Favorite Expansion Packs

[Cranjis]

I want to get a combined vote on which expansion pack people like, whether it is storyline, gameplay, or something else.

I am predicting that Ravenloft will win, but we will see.

[Szling]

Not the saltmarsh expansion mind you, but the balance changes. Best update 9/10.

[WruntJunior]

Not the saltmarsh expansion mind you, but the balance changes. Best update 9/10.

I loved Saltmarsh and the balance changes and new items that came with it myself, it's probably my number 3 expansion (behind ravenloft and, my favorite, the feywild).

Feywild is my favorite, between the environment and quests, the loot, and the enhancement tree tied to it that I use on almost every build I play now.

[kmoustakas]

Death house still haunts me. Ravenloft is not the best pack but it's definatelly the best expansion via a wide margin.

Shadowfail does too sometimes for all the wrong reasons. It's the worst expansion by far

[axel15810]

I think Ravenloft is the best from a quality/design standpoint but on a personal level I enjoy MoTU the most. So I voted MoTU since the poll is asking for favorites.

[TFerguson]

Ravenloft is an absolute masterpiece.

[cmecu]

Hard toss up for me.. I love Ravenloft, and I also love anything Forgotten Realms. So all of Evening Star I love also. I would love to see more Forgotten Realms expansions.

[Isolani]

I voted Ravenloft, but I think all of them, including Saltmarsh are pretty good. Except for Shadowfell, there's some good xp quests in it, but nothing else about it really grabbed me.

[droid327]

No love for Sharn? You all wear the gear but won't rep the pack lol

It's got great gear...the quests are all great outside of Just Business and Same Old Song with the sound on....I love that it's got nice bite size quests as well as longer form ones...and a decent and well presented storyline to boot..and it gives Inqui, which is pretty much the ranged playstyle of record

One of the best elements in any quest is in Reach, one I'd like to see more often: you can choose between a trash-heavy path that favors aoe, or a boss-heavy path that favors single target burst. Well kinda, two target burst I guess..

[Weemadarthur]

No love for Sharn? You all wear the gear but won't rep the pack lol

It's got great gear...the quests are all great outside of Just Business and Same Old Song with the sound on....I love that it's got nice bite size quests as well as longer form ones...and a decent and well presented storyline to boot..and it gives Inqui, which is pretty much the ranged playstyle of record

One of the best elements in any quest is in Reach, one I'd like to see more often: you can choose between a trash-heavy path that favors aoe, or a boss-heavy path that favors single target burst. Well kinda, two target burst I guess..

Although I like Sharn I would say it relied way too much on the loot rather than the pack itself. If you remove the gear from the equation its a pretty average pack with very little to make it stand out. MOTU on the other hand is still run regularly to this day and is also the xpack that gave us ED's (which are mandatory for all epic content), Iconics and some actual epic content to run with our epic characters. Without the loot Ravenloft definately has the best story and atmosphere by a long shot with quite a few stand out quests and very few unliked ones (I'm looking at you Wachterhouse). So although Sharn is I would say a decent pack I would say that MOTU and Ravenloft were and are better (although I can't decide which is best so am abstaining from voting :P)

On the flipside I suggest any future x-packs should be compared to Sharn 1st and foremost. It is imo exactly as good as an x-pack should be. I kind of look at it as the average that is both acceptable and enjoyable without being anything truly special.

[Dejvid]

im voting for MotU, because it felt the most like an actual expansion pack.

it introduced a new setting, a new hub, had a big chunk of content, a new class, another batch of challenges, and it brought us into epics with destinies.
there was even that introductionary questchain in the harbour to hype the expansion! it felt the most natural evolution of the game.

and honestly, theres just something about the later expansions that feels off to me. the quality is top notch, no questions asked (and im a person that does not care about the loot, i want an actual good experience (not exp!) with the quests and the adventure itself), but everything after motu felt more like just expanded adventure packs then an actual expansion of the game.

[HuneyMunster]

Best to worst:-
Ravenloft
Menance of the Underdark
Feywild
Sharn
Saltmarsh
Shadowfell Conspiracy

[SerPounce]

im voting for MotU, because it felt the most like an actual expansion pack.

it introduced a new setting, a new hub, had a big chunk of content, a new class, another batch of challenges, and it brought us into epics with destinies.
there was even that introductionary questchain in the harbour to hype the expansion! it felt the most natural evolution of the game.

and honestly, theres just something about the later expansions that feels off to me. the quality is top notch, no questions asked (and im a person that does not care about the loot, i want an actual good experience (not exp!) with the quests and the adventure itself), but everything after motu felt more like just expanded adventure packs then an actual expansion of the game.

MotU was also the buggiest on launch. Some of that ED and druid stuff was broken for years and it introduced a ton of exploits that have haunted the game. The vision was huge, but the delivery left something to be desired.

I definitely a agree that the buildup around MotU was the best. We had the intro quest line and trailer, and they even *gasp* advertised and it brought in a lot of people. It was a fun time to play, but I think all the SSG xpacks are better products (and I'm guessing were made on much smaller budgets).

Edit:
Ravenloft
Sharn/Feywild
Saltmarsh (I really do like it, but the scale is just much smaller)/MotU (Huge, but introduced a lot of problems)
Shadowfell (Something clearly when wrong with the development here; should have included thunderholme and full enhancement rework)

[salmag]

Best to worst:-
Ravenloft
Menance of the Underdark
Feywild
Sharn
Saltmarsh
Shadowfell Conspiracy

I agree with this except I would place Sharn over Feywild.

[Eme]

RL- that was an experience first time through, the others still good but they were adventures

[Aelonwy]

Ravenloft hands down. Don't even have to think about it. When a TRed character of mine is approaching the levels to run it my imagination begins to salivate.
Now if the question was second favorite or to rank them... well then dang it, that's going to take some critical thinking.

When I evaluate a set of adventures my criteria are Story & Characters, Setting & Atmosphere (Aesthetics), Gameplay & Enjoyment, Rewards.

• Story & Characters Was the story interesting? Was I concerned for and invested in the characters? Was the voice-work top-notch? To be fair the voice-work in DDO is almost always top-notch.
• Setting & Atmosphere (Aesthetics) Was the setting visually interesting? Were the interiors and exteriors of the quests immersing me in the story? Did the aesthetics make me feel a part of a grand adventure?
• Gameplay & Enjoyment Were the quests fun? Were there mechanics that made me look forward eagerly to the quests or dread some boring, compulsory portion that impeded progress without being necessary to the story? Were the villains/mobs/etc thoughtfully placed in the quest or were they clone-stamped down in little matching groups every x-meters just because? Were the puzzles/mini-games appropriate to the theme of the quest and storyline in which they've been placed?
• Rewards This doesn't mean what you think it means. I'm not talking XP or even named items, necessarily. More the mechanics of the rewards. Did this adventure pack/expansion have rewards that required massive grinding or could you get most of what you needed (for one character) in one or two play throughs? Was there excessive randomness to the rewards such as was in the old s/s/s mechanics, or did you have to do the highest difficulty to get the only desirable version of an item (old named items with difficulty versioning). You could grind ToEE for a year and still not have the particular weapon or armor you wanted drop. I still don't feel adequately rewarded for retrieving the Stormreach Beacon from Sharn because no one in Stormreach so much as thanked me.

So if I ranked the Expansions from best to worst based on my criteria it would be:

• Ravenloft
• Menace of the Underdark
• Sharn
• Feywild
• Saltmarsh
• Shadowfell

Although if I'm being honest with myself Feywild and Saltmarsh could be interchangeable on the list. I really love the aesthetics and atmosphere of Feywild and Feytwisted chests were just straight up genius but I will forever feel like Feywild was rushed and there just wasn't enough to it. It needed more quests, a larger wilderness zone, more optionals, some of the quests are too much repetition with nothing really of interest such as Combatting Corruption, others are overly convoluted without a logical progression of story as you explore such as A Frosty Reception, which I like by the way but I can hear my husband's teeth grind the moment we enter. Saltmarsh has a wonderful salty boondock atmosphere and most of the quests are a pleasure to run with more story and optionals if you want them.

Shadowfell is last, will always be last because of so many things... I hate fighting Shadarkai, I hate having to change my graphic settings for the purple glow of blinding, named items with random effects *smh, rolls eyes*, I only really enjoy Mirror and most the Stormhorn quests. The quest giver named items have almost always been lame. I usually like Urban wilderness zones, I love the Chronoscope raid for this reason but Wheloon *blech*. However the Stormhorns are gorgeous and I love them dearly. Oh and voice-work, the weaselly, venomous sounding Netherese... Idk, just too much of it maybe? They set my teeth on edge. I often turn off narration when running Wheloon so that's two things - Narration and Graphics that I change to run that content. Not a pleasure.

[Weemadarthur]

[*] Setting & Atmosphere (Aesthetics) Was the setting visually interesting? Were the interiors and exteriors of the quests immersing me in the story? Did the aesthetics make me feel a part of a grand adventure?

Nice post and I pretty much agree with all of it but the part I quoted I think is actually key to the difference between those packs that get known as great and those that are just good. Ravenloft dripped atmosphere from the moment you stepped in and the feel of the place made quests that could have been boring dungeon crawls into some of the most popular quests in the game. As an example Death house is a pretty run of the mill quest if you just look at the quest design and story board but everything in there from the look of the house to the simple yet incredibly effective sound makes it feel so much more. The same could be said for the Schynd quests in MOTU. They all have a great aesthetic and despite being quite small maps for the most part manage to give an impression of being a small part of a much larger whole.

I think this is a part of the problem with Sharn for me. For a place that's known for the verticality of its structure all the quests feel quite flat (I will make an exception for reach but tbh that's the only quest where I felt like I was in Sharn). I don't think it ever really got the feel of being a place where height was a major factor. A lot of the quests I thought were great (some comparable or better than RL) as far as mechanics and story went but the atmosphere just felt too closed in and horizontal.

[fredericko]

Many of DDO expansions are outstanding material, but Menace of the Underdark takes the crown for so many reasons it would take several pages to explain. An extremely concise explanation:
As DDOWiki states, WB supported Turbine (later SSG, now daybreakgames?) with some million dollars, and IMHO Turbine put them to good use. Bear in mind Neverwinter MMO was not a thing in those days. Quality and quantity of storylines, assets, mechanics (not just player-wise, even DM-wise), maps (quality differs, but still): three player hubs -the rift, the cavern, eveningstar-, four wilderness zones (Underdark is still my favorite wilderness to this day, with some of the best random encounters too), the story arcs with a proper conclusion to each arc, all building towards a raid against one of DnD iconic gods while helping Elminster himself, etc.
Ravenloft, a masterpiece by itself, has to be a close second -amazing art and art direction, maps, mechanics, quests...- but still.

[Hawkwier]

RL is hands (of the dawn healer) down the best by a (Barovian) country mile.

[kmoustakas]

No love for Sharn? You all wear the gear but won't rep the pack lol

It's got great gear...the quests are all great outside of Just Business and Same Old Song with the sound on....I love that it's got nice bite size quests as well as longer form ones...and a decent and well presented storyline to boot..and it gives Inqui, which is pretty much the ranged playstyle of record

One of the best elements in any quest is in Reach, one I'd like to see more often: you can choose between a trash-heavy path that favors aoe, or a boss-heavy path that favors single target burst. Well kinda, two target burst I guess..

Sharn competes for the worst wilderness ever (doesn't win) and I love wilderness so no love for sharn, for sure.