DDO vs WoW

[Angelus_dead]

DDO has an incredibly bad itemization. We cannot stop counting the problems related to items in this game.

On that subject, this is funny:
http://www.blizzard.com/us/jobopp/de...-item-wow.html

[al73r]

Played wow for 5hrs tonight
Hit lvl 20

Power leveling is a game breaker IMO .. had a guy just kill everything for me.
Combat system is ****.
Not impressed with the graphics.
Not impressed with the massive cities that force you to run for 10mins to get to your trainer.


As much as DDO is not polished it sure catches my eye a bit more.

After 5 hrs of playing i'm still not used to the controls.

Just my 2 cents.

[thingming]

Having played ddo for close to 3 yrs, and having my first 2 months of wow under my belt, I have some comparisons to add as well. DDO is an awesome game, and to tell you the truth, I made fun of people who played wow, because to me it looked stupid. I could not have been more wrong. There are things in WOW that are way more interesting than anything in DDO. That said, DDO has a Superior combat system....imho....

One thing that WOW does to keep the new peeps coming in, is the RAF system. Totally awesome to come into a game getting 300% xp. DDO could learn a thing or two from this example. There is absolutely no comparison in the amount of content, so I won't even touch this....

When questing, or just killing mobs becomes boring, just go raid a rival city, and wipe out your fellow players. (if on a pvp server). I view both games as entertaining, and worthy of my gaming dollars. Try them both, they each have their own little dumb things that we can pick apart till the cows come home.

P.S. Left DDO 2 months ago, and to be honest with you, wow has me won over. That does not mean that DDO is a bad game, but rather, not enough to do. We will see what happens after the next mod......YAHA

[JayDubya]

I went on an elite TR run with Clay, Uamhas and some other folks from Thelanis this morning. It was a zerg-fest extrodinaire, and it was incredibly fun. Crazy hordes of elite hobgoblins chasing us, wolves and spiders and ogres and spells and dancing and triple-hits and traps and haste scrolls and wand-whipping and barkskin potions, etc, etc. Intense, adrenaline pumping crazy-whacked-out-fun.

I have a static 4-man group I play in regularly, with a young cleric who often forgets he's not a barbarian. Quite intense

I've been in Shroud raids which have gone horribly wrong, but we pull together and regroup three or four times, sharing pots, scrolls, whatever. Where we've got Harry down to a sliver, and all we have left is one dwarven ranger with evasion, and everyone else is dead, and all of our hopes are pinned on one guy not rolling a 1.

I've never seen anything like it... oh wait, yes I have - Quake, Halo and Half-Life. Other than high-intensity FPS, there are no games with the level of combat intensity that you get in DDO, and the number of tactical options you have in solving quests and reaching goals.

People complain about the small world. but I like the small world. I like going back to earlier dungeons and kicking around the mobs that pwned me not so long ago. I hated the fact that in Warhammer, everyone was moving on, never really returning to the same place after finishing the quests. I know that's not for everyone -some people want to stretch out and explore the world in every direction. I respect that, and I wish there was more of that in DDO (if there were more explorer areas, and they connected together, it would feel more like a full world). But it's not a dealbreaker for me.

I would love it if DDO had better crafting, more ways to fight raid bosses and high-end monsters. I think DDO is shooting itself in the foot by having sub-par XP for hard quests (Necropolis, Searing Heights, Proof in the Poison, etc) - it's already relatively low on content, why make it even worse by making some quests not worth running?

I would love it if DDO had the ability to drain levels from characters "permanently" so they could respec.

But I find those issues minor, compared to the wicked fun involved in trying to drink haste potions and wand-whip an incapped friend back to life while being chased by 24 angry elite hobgoblins and an orange-named Ogre.

[Stonebread]

DDO character customization > WoW character customization

That is probably the most important thing to me. I love leveling up new characters and seeing how they work out. It is impossible to build a bad WoW toon because you have no important decisions to make. Their capabilities are tightly controlled and balanced. But in DDO, you can move outside the box and do very well if you know what you are doing.

[Noctus]

ummmm... Dude, my rogue is waaaay more than that and he's a 28 pt., non-optimzed, only decently equipped rogue. The really good rogues in DDO are amazing and not that hard to build, gear, or play. Just sayin...

/triple signed.

If your rogue was only a trap/open lock rogue you had a gimp.



And why was he a gimp? Because the class is inherently gimpy, as you claim?
Or rather that you build him to be a trap/open lock gimp, because "rogues are all about doing traps and opening locks and getting one-shotted if they dare to participate in a fight"?

[Mr_Ed7]

Why compare MMO's it's useless. It's what you want out of a game and the fun factor.

Have fun running to get 12 of this? Great! Want to run a cool raid or dungeon? Awesome!

Does it really matter what game it is?

Please refer to OP.

[cpito]

About 4 years ago, a friend of mine in Australia (east coast US here) tried to get me to join WoW so we could play together. We were chatting on MSN and he mentioned he was playing WoW at that moment, heading out to do a quest. We spent some time talking about it and it did sound kind of interesting and then we moved on to other topics. About two hours later he comes back with "sheet! I died, gimme a few minutes?" Sure thing. "did you at least get your quest done?" I inquired. "Nope, hadn't even gotten there yet.... now I have to go find my body before someone else does and takes my stuff"...what? Two hours gone and he hadn't even quested and now had this to deal with? As a mother of 2, I knew then that I wouldn't have the time to sink into WoW.

My best friend had a similar experience when her daughter tried to get her into WoW... 45 minutes of travelling to a quest only to die shortly before getting there and having to start all over again. This same friend has watched me play DDO and really REALLY wants to join but has made her wisdom check and does not play because she knows she'd get addicted. F2P may be her undoing

[KoboldKiller]

In my humble opinion, DDO beats WoW in one important category, the players, period.

[SolPiercer]

I did the WoW trial, and given we are talking about "role-playing" I just cannot play the role of a cartoon-like character. As with sporting games, I want to look like an athlete, so when adventuring I want to look like and become a more authentic medieval knight, rogue, ranger or the like. It may not bother some people, but it really is a show-stopper for me.

Plus for anyone who played pencil and paper D&D for so long, this is like watching a dream come true where everything is virtualized in the DDO world, at last! You learn a lot about real medieval weapons and armour, I always appreciated that base. We ought to support the trailblazers of original RPG... I've lost a few friends to WoW who aren't even willing to do the DDO trial - not sure why, fear of knowing they will want to switch?!

[Dark_Helmet]

I am trying to convince some people who happen to work in the computer industry that DDO is a better game then the one they are playing.

However, I have never played WoW.

Anyone have any thoughts on why DDO is the better game?

Preferably I would like to hear from someone who has played both.

One of the biggest blunders is saying "My game is better than your game" (the second is never get involved in a land war in Asia). Each game has it's own strengths and weaknesses.

The strength of DDO is it is based on D&D rules (for those who have played PnP before); the combat system is unique;dungeons are separate instances (no griefing / camping); and, it has built in voice chat (which a lot of people use).

The weakness is slow release of content . For new players, this should be no problem as they can quit subscribing (or just not buy stuff if they are F2P) when they are done with the content. Oh yeah, and the occasional lag (a lot of lag when F2P launches in 3-9 moths ).



Don't say it is better, say it is different and have them play with you on a trial account. If you can show them some basic stuff, it is better then letting them run around and get lost and bored.

[Mr_Ed7]

I did the WoW trial, and given we are talking about "role-playing" I just cannot play the role of a cartoon-like character. As with sporting games, I want to look like an athlete, so when adventuring I want to look like and become a more authentic medieval knight, rogue, ranger or the like. It may not bother some people, but it really is a show-stopper for me.

Plus for anyone who played pencil and paper D&D for so long, this is like watching a dream come true where everything is virtualized in the DDO world, at last! You learn a lot about real medieval weapons and armour, I always appreciated that base. We ought to support the trailblazers of original RPG... I've lost a few friends to WoW who aren't even willing to do the DDO trial - not sure why, fear of knowing they will want to switch?!

My friend and I were saying that when we were kids we would say "If only we could watch our characters fight the monsters on a TV screen!"

[salmag]

One of the biggest blunders is saying "My game is better than your game" (the second is never get involved in a land war in Asia).

I thought the more important one was "Don't mess with a Sicilian when DEATH is on the line!!!"

[Babumbalaboo]

Too many long, intelligent posts in this thread so instead of offering my own opinion, I will say this; I enjoy both games very much for different reasons. I will not offer up an opinion of which one is "better", because I find them beyond comparison. Don't give your friend DDO as an alternative to WoW. Give him DDO as DDO. If he likes it, cool. If he doesn't, oh well. Neither game is for everyone.

[Vendra]

The WOW devs have done a lot to try to change that. (Leading to results like this)

Please elaborate, I am not sure what this video is saying really. Is this supposed to be a hard fight or something?

[Chazzie]

I did give Wow a 4 month go and it was ok ,but the real reason I left where the playerbase,the bickering x box vs 360 and the other convo that went on reminded me of another mmo that I played with the daughter (Runescape talk about a grinding kiddy game) nuttin but rude little kids,even the adults acted like little children you would want to slap acting up in the store.

Full discloser: This is coming from a grandpa with a very long history with PnP D&D,but Im also a mmo nut. I have a nice list of mmo's I have played and still do play,But for the past year I have played 90% DDO....PnP peeps can relate to me because we can SEE with our own eyes that flippin Kobold,and watch your toon take him down =).

[Wabbajack]

DDO was advertised on ZAM Network's popular WoW Database website on Friday: Wowhead.com. (It's no longer there, must be an expensive slot thought!)

[Chazzie]

I did the WoW trial, and given we are talking about "role-playing" I just cannot play the role of a cartoon-like character. As with sporting games, I want to look like an athlete, so when adventuring I want to look like and become a more authentic medieval knight, rogue, ranger or the like. It may not bother some people, but it really is a show-stopper for me.

Plus for anyone who played pencil and paper D&D for so long, this is like watching a dream come true where everything is virtualized in the DDO world, at last! You learn a lot about real medieval weapons and armour, I always appreciated that base. We ought to support the trailblazers of original RPG... I've lost a few friends to WoW who aren't even willing to do the DDO trial - not sure why, fear of knowing they will want to switch?!

Amen +1 rep you said it better than me NICE !!

[nbhs275]

I only played WoW for a week and was somewhat bemused by what passes for a quest in that game having just started DDO... but I have watched Wintergrasp over a mates shoulder and that was pretty cool - a PvP raid! Wow I would love to see that in DDO. .

And there was the conversation with the guy that started out pleasantly enough and ended with him telling me how he'd just shaved his *****. That was easily the most traumatising conversation I've ever had in a game, lol. And I've grouped with *******.



In my mates spiel to get me to play the game, he claimed that all the kids gravitate to alliance because those races are pretty and therefore the adults gravitate towards horde because, well, there are no kids. Whether thats true or not I don't know.

I like DDO because the graphics are about 10000 times better than WoW - my mates machine is a topend dual geforce 9800 sli config so I expected the graphics to be awesome. Nope. Where we use the term toon as a purely legacy word, they use toon because their characters look like cartoons.

I love the combat system in DDO because it requires some skill. I don't like in wow how you can basically write a macro to execute a series of moves and attacks, trigger it on a mob and go make a cuppa.

The difference between DDO and WoW are huge, and the way people try to compare them really is never fair.

First, DDO is a completly instanced world, where WoW is an open world with instances. SO right there is a major divide. The wow solo experience is often similiar to running around alone in the explorer areas, just that the wow one have a much larger area, range of enemies, and environs.

Where the "quests" in DDO are all seperate instances, wows quests are all small missions. The true equivelent of DDOs quests in the WoW world is their instanced areas. These play much like a ddo instance in design. Kill trash mobs, fight boss, get reward.

Loot is completely different also. WoW gives loot per mob, from chests, and larger awards based on type of mob(boss/rare/raidboss). DDO simply gives all loot via chests, which are gained mostly through boss fights also.

CUSTOMIZATION! Here is where alot of people have odd arguements. Sure, ddo gives you a very free way of developing a character. However because of the way our stats are layed out, the obvious power combinations, and poor development of role balance, we get alot of the same thing out of different combos.

As it is right now, if you look for a DPS character, most will be TWF, using only maybe 2-3 different weapon types, no matter what the class/setup. I mean, from a direct play perspective, there isnt a huge difference between a TWF rogue, ranger, barbarian, fighter, or paladin. In the end your buffing up and holding the right button.

Wow however gives you a much narrower space to customize, in that all the classes have 3 defined talent trees that they can follow. BUT they all, for the most part, lead to complete different play styles, abilities, and powers.

Where in DDO a rogue is a rogue, no matter how you build it, a WoW rogue can either be a poison based killer, a brute sword wielding thug, or a stealthy oppertunist. And the talent trees all work to support the roles.

PvP...Quick note. DDO pvp really shouldnt be in the game. It's probably one of the dumbest things they have done. Its such a shoddy piece of work, that if i tried to compare it with WoW, or any other MMO with pvp, it would be a ten page long list of errors.

CRAFTING. DDO loses. Plain and simple. The only "crafting" in the game currently amounts to "grind shroud, make same weapon everyone else uses". Wows crafting involves collecting materials from varies places to make items of varying power and use. This also effects the games economy.

DDO's economy is ...well....****. Anything worth any value has shot up to the point where plat is nearly worthless. If you visit the AH, you can see tomes, materials, and even potions listed at several thousand plat, all the way to the millions. Where as the ecomies in WoW are actually based on values. Something that people actually need and is difficult to get has a connected value, where things that are easy to get or that are less necessary drop in value. That function helps keep the WoW AHs from having huge amounts of junk going for rediculous prices. And, keeps the games currency actually worthwhile.

RAIDING. WoW wins. WoW wins for the fact that the raids arent a single boss. That the loot is balanced, mathmatical superior to that which came before it, and actually drops in numbers enough to make it worthwhile to run them.

DDOs raids have become nothing but cheesy quests that up to 12 people can enter. When you consider that many of DDOs best players can 2-3man most if not all the raids, it makes them look bad. When you consider that many of those people with the ability to do such need to bring along 9-10 fillers for a chance for loot to actually drop, they look worse.

OH, and if you need one more arguement why WoW raiding is DDOs superior, its because its content not every player can do. If you look at the stats for wow raiding(which blizzard can actually give you because they numbers for the game arent completely hidden like ddos) you can see there is a good portion of players who have never completed the current first tier of raiding. Few still have killed the "end boss" of Ulduar, the next higher step.


In the end tho, wow and ddo are really not similiar. WoW is a number backed, strategy heavy, open world with a huge fan base, quick and skillful development, and reliable service. DDO is an under publicized,high speed low number, instanced game. With apparently all the backing of its developer and none from its financier.


This might be a little rambly, but its pretty accurate. Tho if i see anyone else say " wow quests are all go kill ten rats" ill shove arlos right up thier arse. I guess ill just argue back "all ddo quests are go kill the boss and come back here for a random useless award you will sell for 1k plat and then blow on 3 scrolls"

[nbhs275]

The WOW devs have done a lot to try to change that. (Leading to results like this)

Please elaborate, I am not sure what this video is saying really. Is this supposed to be a hard fight or something?

OK, heres the breakdown. Freya is a boss who is contantly healing during the fight through a buff on here. Through the fight she spawns 6 sets of adds. When you kill these adds, she loses a portion of her healing buff. So the normal method of taking her out is to kill the 6 waves of adds as they come, to remove her healing buff from her. Then you simply tank and spank really.

What that video shows is them going in and simply burning her down, buy outpacing her healing. Its from the beta or test server, where her healing wasnt as high as what ended up in the final version most likely.