D&D Online (Unlimited) Now Free

[roorooroo]

Just a heads up..most of you will probably know already but this one is free to play..relying now on micro-transactions instead of monthly payments.

Had a quick look yesterday and it was good fun for free..would be good to get a few players teaming up playing from scratch.

Anyway its available from their D&D online site (about 3.5 gb).

[danroyle]

might looks this up cheers

[Behemoth]

Thanks for the info, I've been looking for something to play while I'm holiday this week and next.

[Zoso]

Definitely worth a look; a couple of races (Drow and Warforged) and classes (Monk and Favoured Soul) need a "micro"payment to unlock, but other than that the early stuff does seem to be free to play. Not sure whether there'll be some theoretically-optional-but-really-useful stuff later on that needs payment, though.

[Jasp]

Not really into the whole free to play games as normally they are too heavily cripped in favour of the micro payments, tried perfect worlds, runes of magic, rohan, etc etc, but i actually like this one lol been playing it now for the past two days its based on the PNP 3.5 D&D rules but is heavily modifed to suit the game, the gfx are good and the people seem nice enough. Were this game differs is you can earn favour which in turn sometimes relates to turbine points rewards so you actually get store cash which you can spend on what you want.

[Zadock]

In the process of downloading this one...

What is the rpg system like? I'm an NWN player am I going to feel familiar with the character sheet?

[Ferral]

I'm guessing you have to pay for the game itself in the same way as Guild Wars. I also thought this was only available in America?

If its completely free now can we have some links please?

[menthel]

I'm guessing you have to pay for the game itself in the same way as Guild Wars. I also thought this was only available in America?

If its completely free now can we have some links please?

Same here. However if its free in the UK I am up for it too!

[Zoso]

What is the rpg system like? I'm an NWN player am I going to feel familiar with the character sheet?

IIRC, they're both broadly based around D&D 3.5e, so you should be pretty familiar with the stats, feats and skills, though they're tweaked quite heavily to work in an MMO. They've added some straightforward predefined builds, though (e.g. offensive two-handed fighter, defensive sword and shield fighter; bow-using ranger, two weapon fighting ranger), so people can just pick what they fancy without having to worry about boosting Int to get more skill points to cover cross-classing skills...

I'm guessing you have to pay for the game itself in the same way as Guild Wars. I also thought this was only available in America?

Nope, totally free to start playing. I've only played for a few days since it went live, though, so I dunno how much pressure there'll be to buy in-game stuff later on.

The Europe/America thing is a bit weird; in Europe the game's run by Codemasters, and the European servers still need a monthly subscription, but there doesn't seem to be any problem with downloading the US (free-to-play) client and setting up an account over there, and I had no problem buying points for the US store with a UK credit card. http://www.ddo.com should give you everything you need.

[madman045]

I've just started playing this and enjoying it, getting used to the way the XP points are earned, latency to the server is around 100 which is fine.

I am playing on the Cannith server

[MadduckUK]

iv listened to all the penny arcade d&d podcasts and its sounded like quite a lot of fun, might hop on this at some point

[Ferral]

Nearly finished downloading it now. Will take a look later tonight after had tea and got the kids off to bed. We should definately get together for a bit of questing.

[PeteSmith]

So what server are we all on? And what handle's are we going by? We should form a Hexus guild perhaps?

[Zak33]

SORT IT OUT SOON GUYS

Don't go off on different servers.. I'll need as muh help as you can all give later on when I join, fashionably late

Pm each other asap to get on the same servers etc.

[PeteSmith]

I'll join madman on the cannith server, last on the list.

[Gerrard]

iv listened to all the penny arcade d&d podcasts and its sounded like quite a lot of fun, might hop on this at some point

Thanks for reminding me! Completely forgot they're doing a third one at the moment, and I've only got the first part. Since listening to them, I've been tempted to try and find a group; I do like my NWN's and RPGs.

However, assuming it's still the same as the DDO I played when it first came out, it's a bit different. For a start, you got XP for completing the quest, not from killing monsters. IIRC, you could get various percentage bonuses on top of it for killing the majority of monsters, finding all the secret doors, and disarming all the traps. The more times you do the same quest, the bigger the percentage penalty you get. e.g. If it's the 4th time doing it, you'll only get 50% of the XP (can't remember exact figures). Of course, been a couple of years since I've played, so it's probably all changed. If you guys are going to get into it, then I'll be tempted to get back into it.