Dungeons and Dragons Online free to play

I can't say I really care about Dungeons and Dragons, never played it, seen the movie which was ok but not great, and the only reason I kind of know what its about is that I know it's something like Warhammer, I get the impression that Warhammer is the more characterful game of the two though.

So yeah it's free to play now, looks like it's a little different from normal MMO's, I don't think it's news that it's free to play but I didn't find a topic about it on this forum, I saw it on a banner of another forum and thought I'd take a look, the game looks ok, I've only looked at one video showing gameplay and the others were just to see it's settings maxed out, because in the gameplay video they looked a bit average and dull.

I don't think I'll download this game at the moment just to try it out, but if you guys what to play I'll join you. I've already got 3 MMO's on my PC; WoW, RoM and LotRO.

I think I might actually give this a go now, I watched a review which looked good, graphically it's not amazing but it looks like its a very solid game that plays a bit differently from the usually MMO's, which is a big plus. It might teach me to be a better MMO player because you need to work in parties on some dungeons, which is something I don't do and I kind of blame PSO for that, it kind of set my mind to not trusting other players because they might PK or crash the lobby etc. I really need to get out of that way of thinking. I really don't talk to people online apart from you RA guys. I'd rather play with you guys anyway, but we don't play the same games very often. I also want to slow myself down while playing, as it is known I tend to burn myself out and loss interest. I'm going to try not no focus on leveling up and getting stuff and try just to enjoy the quests etc.

Quite enjoying it at the minute. I've made a Rogue, they are used to scout into dungeons and disarm traps, unlock doors, find secret doors etc. The game looks quite nice as well, bit dated sure but thats because its 5 years old or so, but it does look good. It's a bit confusing there is a lot to take in. I've actually been reading quests, I haven't done that in an MMO for a long while.

So now it's free does that mean you need to use a cash shop to get anywhere?

I've heard that the cash shop doesn't cause you any problems, I've not really looked at it. I think it's more like Champions Online than say LoTRO which only really let you play upto level 20. There are some classes and races which you have to pay for if you want them but there are a good number of free ones. The character creation is quite good, it's no Perfect World but you get a good sellection of options.

Leveling up is a bit odd, you have to rank up about 5 times before you can level up, there are only 20 levels in the game but you have to in effect level up 5 times for each level, so it's more like 100 levels really. Ranking up gets you points to spend on skills and leveling I guess gets you stats, I've not leveled up yet I'm rank 2 level 1.

Guilds don't have guild houses, they have guild airships! I don't know if they actually move around or if they are just fancy houses.

The download of the client uses Pando so after you have downloaded and installed the client make sure to unistall Pando or it will use your PC as a seed to torrent the client to other people. It's perfectly easy to find and unistall it doesn't try to hide itself on your PC or make itself difficult to uninstall or anything, it's just an underhanded thing to do.

Thanks again to Longlegs for the warning about Pando.

I'm playing on the Sarlona server.

Wow I just did the last part of a quest on hard with 1 HP, I don't think the last guy was as tough as the others but 1 hit and I'd be dead. Dying itself in this game doesn't matter you don't loss anything exactly, but if you complete the quest without dying you get more exp. You don't get exp from killing monsters in this exactly you get exp at the end of the quest based on what happened in the quest, i.e. if you found all the secrets, traps you disarmed, things you broke monsters you killed etc. Dungeons and quests are the same thing in this game and you can pick a difficulty before you start. You have to unlock the difficulties by completing the one below it, and you are supposed to get better loot when you do play harder versions, though I didn't when I played on hard...

Dying in a party in this game is much more serious, you team mates can't just revive you, if you aren't fully dead just knocked out they can but if you actually die you become a ghost and your team mates can pick up your soul stone, and carry you to a respawn stone thing, which isn't always close by. Now as a ghost you can still be helpful to your party and scout on ahead. I believe you can just leave the dungeon and run back to your party but I think that losses you more exp. It's a striked system but I think it's good.

I'm not very far in this game so far it's good, maybe the best thing so far is that there are puzzles in the game, so you've just finished slaughtering a bunch of spiders and then you open a door and have to solve a puzzle on the floor so that energy flows to all the corners correctly. I like that it's different and if you haven't done the dungeon before you really don't know whats coming, it's not like most where the only thing thats different is the look and how long the dungeon is.

*Cough* I decided to make a warrior though because I was finding it quite hard going with the rogue. I'll go back to the rogue when I understand the game better.