Considering coming back, a few questions...

[blarneystone]

I preordered the game when it first came out, played it for a month or two and hit the level cap (it was 10 or 11 at the time, don't remember). Got bored pretty quick, and with no promise of the level cap being raised in the next year, I quit.

I understand it has been raised, though I'm not sure by how much. No FAQ or mention of it in the About section on the website. I also understand there is PvP and stuff added now, which is nice.

Soooooo... the questions:

1. What's the current level cap?
2. How is PvP (for those who like doing PvP in games)?
3. What is the current end game like?
4. Do you feel like they (Turbine) keep the updates coming at a reasonable pace? I did notice it's been... err, what, 2-3 years since launch? And there are no paid expansions, and they are on free content update #8? LOTRO on the other hand has been out less time, has a paid expansion, and many more free content updates than that I think.

Thanks guys :) It was a fun game, and I miss a lot of aspects about it, just wish there had been a bit more to it. Hoping they've filled it out a bit in my absense :)

[...v...]

I preordered the game when it first came out, played it for a month or two and hit the level cap (it was 10 or 11 at the time, don't remember). Got bored pretty quick, and with no promise of the level cap being raised in the next year, I quit.

I understand it has been raised, though I'm not sure by how much. No FAQ or mention of it in the About section on the website. I also understand there is PvP and stuff added now, which is nice.

Soooooo... the questions:

1. What's the current level cap? current level cap is 16 going to 20 soon
2. How is PvP (for those who like doing PvP in games)?pvp sux
3. What is the current end game like?Raids! crafting a lot of fun.
4. Do you feel like they (Turbine) keep the updates coming at a reasonable pace? I did notice it's been... err, what, 2-3 years since launch? And there are no paid expansions, and they are on free content update #8? LOTRO on the other hand has been out less time, has a paid expansion, and many more free content updates than that I think. Were all impatient for the new mod 9 to hit it would'nt be fair to answer that ;).

Thanks guys :) It was a fun game, and I miss a lot of aspects about it, just wish there had been a bit more to it. Hoping they've filled it out a bit in my absense :)

gl hf

[Bekki]

I preordered the game when it first came out, played it for a month or two and hit the level cap (it was 10 or 11 at the time, don't remember). Got bored pretty quick, and with no promise of the level cap being raised in the next year, I quit.

I understand it has been raised, though I'm not sure by how much. No FAQ or mention of it in the About section on the website. I also understand there is PvP and stuff added now, which is nice.

Soooooo... the questions:

1. What's the current level cap?
2. How is PvP (for those who like doing PvP in games)?
3. What is the current end game like?
4. Do you feel like they (Turbine) keep the updates coming at a reasonable pace? I did notice it's been... err, what, 2-3 years since launch? And there are no paid expansions, and they are on free content update #8? LOTRO on the other hand has been out less time, has a paid expansion, and many more free content updates than that I think.

Thanks guys :) It was a fun game, and I miss a lot of aspects about it, just wish there had been a bit more to it. Hoping they've filled it out a bit in my absense :)


Answers:

1. What's the current level cap?

The current cap is 16. Mod 9 is supposed to raise this to 20
In addition to this There is talk of a new Playable race coming soon as well...
Half -Orcs! RAWR!!! (I don't know yet if it is true, :( but personally... I hope it is...) :D

2. How is PvP (for those who like doing PvP in games)?

This really would depend on you opinion of PvP.
If you like full Pvp the you may not like it... as it is limited to certain Taverns and Instances within those PvP arenas.
If PvP is not your main focus then It is okay, when you feel like doing PvP... You head to the tavern and PvP.
It really hinges on personal preference...

3. What is the current end game like?
There are alot of new Raids with more to come with Mod 9! :D
They now have crafting and I am trying to get ennough components to try it...
I can't comment on this too much as I haven't done anything with it yet...

4. Do you feel like they (Turbine) keep the updates coming at a reasonable pace? I did notice it's been... err, what, 2-3 years since launch? And there are no paid expansions, and they are on free content update #8? LOTRO on the other hand has been out less time, has a paid expansion, and many more free content updates than that I think.

I think they try to update at a reasonable pace... when I first started... Two years ago???
Three years??? I lost count. I started back in 2006, Joined the Forums later. :D
They had monthly content updates... they reduced this to Quarterly and Annual updates to improve the content, and reliability of the Mods... as some of the earlier mods proved to be Reallly buggy and they had allot of Downtime Immediatly post mod. so to try and correct this they backed it off to Quarterly mods....

I hope this helps...


Bekki.

[Angelus_dead]

1. What's the current level cap?
The cap went 10, 12, 14, 16, and will be 20 in the next real update.


2. How is PvP (for those who like doing PvP in games)?
Not much there.

The biggest use of PvP is to practice your gear/spells for PvE. For any other purpose, PvP has two huge flaws
a. The game balance isn't aimed at PvP at all
b. Little in the way of pvp maps / rule support.

There's 2 kinds of pvp. The more popular one is to walk into a brawling room of a tavern and attack whoever's there (or maybe play a kind of KOTH and hold the room against all comers). Or you can organize a pvp party and play TDM or CTF on one of three pvp arena maps. Hardly anyone ever does that, but that's not a bad game... it's fun like CTF can be, except that you've got to know that only 3-4 classes have any chance at all.

But again, essentially nobody will do that unless you invite people for that specifically.



3. What is the current end game like?
End game is mostly about repeating a fairly small number of high and mid level quests which have good loot in them. Most of those quests are raids, which accept 12 players, and for which you need a full group not because the mission is hard to complete, but because more loot drops the more players your brought.

Notably, some of those repeated raids are old and built for a lower level cap, so their monsters provide zero challenge towards current capped characters. But they have some loot you can't equal elsewhere, so they still get run. (I consider that situation one of DDO's biggest flaws)



4. Do you feel like they (Turbine) keep the updates coming at a reasonable pace? I did notice it's been... err, what, 2-3 years since launch? And there are no paid expansions, and they are on free content update #8?
It's not quite as bad as only 8 updates, but it's still quite bad. The current update is Module 8, and originally they tried to have a system of big updates called modules and small updates called whatever. But the small updates mostly sucked (they usually contained content areas at a level where the devs shouldn't have bothered wasting their effort), and they gave up on doing them anyhow.

(It's pretty sad that the small updates were mostly unpopular, because it isn't that the quests were inherently bad: they were just set at poor levels of loot, so visiting them wasn't a profitable usage of character time compared to existing quests. On the rare occasions when a small update included a high-level quest, it worked into gameplay OK)

So yeah, the rate of updates is terribly low. And the problem isn't only with the rollout of new content areas, but also fixes and improvements. For an example of the single biggest failure in that area, look what they did to the Abbot raid (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=161293). The Black Abbot raid was part of Module 5, but the original version didn't work quite right. So after a week or two they patched it and completely wrecked the quest, making it a million-to-one incompletable unless you were cheating (and cheating in a way that wasn't fun either). It was obviously broken, but they haven't fixed it yet. A couple months ago the devs announced they had fixed it, and so the patch will probably come in module 9... but it's just terribly bad for a big-name raid to be so broken for so long. (And this underlines how they don't have the capability to push out a change in a reasonable time. The fix is done, but they can't patch it in).

If you instead look at WOW, they had a big content update in Dec, and have had at least 2-3 serious adjustments of gameplay rules since then.



Thanks guys :) It was a fun game, and I miss a lot of aspects about it, just wish there had been a bit more to it. Hoping they've filled it out a bit in my absense :)
Give DDO a try, and it will seem like updates came faster because you weren't standing around waiting.

[feynman]

1. What's the current level cap?
2. How is PvP (for those who like doing PvP in games)?
3. What is the current end game like?
4. Do you feel like they (Turbine) keep the updates coming at a reasonable pace? I did notice it's been... err, what, 2-3 years since launch? And there are no paid expansions, and they are on free content update #8? LOTRO on the other hand has been out less time, has a paid expansion, and many more free content updates than that I think.


1. 16
2. We have PvP? :)
3. There are several high level areas, each with an associated raid. Crafting is a grind, IMHO, but you don't really have to do that much to get your items.
4. Forget paid expansions; we get the same thing for free, and you don't have to worry about filling a group and someone not having the expansion for the quest you want to run. I would like to see them either more often or with more content, but I'd like to have an olympic sized swimming pool filled with jello and Victoria's secret models, too.

[tihocan]

Btw there have been more than 8 "free content" upgrades. Up until, hmm, some point, there used to be new quests between "big" modules. Now, they don't do it anymore, supposedly because modules are bigger (but it's not always the case).