DDO Rant

I think DDO was originally designed to the roleplayer, not the MMO player. However Turbine seem happy enough to take MMO players money, and pretend they're the same sort of game. It just becomes glaringly obvious after the current content is burned up that perhaps DDO isn't the same as WoW. This Dragon Vault expansion has been slotted in to keep hold of the MMO player.. shiny new loot (some bind on equip ffs!), big raid style quest.

I think they're playing a dangerous game, because there isn't enough proper roleplay functionality in the game, and there isn't enough content for your MMO player, and they're trying to appeal to both camps. They certainly can't cut the mustard compared with the amount of content on offer in WoW. I think they should drop the pretence and forge ahead as a true real time PnP experience.

Theres hardly any solo game in DDO. Its all about the group. A good roleplay group can enjoy the storied content and develop and enjoy their own characterisations in DDO. A well organised pick up group of MMO players can blitz through the same content in a fraction of the time. They can do the XP gain thing, be hurtling through the objectives and performing a loot trawl over and over again. If you blitz the content, it is quite easy to get to the end game. That doesn't mean the content isn't well designed if played through properly, it just means theres no mechanisms in place to prevent your average progression hungry MMO player from bolting it all down.

The only mechanism in place is a reduction in the quest completion XP gained for repetition of the quest. However, each quest has three difficulty settings, normal, hard and elite, which means each quest can be repeated at least 4 or 5 times at each difficulty level before the XP reduction makes it not worthwhile. XP gathering field day for your MMO player.