Game world seems smaller than expected.

[Incomyng]

Imagine if your pencil and paper DM did that.

DM: Ok, you've killed the ogre king and looted his chests. What do you do.
Player: We return to town to spend our gold on wine, women, and song!
DM: OK, what do you do?
Player: Uh, I leave the ogre king's lair...I just said that...
DM: Fine. You take a step. What do you do next?
Player: Huh?? I said I go to town.
DM: OK, you take another step, I assume.
Player: Obviously! I walk to town!
DM: Ok, you take another step.
Player: *Sigh* whatever. OK, I take steps towards town until I get there or you tell me something else happens.
DM: Sounds good. You walk out of the lair. And through the caves you fought through. And out into daylight. You descend the cliff face that you walked up earlier. You reach the plains. You tread across the a field of wild grasses...and across a stream...and across another field of grass...and come to a rocky outcropping. You cross the outcropping and find another grassy field. You cross it and enter some sparce woods. You walk across the leafy ground, deeper and deeper into the woods....
Player: zzzzzzzz

Boring! How's a live DM do it?

DM: Ok, you've killed the ogre king and looted his chests. What do you do.
Player: We return to town to spend our gold on wine, women, and song!
DM: Ok, let me roll some random encounters and...you arrive in town.

That's what DDO is trying to replicate.

lol .. your games were shorter than mine then

we had 3 day/night game sessions at a time, depending how we felt we could be all summer on the same **** dungeon .. our DM was a b'stard. we got seven shades of **** kicked out of us just getting there, let alone getting back.

And before we went it was buying supplies, making sure we purchased a cart .. yes a cart, our DM didn't allow us the ease of pocketing shields, armour etc for the trip back, not that we ever found much, he was as tight as a ducks ass!

it was all fun though .. as long as you weren't put in charge of drinks anyway.

[ProdigalGuru]

There are plenty of wilderness areas if you like to explore...

[Razcar]

Thanks for the replies.

I guess the comparison to Guild Wars makes the most sense.

And don't get me wrong, there are a lot of quests and a lot to explore, but without a world map, games just sort of have this enclosed, linear feeling to them. Even if running to a destination is a "time sink," there's a lot to be said for the openness and exploration of it.

Not every single second has to be spent in a game doing something productive. Sometimes it's nice to just get out, run around, and find cool locations. In DDO, this basically doesn't exist.

It's just not that kind of MMO. DDO doesn't follow the template of Everquest. Some players think that's good, some think (thought rather, since they likely left) it's bad, some are in between. I think it's nice myself, just because there are so many MMOs doing the "open world" thing already. So if I want to run/ride into the sunset I can load Lord of the Rings Online or something similar. If I want heavily instanced, ninja-free dynamic environments in scripted quests in my MMO, there is not so much else out there than DDO.

They added the "Adventure zones" sometime ago to make the game world seem bigger, and I think they succeeded partly with that. Now you can imagine that there is something beyond the city walls in the Harbour, because there actually is (Cerulean Hills). Even though exits from the Adventure zones themselves are all blocked by rocks or mountains .

On a technical level, I do not think the monster collision detection/pathing and general combat/spell mechanics of DDO would work with more than 12 people in an instance anyway. Something would likely have to be toned down if we should be able to have larger and more populated zones than we already have.