry about players having so much power as to entirely circumvent your plot.

For the player it really depends on what you're like. If you played a wizard and liked the fact that you were the party once you got past about level 6[unless the DM arbitrarily shut down all of your methods of attack, which is really lame] then you might feel slighted because now your non-spellcasting friends with the exception of the guy with 1 level of rogue for trapfinding[which didn't matter much anyway] are actually useful for something other than having the DM forcefully meta encounters around the guy with the axe who was uselessly swinging it at a monster who would rightly never care since he was going to get "save or died" by the wizard the next round anyway.

If you enjoy 3.5, by all means go ahead and play it, but 4e is just plain better at doing what DnD does and getting out of the way of the stuff it does not.

______

That being said, i'll be giving this a whirl.

[Lantyssa]

Effectiveness is not a concern of mine (unless power gaming twinks are ruining the fun).

It was a second edition campaign, but the most fun I've ever had was my my thief and her wild mage companion.  He let me stuff all my thief points into sneak and read languages (with a half chance to speak) first.  Her combat skills were terrible and often she used non-proficient weapons... like the time she tied a LG +2 sword to a stick since she couldn't touch it without taking damage.  Usually did as much damage or more damage to herself than the enemies through critical fumbles.  She would do anything to remove the cursed amulet she started the game with.  Often very stupid things.  The mage was even more crazy.

It was some of the best RP we've ever had.  As long as we were alive rezzed by the end of the adventure, we didn't care how it went.

[Goumindong]

Effectiveness is not a concern of mine (unless power gaming twinks are ruining the fun).

[...]

It was some of the best RP we've ever had.  As long as we were alive rezzed by the end of the adventure, we didn't care how it went.

Effectiveness is not a necessity for good RP, but it doesn't detract in any way.  The advantage of 4th is not that its going to make your RP amazing, no system can magically make your and your group have a better time RPing. All systems can do is model the abilities of your characters towards how you want character differences to turn out. Some systems are better at that than others in terms of "realism or simulation" (I am thinking WW D10 or "Godlike D10"), some in terms of "utility" (E.G. DnD), but none in terms of narration. And the newer DnD systems are better at what DnD systems do, which is making the stuff that isn't RP fun and balanced between as many different character combinations as possible. It takes workload off the DM and allows a wider range of effective characters. It makes all classes valuable rather than just the spellcasters valuable.

All of the things you did in 2nd could have been replicated in 4th but without as much rigmarole. \

Oh, and in case anyone was wondering. Improved Invisibility and fly were not the killers in 3.5, it was things like Sleep, Ray of Enfeeblement, Glitterdust, Hideous Laughter, Protection from Arrows, Touch of Idiocy, Blindness/Deafness, Deep Slumber, Hold Person, Suggestion(both the spell and the ridiculous version the bard gets), Ray of Exhaustion, the illusion spells, and this isn't even getting out of third level spells

[Xilren's Twin]

To reroute this to DDO, one system they have put into the beta which is causing much wailing and gnashing of teeth is a "Dungeon Alert System'

Our research into player feedback on performance issues found that having a great quantity of monsters chasing players through a dungeon was contributing to a poor experience for everyone in the form of what is called “lag”. Hitching, rubberbanding, or other irregular game behavior could ruin a night of questing for not only the group being attacked by the monsters, but also fellow server mates in other parts of Xen’drik! Something had to be done, but finding a resolution that was still satisfying for game play was needed. Simply forcing players to kill every monster wouldn’t do – it was too punishing to our sneaking and/or spell casting experts. Causing monsters to leash helped in some areas, but created new problems in others when a monster leashed at an inopportune time, resetting their hit points and making double the work for heroes. Simply pulling monsters out of quests was not only a time consuming process for quest makers, but could turn once challenging encounters into harmless nature walks. So we took a lesson from our favorite stories of action and adventure, and the Dungeon Alert system was born!

If a hero charges into a castle making a lot of noise, running past all of the guards smacking them in the face once or twice, and belligerently barreling by adversaries rather than facing them, eventually the entire castle gets alerted. Ultimately they will do something about the intruder - it’s never a good idea to let an enemy guard see you and leave it free to fetch help! We thought about how we could bring that element into questing in a way that still felt flexible for players. Our intent is to improve game performance while still allowing for players that are dealing with encounters by stealth, vanquishing enemies, or even charming them.

How It Works:

As you or your group members aggro enemies, you gradually increase the “alertness” of the region or dungeon you are in. Your enemies become harder to escape from, and bosses grow challenging having had the time to be alerted to your presence. The Dungeon Alert system is forgiving initially, but gets progressively harder as your party reaches certain thresholds of alert. We want to support stealthing past monsters, some kiting, and active movement in combat, but ideally want to reduce occurrences of players dragging large numbers of monsters around without dealing with the encounter in some form.

With each alert level, an icon will appear to warn you that your enemies are becoming more and more aware of your presence:
No skull: The enemies in this region are not yet alerted to your presence.
Green skull: Your presence has not gone unnoticed by the creatures in this region.
Yellow skull: You have angered many opponents, and your enemies have been alerted to the presence of invaders.
Orange skull: You have angered many opponents, and your enemies have been alerted to the presence of invaders, and are taking defensive measures.
Red skull: You have angered a great many opponents, and your enemies have been alerted to the presence of invaders and are taking extreme defensive measures!
At the Green Skull alert level, you will note the inhabitants of dungeons becoming more aggressive in their pursuit of you. Bosses of the regions will also fight more fiercely, having had advanced notice of your coming. Should you be unfortunate enough to reach the Red Skull alert, pray to your gods, for the enemies in that region are out for your blood and the mere sight of you will work them into a frothing rabble determined to eliminate you at all costs!

To help prevent a player from getting in a situation where they’ve inadvertently made their dungeon too tough, certain actions can reduce and mitigate the alert level. These actions can happen on the fly, and help a player to effectively manage how much awareness their foes have at any point during their adventure. Such beneficial actions include:
Destroying enemies: by killing, banishing, or otherwise slaying foes, you reduce their ability to alert their friends to fight you!
Charming enemies: You're one of their fold now! Charmed enemies don’t try to give away your presence.
Stealthing by enemies: It’s hard to make a fuss about that which isn’t seen. If you successfully slip by enemies using your stealth and are not caught, you’re in the clear, having not alerted every mob and his brother to your existence. An additional benefit to our stealthy types is monsters will no longer have ESP, forever searching for you. If you're careful not to be discovered, your enemies will eventually give up looking for you! After all, it must have just been a mouse.
The passage of time: Time heals all wounds. Monsters in a dungeon will eventually calm down after a while even if you agitated their entire hive. If you’ve not been seen or heard from for a while, the bad guys gradually presume you were dispatched and their angst decreases.
Players can use any combination of these techniques to manage how aware their enemies are to their presence. It is even possible to take some monsters in tow in the heat of the moment – but if you start to amass a small army’s worth of trouble, the danger also amasses!

Naturally there are some quests that are more prone to having large quantities of monsters than others. We’re able to make adjustments to the Dungeon Alert system to help alleviate accidental threat levels in quests where it is extremely likely that a player will be faced with large batches of monsters. We’ve already made major adjustments in several quests that involve large groups of monsters as part of the primary game play (such as Kobold Assault). As you play through adventures on Lamannia, we encourage players to provide feedback on any quests where they find the Dungeon Alert system ramps up too quickly for them to manage.

For those that dont know, the fastest way to complete many quests is to run by a lot of monsters without fighting them.  Going through a door to another "zone" will stop them, or just run from them long enough and they'll eventually return to their spawn points.  For people looking for quick completions (favor or loot runs) it was much much faster to to this then to play through the dungeon "as intended".
Im not sure how many players beleive them that doing this leads to server lag as a) lag is really only noticeable in two main high level areas, and b) it's not like the server have been packed.

From reading some of the posts, i think making this sort of sweeping change to how the bulk of the paying customer have been playing your game for years is....unwise.

[Lantyssa]

Effectiveness is not a necessity for good RP, but it doesn't detract in any way.

We very much found that it did.  All of my friends have a bit of power gamer in them.  If you let us become too effective, we will abuse it.  We're bad enough at being effective with junk...

On the DDO front I found a $5 box at Gamestop, so I started a pre-VIP account.  The difference is already pretty telling.  The beta controls are much more friendly and intuitive.  Animations have been tweaked and voice added to the tutorial.  Even though it's just the tutorial, voices make it cheesy in the perfect dorks playing D&D way.

[NiX]

From reading some of the posts, i think making this sort of sweeping change to how the bulk of the paying customer have been playing your game for years is....unwise.

They're not paying them after next month, what do they care? They're a small subset now, or they're probably hoping. Probably banking on this system deterring the new players using this system because they're told it's the way to do things. The problem I see for new players that are incoming, is if they only want to play for free and run out of content, they're not going to be too happy about having to take things slowly every time.

[Goumindong]

We very much found that it did.  All of my friends have a bit of power gamer in them.  If you let us become too effective, we will abuse it.  We're bad enough at being effective with junk...

So you played 3.5 or 2.0 with no Spellcasters?

I'll just say it this way. In 3.5 you had to ridiculously powergame your non-spellcasters to have a chance of being better than a straight up, PHB core human wizard, Cleric, Sorcerer, or Druid[and it was pretty much the same way in 2.0 with its spellcasters]. And if you even bothered to optimize those classes slightly then the non-spellcasters never catch up[they don't even catch up with a bard, who, at level 6 gets pretty much a "go first or die" attack, since the save is so high its not reasonable to make it unless the creature is immune to charm effects]

In 4.0 this is simply not possible, there are many more choices that are effective. No classes stand out as overly effective as others, there is nothing that will simply obviate the other players.  You can have a fighter and wizard and rogue in the same party and have everyone feel effective past level 2 and not just playing interference until the wizard and cleric solve the problem.

on the DDO front, i am trying to find a way to download this[i have an old account but still don't see a download link anywhere] so i can either resub for a month or i can just see what is available.

[Sophismata]

It depends entirely on what you're looking to get out of the game. 3.5 removed a lot of the soft 'balance' given to casters in the older additions of the game, and (mechanically), it scales very poorly - at high levels encounters tend to be very short and very lethal once you include a few supplements.

Core 3.5's big problem is the Druid - while Wizards and Clerics are powerful, they are still limited by the actions they can take in-game. The mainstay of more martial characters are the feats, but there aren't enough in the PHB and those that are there are (for the most part) terrible, either in effectiveness, design, or both. Example: Dodge - it's annoying to keep track of, not particularly effective and acts as a speed hump to one of the best feat ideas, Whirlwind. Whirlwind is, of course, terrible - but there should have been many more top-tier martial feats that relied on two or more distinct paths of feat progression.

Anyway, I've rambled off of my point. 4e is too carefully balanced. It's visible in every aspect of the rules, and I've found that as a result it tends to prevent players from attempting extraordinary, or creative, things. What can and cannot be done are very strictly defined by the ruleset, and while thinking outside the box is possible, it is not encouraged. Furthermore, there are key balance issues in 4e, as well, that cause problems with savvy players. Those carefully meted out bonuses to damage? They stack across attacks, and takes little to realise that multi-attack powers are the best in the game. The basic system math is off, attack versus defense values start to drift apart at the higher levels. Casters and multi-stat classes (such as the Paladin) are unduly penalised, which is especially bad in a system so tightly wound around by-the-numbers balance. Players (subjectively) tend to find little that is 'unique' about their characters, whereas in 3.5 you had things like Special Mounts or Scorn Earth (your character hates the ground, the ground hates him back. They rarely meet.)


Bottom line, both systems have balance issues. (And both systems can overcome those issues with a little common sense or a rules-savvy GM). This won't prevent you from having fun with them, though. If you're a fan of tactical battle, or are new to the game, 4e's probably definitely the better choice - it is easier to run, the rules and abilities and pretty much everything is clearly shown, and the rulebooks are well-designed. Most players (in my experience) who remember key moments from previous roleplays, or have favourite characters, though, don't get much chance to relive or recreate them in 4e.


Edit: There is a group of players who really dislike the "çandy store" approach to items in 4e (I'm one of them, in any case). To be honest, 3.5e had a similar (though less obvious) item requirement, and 4e actually makes it much easier to remove items from the system altogether. It makes the bonuses from items and item progression logical, and simple to reverse-engineer. So, you can easily move the game from a half-dozen magical items every level to fewer, more powerful items, or remove them altogether.

[Goumindong]

4e isn't perfect and therefore its just as bad as anything else

There is also a lot of simple bullshit in there.

at high levels encounters tend to be very short and very lethal once you include a few supplements.

You don't need to include supplements. A core bard, one of the weaker spellcasters, puts out a DC 27 will save or die at level 6.[actually can be more]. Wizards, while they can only get to DC 18-20 or so are much stronger. Core wizards make encounters and even games at all very lethal, nothing else, just core wizards. If you were having problems only with druids then either the people in your games were terrible, or you were arbitrarily limiting wizards.

What can and cannot be done are very strictly defined by the ruleset, and while thinking outside the box is possible, it is not encouraged

Bullshit, that is all on you. Either for having no imagination, or for failing to read the rules in the DMG. The other day, i dropped a tree on my enemies. Why? Because i wanted to, and i could, and the DM could figure a reasonable effect for it.

Anyway, I've rambled off of my point. 4e is too carefully balanced

This is one of the most retarded things i have ever heard anyone say, and i've heard a lot of retarded things.

The basic system math is off, attack versus defense values start to drift apart at the higher levels. Casters and multi-stat classes (such as the Paladin) are unduly penalised, which is especially bad in a system so tightly wound around by-the-numbers balance

Bullshit. Casters and multi-stat classes are not penalized. Paladins only have problems in power selection[early power selection for str based Paladins only] and casters have no to-hit problems compared to weapon based classes. While there is a small drop off in effectiveness, the drop off is for everyone, and a slight math error[representing +1-3 to hit over the course of the game] is a pretty small problem all things considered

Bottom line, both systems have balance issues. (And both systems can overcome those issues with a little common sense or a rules-savvy GM).

Except that one of those systems corrects its relatively small issues very easily and without much work on anyones part, and one requires rewriting the entire system. 3.5 is terrible on balance issues, its impossible to balance without throwing out half of the core rulebooks.

Most players (in my experience) who remember key moments from previous roleplays, or have favourite characters, though, don't get much chance to relive or recreate them in 4e.

This comes mainly from them being foolish, or simply not caring that there were other people playing the game. 3.5 works O.K. for a CPRG where you can carefully mete every situation and/or don't care if people break it, but it does not work well with real players in a real game.

Seriously, take off your rose colored glasses and play the various systems, 4.0 works better for pretty much everything.

[Xilren's Twin]

on the DDO front, i am trying to find a way to download this[i have an old account but still don't see a download link anywhere] so i can either resub for a month or i can just see what is available.

Try here for download info

They're not paying them after next month, what do they care? They're a small subset now, or they're probably hoping. Probably banking on this system deterring the new players using this system because they're told it's the way to do things. The problem I see for new players that are incoming, is if they only want to play for free and run out of content, they're not going to be too happy about having to take things slowly every time.

Nix, unless a current subscriber intentionally cancels, they will keep their normal per month sub and be considered a VIP for DDO:EU.  More character slots, unlocked all races and classes, levels etc plus 500 Turbine points a month.  Since most current subscribers already have a ton of high level characters, i dont see too many converting to free-to-play.  Besides, why would they want to alienate their known already paying customers in the hope that they can make more money from F2P players with microtransactions.  The whole Dungeon Alert system seems flawed from conception on.  If you want to force players to kill mobs rather than blow past them, use more doorways you can't open until all the mobs in that section have been killed.  They have this in a bunch of quests already; just extend it.  Makes more sense and doesnt punish your current players for playing the way they have always known.  The entire reason for favor and loot speed runs is LACK OF CONTENT.  The game is structure from the ground up on players repeating content several times.  Multple that by several characters each and are we really surprised people want to blow through a dungeon than walk through it for the 50th time?  Bored and waiting for a group to form, you do loot runs in outdoor areas - haste + displacement and blue allows you to just run around to the know rare spawn points only stopping to fight if a named mob has spawned.  Scratch that now. 

[Goumindong]

Thanks.

[Hawkbit]

NDA is dropped, but is this still closed beta?  They have a link to download the client right on their site but I can't see were I can get a key. 

[Goumindong]

NDA is dropped, but is this still closed beta?  They have a link to download the client right on their site but I can't see were I can get a key. 

Still closed. I signed up but haven't gotten any mail or anything.

[Lantyssa]

They sent me an invitation about a week after I signed up.  I don't know how quickly people are being let in on average though.

[NiX]

<snipped>

Ah, well then, the game is fucked either way. They can't pump out enough content, they don't want people blowing through and all there is to do is repeat it. Bound to fail on each step.

[Surlyboi]

Meh. I logged in and found all my old toons wiped.

Do I want to start this up again?

[kildorn]

I liked the game after trying it again, but it has not aged well. It can't handle multiple monitors properly (I can't display at the second monitor's resolution, only the first's), the bloom is holy lawl worthy, and monsters teleport like a bitch.

Also, kobold casters still dodge backwards up walls, which is always hilarious.

[Mrbloodworth]

I liked the game after trying it again, but it has not aged well. It can't handle multiple monitors properly (I can't display at the second monitor's resolution, only the first's), the bloom is holy lawl worthy, and monsters teleport like a bitch.

Also, kobold casters still dodge backwards up walls, which is always hilarious.

Odd considering its the same engine as LOTRO.

[Yegolev]

Odd considering its the same engine as LOTRO.

You can repeat this over and over and I don't think I will ever believe it.

[Jamiko]

Meh. I logged in and found all my old toons wiped.

Do I want to start this up again?

Did you check all the servers? I only ask because mine ended up on a different server than the one I thought they were on when I last played.

[Mrbloodworth]

Odd considering its the same engine as LOTRO.

You can repeat this over and over and I don't think I will ever believe it.

Granted, the artwork for DDO is not the same, and I am sure some game systems are different, but it is the same rendering engine.