Dungeons & Dragons Online

Tarmoll

I was getting a bit burnt out after playing WOW for 4 years and some of my guildies were extolling the virtues of the above game. So I thought I'd give it a try as its F2P.

In short, I am enjoying it immensely. Its based on the pen and paper version as far as possible so it helps if you are a geek in that department. Not as cartoony was Wow but grouping is easier. Most dungeons have four difficulty levels - solo, normal, hard and elite.

Check it out here - http://www.ddo.com/playnow/

I'm on the server Khyber if you want to look me up - Tarmoll or Cyphera.

cruizer101

Looks good, can you confirm is there no costs at all.

How are they making money, advertising revenue or pay for addons or something.

I played a bit of D&D years ago so will give a go this evening anyway.

Edit: My bad I should have spent more time looking at website, there are paid subscriptions which offer more options in terms of classes & races, also priority queuing and that, still looks decent for free option though

Tarmoll

I played the free account for a few weeks and levelled my characters without any issues. Its perfectly possible to play like this for a long time - even up to the level cap of 20.

Then I started to pay for some "Favour points" in order to purchase "adventure packs" so that I could play with my guildies. This unlocked the "Premium" Account features.

Basically these unlock areas where you can do groups of new dungeon quests. After the second purchase (at $11.99 a pop) I decided to pay for a "VIP account". This cost me c.$43 for 3 months (cant remember exaclty now) and unlocks the additional classes - like Warforged, Monk etc. and all the other adventure areas.

The F2P gives you lots of time to decide whether you like it or not.

jman0war

Tarmoll wrote: »

I played the free account for a few weeks and levelled my characters without any issues. Its perfectly possible to play like this for a long time - even up to the level cap of 20.

Then I started to pay for some "Favour points" in order to purchase "adventure packs" so that I could play with my guildies. This unlocked the "Premium" Account features.

Basically these unlock areas where you can do groups of new dungeon quests. After the second purchase (at $11.99 a pop) I decided to pay for a "VIP account". This cost me c.$43 for 3 months (cant remember exaclty now) and unlocks the additional classes - like Warforged, Monk etc. and all the other adventure areas.

The F2P gives you lots of time to decide whether you like it or not.

From what i've read, the F2P is for US players only. Not for Europe.
However apparently a player from Europe can connect to a US server and play for free, however if they later want to become a VIP customer, they'd find their international credit card not working on their US server account.

Tarmoll

jman0war wrote: »

From what i've read, the F2P is for US players only. Not for Europe.
However apparently a player from Europe can connect to a US server and play for free, however if they later want to become a VIP customer, they'd find their international credit card not working on their US server account.

Ahem - I'm in Ireland. All my guildies are in Europe. I paid for my VIP account using my (Bank of Ireland) Mastercard.

Trust me on this.

http://my.ddo.com/character/khyber/tarmoll/

jman0war

That's interesting news.
And do you play on a US server?
Or when you became a VIP customer, did you have start from scratch with a new character?
If you didn't, did you pay the fee to move your character from a US server to a Europe one?

Turbine runs the game in the US, but they've contracted out the European servers to Codemaster, and that's why they don't offer the free to play thing.

the launch of a free-to-play version, Eberron Unlimited, in the US

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/dungeons-and-dragons-online-re-review - Sept 2009

Turbine has announced that its MMO game Dungeons & Dragons Online will become a free-to-play title in the US following the release of a digital upgrade this summer

European publisher Codemasters currently has no plans to follow suit, confirming that the game’s existing subscription model will remain in place for the time being.
“To clarify, for the time being, DDO Europe will not be assuming this new business model and the European DDO game service will remain a monthly subscription-based game with all new content created available to all subscribers, as has been the model up until now.

http://www.next-gen.biz/news/us-dungeons-dragons-online-going-free-to-play -June 2009

But hey, if you've got a way around that you should let people know on the official forums.
Maybe CodeMaster is now following the same thing?
Or maybe, Turbine has decided to accept foreign credit cards now?

Tarmoll

Ah. Best quote from my guildie's post here -

"We are using the US version of the game because Codemasters are not offering the free to play model. The server we are on is Khyber.

Download from here and account setup https://trial.turbine.com/index.php

If you use their download manager you can be in the character creation section and into the tutorial within 30 mins while the rest of the game downloads in the background.

Download Manager here :-
http://www.ddo.com/ddosupport/download-ddo "

It was totally seamless moving from the F2P account to the VIP account. My characters came with me - no extra charge.

I note that you can't use Paypal though but as I said, the credit card worked fine.

PS: My son is playing with a free account on the Cannith server because all his pals (Irish) are there.

Tarmoll

A little news update.

Switch to free-to-play working very well for DDO

zekiel

Was looking to give d&d another go.. free to play means I'm definitely going to give it another go, how is the pings when playing on the us server any major lag or anything?

Downloading now.

Also when you used your CC I notice it requires a US address, what did you do for that?

Tarmoll

zekiel wrote: »

Was looking to give d&d another go.. free to play means I'm definitely going to give it another go, how is the pings when playing on the us server any major lag or anything?

Downloading now.

Also when you used your CC I notice it requires a US address, what did you do for that?

Sry - only getting back to this thread now.
I used my Ireland address and it went through fine. Can't remember if I filled in the Zip Code as I usually do - 000000. Anyhow, the deductions are appearing on my CC account.

Re lag - no problems at all there. Occasional hiccups at login but everything settles down ok.

Ravage1616

Downloaded it last night! Will give it a try later on today! Used to play D&D long time ago!