Initial Impressions.

A few thoughts for anyone who may fancy joining with us on here. (I'll make comparisons to VG and Rift as that's what most of us know.)

Graphics....... I'd say comparable to VG.

Crafting........ Not sure it's really a big deal in DDO. I've seen hints at some kind of crafting but get the feeling it's more Class work. Ie like the rogue/ranger specific stuff in VG. I could be wrong though.

Char Builds...... I found this very impressive indeed. Several races, each able to choose from the 3 usual Tank, Dps, Healer. caster set. Each set has the different subsets IE, Dps has rogue, ranger, bard etc. The bit that makes it even more interesting, (Ill use rogue as I am one) Rogue then splits into three subclasses, IE Mechanic (Trap and Lock specialist at the cost of attack power and stealth), then a sneaky and a Dps model. You can choose to level up purely in your chosen role, or cherry pick skills from the three different trees. (Hmm, sound familiar?).

Guilds.......... Whoppa! Lots do do guildwise. Quests offer a choice of personal rewards, or alternately guild prestige tokens. These tokens up your guild level and as it rises your guild gets new stuff added IE dedicated guild chat, guild storage, guild buffs, in fact more stuff than I could begin to remember. Guilds can also work together to buy a guild airship, a kind of flying guildhall of six different sizes. Basically a ton of stuff to work together for and give a feeling of joint accomplishment.

Dungeons........ Key part of the game I guess. All instanced. All accessible to do at four different difficulty levels from easy peasy to Elite. Theres literally tons and tons of them, increasing in toughness as you level up. Mobs, traps, secret passages, locked doors and treasure chests.

Progression is very slow, but you also get upgrades as you rank up, which is different to levelling, so don't feel like you are chasing the levels to progress.

F2P or P2P........ Basic difference is that Pay to play unlocks all the content and initial race choices (Except one). For the ten dollars a monts i'd guess its cheeper than the free to play if you want the best experience in the long term. You can upgrade to Pay to Play from Free to play at any time though.

There we go. Bit comprehensive but I'm still a noob and finding stuff out

You forgot floor puzzles which you and nexxus decided to laugh at my confusion :P

The guiild system is really nice here......

Every time you do a dungeon, or outdoor quest you get points..... also you can get guild tokens if you don't fancy one of the rewards.

When you get the points and or use the tokens for points the guild levels start to rise we managed up to 13 so far.

Each time the guild levels x2 it unlocks something for the guild.

1. Was guild chat (yup have to urn that :P)

then there are umm others you will see when you get in though, cheep vendor for your guild craft yup you get a skyship well
you have to buy it but from what i can tell you can buy things to place on it like hirelings etc storage all that, but were baby guild
so far with malt today we reached the 300% guild augment thingie.

And omg you have to do the trials on the pirate island hillariously puzzling and I mean puzzling

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Movement well its supposed to be qwsd whatever but you can alter it
currently we have ours set to W to walk and left mouse to pan the camera fast, it is set to right mouse pan but we seem
to be used to quest clicking on that one and were constantly looking like a pair of ideots slapping air with our weps.

Lots of options for movement, but the W is set and then the mousekey is much easier I find, I can never remember the right
QWSDE and its a bore doing it that way, the movement is super fast as you have to spin around as the mobs go behind u,
they are very dinamic, little barstewards leep out of the way, get behind u so spinning is really good :P auto target so that
is good, just dodging around a lot, lots of fun, some quests hillarious,. highly recommend u finish the newbie iland ones
to get the feel of the mouse, and for the bits before you head to port

Death, arf lots of that but you can pick up a persons toomstone and take it to an alter to res them, so always good,
you get a bit of a negative if you leave to res and all that so good to have someone drag your rotting corpse to the stone.

Heal you cant regen ------- you can purchase pots to regen --- or use the medi come life stone
Healers you can't regen your mana only place to regen that is the regen stones, so be frugal with heals, only when you
need to and have to not hit those fancy spells :P but love the pet haha it agrovates nex and fred so i like them

Usually there are only 2 sets of stones per dungeon, so a long dungeon you have to buy lots of healing pots
or be very careful with healing the party memembers, you can also heal party memembers with turn undead
i currently have 6 turns :P called saves but really is heal over time, once they are gone you cant use until
you are fully rested again. Making u think alot.

Dungeons: Puzzles every step of the way. just like the pen and paper game, makes me chuckle the narater
makes me think of a bunch of geeks telling you that you see a leaver etc, lots of fun really like that,
some dungeons of course are evil :P and some houses ........ yup there are even basement dungeons and all that
Mr Binder is never going to talk to me after I completely managed to accidently kill all his family except his very old
matriac mother haha.

So , dungeons, puzzles etc galore and huge fun




Shad what a git, he does a quest and the pirate made this small little cobolt stand on the end of a plank, with dogs below,
what does shad do ............ make the little cobolt walk off and he was begging him, saying please dont make me walk
the plank, I have a family to feed, etc etc but noooooo he made him walk it until the dogs ripped his poor little body to shreads.

Evil ---------- but i had to laugh he genuinely got guilt doing it some of the quest lines seem to draw you in,
course I screamed when a bunch of bugbares fell on me from a roof, nearly wet myself lol

Quests are super thaught out........... crafting IS rocket science dont ask me no clue total confusion :P
But so far i can see orgument for armour crafting
and spell crafting