View from the Newbs

[OneTreeLikeDude]

My friends and I started looking for a new game, I suggested we look at DDO. I have been playing DDO on and off with my father for the past several years, so I am not a complete newb, none of my friends have ever played DDO before. After three months we are back to where we were before, looking for a new game. On Sunday our pen and paper D&D session went from let’s talk about finding our next game to why we didn’t stick around in DDO.

How did we go from trying DDO to deciding it wasn’t for us in three months? “DDO is the unlikely mishmash of everything we want in character development and everything we dislike in everything else.”

Our entire group plays in a regular pen and paper D&D game every Sunday evening for the past three years. A 5E game mostly set in Ravenloft setting. I’d say we have a decent understanding on how D&D works at a high level, but not specifics of D&D in 3.5, which has been out of print for 15 years. 3.5 and 5 are related, kind of kissing cousins, some of the differences and more importantly the differences that resulted in various implementation in DDO caught us off guard. Oh that thing is a 3.5 issue....

Several players decided to use the predetermined character paths, a couple decided to try some free to play characters designs from the forums, and a couple of us went “hey this sounds cool let’s give it a try.” We all played our characters through the snowy side of Korthos Village before a big adventure into the Korthos Island.

From the get-go we ran into our first problem. No, it wasn’t that there were nine of us in our guild and we couldn’t all run together, can’t do that in most games anyways. Rather one of the group of six characters wasn’t flagged to get out into Korthos Island wilderness. We are not exactly sure why. They had all the quests in their quest journal as completed and we ended up running the content again to get them flagged. We joked that we got the content done on Hard, our glitch for the evening… Nope.

In the wilderness area we pick up the quest “Stopping the Sahuagin” from Gunnar and jump down. Our poor little Wizard splatted when they hit the water. Five of us laughed as we were unsure what they hit, but the 425 hit points of falling damage seemed a little excessive. Three minutes later they were back, found the path down and into the quest.

Our next session we planned on finishing up the Korthos Wilderness but one of bored players went off to explore the Keep on the Borderlands and they discovered the sunny side of Korthos. Our group of nine had players all over the spectrum on where they were in the storyline, who could go which instance and we aren’t even two sessions into the game.

Four sessions, fourteen additional plus characters later our initial group of six characters is now in the harbor ready to explore Stormreach. First up, “Missing in Action”. Thirty minutes later we still haven’t found the quest giver, I have texted my dad, but we are standing by Dalsmara, lets run this quest instead. After the frustration of herding cats into the quests, herding them to start the quest, … well, you guessed it, not a good quest for newbs. Our poor little mage got themselves double zapped in the electrical trap. I understand why some of you hardcore triple quadruple completionests scoff at us newbs, but could we please have a shrine where the hallway Ts to go north and south.

Text from my Dad “It is in the Marketplace.” Like how are we supposed to figure out some old Level 2 quest is not in a location with the rest of the level 2 quests.

We spend the next several sessions working at the harbor getting characters up to level 6ish and one of group discovers, guild boat buffs. Too bad it wasn’t our mage. My father than hooks us up with his guilds level 200 boat, and access to get more. Big mistake… First life newbs given all these bonuses, still must open the quests on Normal and basically, we are playing in God mode. Lot of fun that was, or rather wasn’t.

Let’s look at our gear situation, almost everyone one of us is still wearing the Korthos Sets, we shared a couple of random loot around, and much of the named gear in the Harbor we pulled was worthless. Plus 4 armored bracers with a colorless augment slot, min level 3. Maybe when my dad started playing 16 years ago that was a great item, but it completely out of date today.
We try and pool some plat together to buy some stuff off the auction house, maybe 1 item per person. 15,000 Plat for a level 5 Full Plate with crappy prefix, 50,000 for a good one. Outside of our budget. Made worse by complaining to my father, who handed me 2 Million Plat, as a premium player not a problem, my f2p friends, 40,000 plat… If your plat cap is 40,000 and the useful stuff on the auction house is 50,000 there is a problem. One of our players went I am out.

Crafting. Another system not designed with a new player in mind. My friend who is our crafting expert and mostly does it all for us in other games, CYA, they are out.

Challenges …. What exactly is the point? A repeatable quest that gives minimal XP, a few semi-crafting ingredients for gear that is not relevant in the current game?

Hirelings …. I’ll just say the AI is bad. Player trying to catch up running a few quests solo with a cleric hireling, “not worth my time to be dead all the time”, they are out.

Guild Ships …. Talk about breaking the game.

Level 8 on a predefined Barbarian Build, running Hard, can’t hit water if they fell out of the boat in the middle of the Thunder Sea. Another Player Out.

Two months in, 5 of the 9 players gone.

According to the forums the game gets better at level 10. Not sure why anyone would think that. A couple of sessions later, two out of the four remaining players, we are out of here.

The other player, hey everyone else left, I am not going to stick around. Three months 8 new player lost. Total money spent $5.

The frustrating thing is we all think the game has potential, just with as many minor issues it is never going to reach anywhere near its potential and players like us aren't going to sit around and wait for you to fix what we see as obvious problems that are a result of a decision made in 2005.

[OneTreeLikeDude]

Our thoughts from Sunday’s Pen and paper D&D discussion.

Unlike other games, a f2p didn't require us to commit money and without committing any money it lessened our pain tolerance and desire to stick it out.

There are too many predetermined character paths and with the current game play design we think everyone one we tried, except a human cleric – the font of healing, was nigh unplayable by level 8. This is made worse by the “Descriptions” in the Character Generator which says things like “Good Solo Play.” How can an Half-Orc Barbarian with no self-healing be a good solo play build.

We strongly recommend changing the character build process, where predefined build should be more like Iconics. In the first step of the Character Generation, add a fifth category, Predefined Builds, with two maybe three builds for all the free to play races; using just the free to play classes. Dwarven Cleric, Dwarven Paladin, Dwarven Wizard (Con based necromancer). If you are playing a premium race or class you don’t need a predefined path, but those of just beginning.
It would be nice to see other Racial Options, you have Drow Elf, Korvarie Elf, and Wood Elf but what about High Elf? How about Hill and Mountain Dwarf to go along with what we assume is Khorvaire Dwarf. Yes Dwarf got a lot of discussion in our group.
If you are playing a predefined build, it would be useful to talk to the trainer and see at least suggestions for Enhancements. Maybe our Dwarf trying to use Con to Damage might have been able to hit water.

Finally during the Character Build it would be nice to have an option to buy cosmetics from the store for our characters, maybe even have a DDO points deal available, 1000 points for 4.99 on your first character or a better connection to the market highlighting the new player sale for $7.99. Which we can’t find now.

Sunny vs. Snowy Korthos. We get this as a high-level concept, in practice we found it the biggest pain in the butt. It caused no end to our issues. Whether it was the bored player hoping over to look at the keep on the Borderlands or the player a few days behind or any of the other ten problems we had. We felt the Sunny side had to go. There is just no reason for it. If you are set on training quests put them in the end room of the Grotto. Maybe one each for the three NPCs. But once you step out of the grotto there should only be one side to Korthos.

Casual, Normal, Hard, Elite, Reaper 1, … Reaper 10. Seriously 14 levels of difficulty and we can only casual or Normal. Our advice, condense down to “Skulls” 1 through 10. Where Skull 1 is equivalent to Casual / Normal and Skull 2 is Elite, and Skull 3 is Reaper 2 and Skull 10 Reaper 15.
Yes that means that even doing a quest on Casual Normal would give you Reaper points, but earning 25 points per quest be a bad thing? Unless you are an elitist, probably not. This would help us move up in the world.

Favor, the way favor is awarded probably made complete sense in 2006, today in 2022 it does not unless you been here a while. Does it need to be tied into n/h/e completions or would a different system make sense. We don’t have an answer other than to say the current system doesn’t make any sense to newbs.

Quest Locations. We strongly recommend relocating dozens of quests in the game. From the solo quests moving to Korthos to level 2 quests in the lower harbor, level 3 quests in the upper harbor, level 4 in the marketplace…

Quest Level. Whether the reasons that some quests were base level 3 in 2006 it is 2022. With the way the game currently plays it is time to make a pass and make sure quests base level makes sense. Chains that go 3-3-4-5 or 3-3-4-4-5-5-6-6-7-7-8-8 or 8-9-10-8-9-10 no longer make any sense. My father explaining that back in my day we walked up hill to school in snowstorms in July isn’t a good reason to not fix this. Waterworks should be level 3 for all four parts, STK level 4, Tangleroot 5/6, Threnal 8s and so forth. It doesn’t all have to be fixed at once, but it just has to be fixed and yes it is probably a lot of work.

Old Named Items, crafting, and sets.
Things need to work together. We have 50 crafting systems and yet not enough crafting as a whole.
Please take the time and revisit the older named loot. Ask your self is it at least as useful as the potential random loot, if the answer is no, and from what we saw the answer is always no, then update the items. Update the descriptions, update, update, update.
There is no reason to have two or three different name conventions for Items (Power IV vs Wizardry I and Wizardry 42) for items that do the same thing. I know this is busy work that your loot gods probably want to make a new system, but this really needs to be fixed. One System, one naming.
It would be nice if there was a collectible system in places like Korthos, Harbor (coin lords), where you could trade for the proper named loot. In the Sands you can now turn in Antique Bronze Tokens, why not have similar systems for other settings whether it be harbor or Coin Lords. Example Collect an Antique Mage Token (I almost said ‘Tokens of the Twelve’) and Turn it into a NPC in the Twelve for Pearls of Power, or other named “casting related items”.
It was suggested that Challenges could easily be tied into this system. You have a Coin Lord Challenge, gives out Coin Lord Tokens (Storm Tokens) that can be used to buy and then upgrade items.

Crafting, our crafting guru understands what you think you accomplished with this system. In a perverse way it makes sense, but unless you spend years grinding collectibles and materials it is this side of useless. The best answer maybe to blow up the entire system and create a system more in line with what other games or doing, but that may not be in the cards. The system however needs to be more in line that a player who wants to craft can make useful items, and remember it takes a village to raise a baby.

The elephant in the Room, Guild Buffs. For us there is no question that Guild Buffs completely made the content we are allowed to play irrelevant. Mind you opening quests on Normal as we are first life premium and free to play players using 28-point builds. Without the buffs we struggled, with the level 185 ship buffs we were gods. If we are going to get the ship buffs let us open the content on Hard at least. Give non-high level guild members a system to get at least some of the buffs or lesser versions of the buffs.

House P buffs, wow do these need a way to not run in public zones.

Unscalable UI, how 2003.

Finally, as players who have played most open landscape games the number of instances we see during play was a huge put off. We understand what the reason was when the design happened, but short quests with multiple instances in them or towns with multiple instances or going to the cave for the Level 3 quests for the Cerulean Hills. From a Public instance standpoint there should be fewer, Stormreach, the entire city should be a single instance, not 24.

[OneTreeLikeDude]

A statement we heard fairly often in the Discord Channels and other Forums was "When you play DDO for six months you will understand many of your issues."
I counter that with "If you don't make it to six months because of the issues you will never understand them."

[axel15810]

DDO has an extremely high learning curve, which is both its appeal for many and downfall for others. If you're not aware of it, the ddowiki (ddowiki.com) is for all intents and purposes this game's unofficial manual/strategy guide. Definitely check it out. It's extremely important and can help you with a lot of issues you mentioned, such as finding quests. Frankly I don't see how any new player could make heads or tails of DDO without the wiki to learn about the game. I agree that some things like elite open are a pain to be paywalled behind VIP or behind reincarnation, since normal in most content, especially low and mid levels is incredibly easy even for most 1st time players. I will say that if just 1 person subs to VIP they can open for everyone else (only 1 person in your group needs it to get access) but I get not wanting to spend money to just try a game.

[ahpook]

Our thoughts from Sunday’s Pen and paper D&D discussion.
...

I can't disagree with your posts. In the game's defense, it took years to get these problems with some bad choices buried alongside a lot of good choices. But as you noted it is clear that this game is very complicated, inconsistent and not new player friendly.

[krimsonrane]

I really think the devs should be listening here. Even some of us vets know these problems exist when we try and start from scratch on another server. I have a level 12 pali on an off server still running around in lvl 6 feywild gear. Random loot sucks and it took me forever to farm out those feywild items. Itsa lonely world too. On one server I have a level 14 toon. I'm not in a guild. No one has ever invited me outside the instant korthos guild recruiters who send blind invites to anyone. And I barely bother to look at LFMs anymore. It's always R+ something. As a first lifer with no good gear and no PL/EPLs I just can't keep up. Literally my striding is 10% and I get left behind easily. I die easily too. I see a lot of folks on Argo with no guild at level 30. There's also a lot of guilds in the teens levels. Obviously people who haven't been invited to or joined a higher level guild. As the OP mentioned, a level 200 guild with buffs is God Mode for newbies and first lifers. So, apparently the incentive isn't to level up and gear up. It's to get into a level 200 guild. But the invites don't really exist and you're not making friends or having fun being that person who gets left behind and dies a lot running levels you're not prepared to run. If I were a brand new player facing all the huge player base chasms and confusing as hell quest set ups, with the lack of information on how to move forward and what you need to get there, I'd quit too.

The game has changed so much since 2006. Just look at the backpack and bag issue. No one tells you they're needed or how to get them. When you do find them they are overwhelmingly inadequate in today's game. You can't buy larger bags on the AH because they're always far to expensive for characters who have little to no wealth. Which leads you to the dreaded piranha like PTW micro-transactions. Often that's another dealbreaker. You've barely had a chance to determine if game is even worth your time before conditions force you to spend money or quit. Sometimes for things that come free at some point and no one ever mentioned it. How would you know that the backpack space you just spent ten bucks to buy comes free with certain favor?

I remember when I saw my first vorpal weapon at the vendor in atraxia. it was ten grand plat I didn't have. I wanted it so bad but only had a tenth the cost. Luckily I was in a guild and one of my mates gave me ten grand. I was so grateful. I felt like he'd given me a million. I even made sure to pay it back ASAP. I had no idea that was pocket change to a vet.
As a vet trying new servers I've been forced to openly beg for plat just so I could buy some decent gear. After a few times of being ignored or even squelched I'll never demean myself that way again. Its no wonder plat farmers can make a good living and are illegal. New players are virtually ignored in DDO. As if they don't exist. Their only offering of help being the trope "git good".

As a matter of fact, I think I'm going to start being more new player helpful on my main server by offering guild invites and plat to random new players. Just to help make their experience better and hopefully add to player retention.

[Oliphant]

Its hard to even understand years later but I recall it was quite challenging just finding quests to do, and then people were pretty stuck on their first time bonuses, so there was a lot of standing around with people saying "already did it".

I wish there was no flagging. I wish NPCs would just port people to the door. I wish there was no sunny and winterside Korthos seams. I wish new players could open elite.

[ahpook]

I really think the devs should be listening here. Even some of us vets ...

Ha ha "us vets". I see your join date ya newb ...
(j/k)

... know these problems exist when we try and start from scratch on another server. ...

There are some good points in that ellipses. And the issues you faced are far lesser than what a new player sees due to your experience and game knowledge. SSG has manged to create a hamster wheel that keeps vets playing and gaining power at the cost of making a game utterly unattractive an unforgiving to a new player. I don't know if they can listen enough to solve that problem or if it would be worth their time if they did....

[OneTreeLikeDude]

The Learning Curve in DDO is not any steeper or larger than most games.
The difference is that DDO requires a large investment to acquire the necessary items to move your character up the ladder.

Think of it this way, DDO's hamster wheel is atop the famed white cliffs of Dover. DDO hands you a ladder to reach the top, but the gap between the first rung and the second rung is thirty feet. To use the ladder you need to collect large rocks or boulders to build a rock ramp on the ground to reach that second rung. It takes a long time to build that ramp, too long. Once you reach that second rung the next gap is a manageable six feet in comparison.

This is made more difficult in the process as too many things create pit falls or side tracks.
I'll highlight as an example the name conventions used on named loot. Power III, Wizardry I, Wizardry 60 all can be found on Level 4 loot, the named items are 30 and 25 spell points, while Wizardry 60 is 60 spell points. It does take more knowledge to know the Power III is 30 spell points compared to Wizardry 60 providing 60. My comment is that when the new loot system was brought into production, why weren't the older items brought into line and use the same nomenclature. Why isn't a Pearl of Power III not Wizardry 71? Why wasn't it given a Augment Slot or Crafting Slots? That is the pitfall a new player must overcome. It should be exciting to pull a named Item the first time, not deflating to discover that Random Loot at level 2 has more power than a level 5 named item.

[krimsonrane]

Ha ha "us vets". I see your join date ya newb ...
(j/k)

There are some good points in that ellipses. And the issues you faced are far lesser than what a new player sees due to your experience and game knowledge. SSG has manged to create a hamster wheel that keeps vets playing and gaining power at the cost of making a game utterly unattractive an unforgiving to a new player. I don't know if they can listen enough to solve that problem or if it would be worth their time if they did....

Yea, my join date is wrong. I had to create a new profile on the forum some years back.

[droid327]

Several players decided to use the predetermined character paths, a couple decided to try some free to play characters designs from the forums, and a couple of us went “hey this sounds cool let’s give it a try.”

Rather one of the group of six characters wasn’t flagged to get out into Korthos Island wilderness. We are not exactly sure why. They had all the quests in their quest journal as completed and we ended up running the content again to get them flagged.

First life newbs given all these bonuses, still must open the quests on Normal and basically, we are playing in God mode. Lot of fun that was, or rather wasn’t.

We try and pool some plat together to buy some stuff off the auction house, maybe 1 item per person.

Crafting. Another system not designed with a new player in mind. My friend who is our crafting expert and mostly does it all for us in other games, CYA, they are out.

Challenges …. What exactly is the point? A repeatable quest that gives minimal XP, a few semi-crafting ingredients for gear that is not relevant in the current game?

Hirelings …. I’ll just say the AI is bad. Player trying to catch up running a few quests solo with a cleric hireling, “not worth my time to be dead all the time”, they are out.

Guild Ships …. Talk about breaking the game.

- Yeah dont ever use Paths. They're 15 years out of date. They should honestly just delete them entirely. Total noob trap, you diagnosed that one correctly. Forum builds are the safest bet, but even those can become dated due to updates, especially more gimmicky ones. Some classics still stand the test of time though. The "this sounds cool" method is almost 100% guaranteed to make you suck and make the game completely unfun, though.

- Korthos is the only place in the game where you can get separated like that from your group. Its like that to protect new players; if your friend went off on his own, I think he had to acknowledge a warning that he wouldn't be able to come back when he left Korthos Snowy Side.

- TBH, at low levels and in a full group, you're God Mode with Guild buffs even naked on Elite. Characters have just gotten so powerful compared to content that's still balanced for 2009

- AH junk isnt any better than chest junk, so you're not missing out there

- Most games I've ever played, crafting always requires an initial investment before you are able to start making decent items...crafting is never "with new players in mind" in that regard

- Challenges are pretty dated too, yes, but they're not irrelevant. They're great XP at-level first time you get each Star. And there are still some relevant pieces of gear, especially in Heroic. The Cannith Challenge Tier 3 Elemental items (Electric bracers, Acid boots, Sonic trinket, etc.) still offer BIS Spell Power + Lore throughout Heroic, for example. They also are the only place you can farm XP pots.

- Hireling AI is a legit and longstanding problem, you diagnosed that one correctly too

A lot of your issues seem to stem from coming in with a set of expectations (both from Tabletop, and other MMOs). DDO is unlike any other game, and to really enjoy it you have to consciously put aside all your prejudices and just come in totally tabula rasa about it, let it be itself and figure out its own unique internal logic. Like others have said, its a steep learning curve, but only because any game so rich and complex has to be...and there's a lot of failure engineered into it, trial-and-error is how you learn a lot of it...but when you get to the top and turn the corner, its rewarding to have all that complexity and depth to play in

[Weemadarthur]

As a matter of fact, I think I'm going to start being more new player helpful on my main server by offering guild invites and plat to random new players. Just to help make their experience better and hopefully add to player retention.

I know this is going to sound a little trite and patronizing but the best thing you can give new players is actually your time. Rather than giving them plat to buy stuff it's far far better to start a group running hard and post it up as a new player friendly teaching group. Take a little time explaining the game mechanics, advising on builds and showing them how to earn their own plat and they are far more likely to stay long term.

[KoobTheProud]

The problem with new players and the learning curve is that at this point in it's lifespan DDO really does not care about most new players at all. They particularly do not care about F2P new players.

What SSG is looking for is that 1-in-100 player that will sink some real cash into the game. What they really want is that 1-in-1000 whale who will drop maybe a couple of grand seeing if they like the game enough to then spend the tens of thousands it will take to quickly get a topflight character.

It's unfortunate but it is the reality at this point.

Definitely was not the reality when F2P launched but we're 12+ years down the pike and it is the reality now.

[superevbully]

Ha ha "us vets". I see your join date ya newb ...
(j/k)

There are some good points in that ellipses. And the issues you faced are far lesser than what a new player sees due to your experience and game knowledge. SSG has manged to create a hamster wheel that keeps vets playing and gaining power at the cost of making a game utterly unattractive an unforgiving to a new player. I don't know if they can listen enough to solve that problem or if it would be worth their time if they did....

But but what about u51 the update for newer players ..........fail

[C-Dog]

Welcome to the game! (even if you're not staying atm...)

... “DDO is the unlikely mishmash of everything we want in character development and everything we dislike in everything else.”

... I’d say we have a decent understanding on how D&D works at a high level, but not specifics of D&D in 3.5...

Several players decided to use the predetermined character paths, a couple decided to try some free to play characters designs from the forums, and a couple of us went “hey this sounds cool let’s give it a try.” ...

I've said this before, but it bears repeating...

DDO is not tabletop D&D... or, more accurately, it's not any edition you've seen before. Call it "D&D 6.e". So while it has the same flavor, and "general D&D experience" will let you know what generally to expect (dungeons, traps, spells, a BBEG, etc), all your experience with any specific edition won't help (and it's morphed away from 3.5 looong ago). Any favorite or "wish list" character concept you have may or may not work (or even be possible). And vice versa, an unexpected character build may be ''exactly'' the sort of fun you're looking for, and something you could never create in tabletop may be possible and even strong here.

Given that, it's VERY easy to try to build something based on your vast tabletop knowledge, and create a character that is nothing short of a walking disaster in DDO. Oy, just light a match. (Same w/ pre-set paths, unfortunately; they work at lower levels, and are good to get you out of the gate and to get a feel for the game, but long term... nupe, nuh-uh. Shame, but the game changes too fast and those just aren't updated, sad reality of it.)

So, most vets strongly advise taking a build off the forums*, something "peer reviewed/vet approved" (and that's usually obvious by the discussion, or lack of it).

(* Some of the builds in these links are becoming old, but few of the builds are so dated that they won't work. A very few may be considered "obsolete" by current standards, but only in that there have been improvements which should not be missed, and some can be (easily/greatly) improved. The majority are still perfectly serviceable, just not "as maximized as they might (now) be". In some cases, a tree or rule change may provide a considerable update and improvement (e.g. Sorcerers, Paladins) - once you find something you like, post it on the boards and see if the build gurus have any insight on obvious/necessary improvements.)

o Strimtom's Build Repository

o Kent's Custom Character Builds
o Request a Build, Get a Build

There are also some more current collections in the Hard Core sub-forum, but not all are "new player friendly" (HC doesn't work like regular questing), so ymmv there. Again (and all me to stress this!), if you find a build that you like and it's older than a season or two, post it in the forums and ask if it's still current!

From the get-go we ran into our first problem...
...
Crafting...
Challenges …
Hirelings …
Guild Ships …

The other player, hey everyone else left, I am not going to stick around. Three months 8 new player lost.

Yeah, there is a LOT in this game that is not intuitive and so almost requires a "guide",a (semi-)vet player who can show you the ropes - then things get MUCH easier, and so more fun. All of those "problems" you list are easily addressed - just nothing that you'd guess without knowing. (Someone suggested the DDOWiki - I'm a big fan.)

And that was true when you first started D&D, and (proly) w/ any new edition you've ever tried.

For example...

If your plat cap is 40,000 and the useful stuff on the auction house is 50,000 there is a problem.

F2P characters have a cap based on their current character level. 40k means you are Level 6 - it doubles each level, so that "problem" is more of an early limiter that quickly disappears (reaching > 1M plat by level 11).

o https://ddowiki.com/page/Currency#Money_cap

(As another example, 1st level characters should not be jumping off cliffs, even if the water looks soft.)


But you're right - the game not only "has potential", but in many ways has lived up to its potential, even in areas you list as "problems". (Not going to address each, but I could. => TLDR. Let me know if there's something specific you'd like to see expanded on.)

[Elfishski]

Great feedback from the OP, don't agree with 100% of the suggestions, but this is really worth paying attention to for the devs in terms of where friction is for new player retention.

- Korthos is the only place in the game where you can get separated like that from your group. Its like that to protect new players; if your friend went off on his own, I think he had to acknowledge a warning that he wouldn't be able to come back when he left Korthos Snowy Side.

Leaving via the boat gives this warning, teleporting to Borderlands via the person standing in front of you when you very first arrive in Korthos doesn't give any warning - it really should do!

[Baahb3]

Maybe it was because I was playing 3.0/3.5 when I started this game.
Maybe it was because I am of a gaming age where things were not slow walked for you.
Maybe I am just a cantankerous old fool.

I am sorry that your group had such a tough time but as your stated group was a DnD group, pre-made paths should have been a red flag to not take them. When was the last time you used a pre-made PCs in a campaign?

Character design should have been second nature for you and doing quests you don't know should have been like your paper and pencil group, rogues scouting for traps, tankier people next protecting your wizard.

Yes there are flaws and yes there is a good learning curve to this game but maybe this is just not the game for you and your group. And I hate to say it but if you are complaining about the number of instances for an instanced based game, then you should have read up on the game before you stepped off the boat.

[boredGamer]

Leaving via the boat gives this warning, teleporting to Borderlands via the person standing in front of you when you very first arrive in Korthos doesn't give any warning - it really should do!

More importantly is just not preventing players from playing with each other. Which even vets can get on board with .

[Eantarus]

Think of it this way, DDO's hamster wheel is atop the famed white cliffs of Dover. DDO hands you a ladder to reach the top, but the gap between the first rung and the second rung is thirty feet. To use the ladder you need to collect large rocks or boulders to build a rock ramp on the ground to reach that second rung. It takes a long time to build that ramp, too long. Once you reach that second rung the next gap is a manageable six feet in comparison.

I've never heard a more accurate description of DDO.

What they really want is that 1-in-1000 whale who will drop maybe a couple of grand seeing if they like the game enough to then spend the tens of thousands it will take to quickly get a topflight character.

No one new is going to pick up DDO and drop $10k on it. Those people are off playing the latest and greatest MMOs. No one picks up a 16 year old game and says "Yes, I'm going to drop half a Ford Focus on this". SSG needs to acknowledge this reality and start putting some real effort into new-player retention.

[Marshal_Lannes]

The whole snowy/sunny Korthos thing is outdated and should be removed. Borderlands was added as a L1 zone that is better than Korthos in almost every way (better items, better graphics, better explorer area). Perhaps the experience would have been different had they started there. I've advocated for a condensed leveling path that highlights the new content and allows players to skip archaic quests such as those found in the Harbor. It's a shame. If this group of gamers could have made it to Feywild or Ravenloft I believe they would have found the magic that is DDO.