Dungeons and Dragons online

[Apotheosis]

Did anyone ever get into this game/still playing it?

Joined a little while back and it's pretty fun... they also have a reasonable f2p/p2p/subscription system..

[Dendum]

I use to log into Lotro every now and again, I still have an account and being f2p it is one of those games you can just piddle around in without having to invest any time or feel like you are wasting your money with a sub...

same devs, I thought they had a very reasonable model and in fact I sometimes wondered how they made money as you could go very very far into the game without spending a dime and even when you did spend money it was in the range of 5-10 dollars for content that lasted for months unless you powered through it like a mad man.

edit: But I hear neverwinter is a better game, I just never played it.

[Apotheosis]

I guess NW being better is debatable depending on the gaming experience you want... One of the things I think DDO does that no other MMO seems to have a solid grasp of is multiclassing.. there are numerous ways to customize your character, with the caveat being that there are numerous was to screw it up..

[Latrinsorm]

I played DDO for about two years, and haven't played for about a year. Some things may have changed, but I doubt it:

PRO
Excellent $$$ model. Enough F2P to play the game, reasonable enjoyment increases with pay (whether micro or subscription).
Excellent character customization. Between class splits, race, enhancements, feats, epic destinies, gear, it's a builder's playground.
Very good grouping mechanics. Easy to find a group, easy to contribute, difficult to sabotage (by accident or otherwise) in most cases.
Strong development schedule. Frequent updates, frequent fixes. (And without compromising game availability too much.)
Strong breadth of content. Huge variety in enemy types and behavior (even in endgame). Enough variety in mission types, although the variety within the "kill" type is the most important for obvious reasons.

CON
Very poor overarching vision (possibly does not exist). I can remember numerous occasions where a change would be made and unmade within a week.
Focus on new customers over old. The overwhelming majority of fixes are to new content, if something's been broken a month you can bet it'll be broken forever.
As a consequence of these two, replaying content is extremely punishing mechanically, and replaying content is required to advance older characters.
Also as a consequence of these two, community interaction is nil. No explanations, no dialogue.
Chance of client degradation. For some the game eventually becomes literally unplayable (as in the program will not execute), and the decay is too deep to repair with fresh client installation.
Some balance issues. I never engaged in the PvP, which from my understanding was very limited, but even in PvE content an arcane class dominated everyone to the point where it's hard to justify playing anything else.
Illusion of options. A capped wizard prepares 45 spells out of 196 options, of which you will use about 8. You can make up to 10 hotbars, of which you will use about 2. And this is the most versatile class.
Terrible cyber Barbie. Bodily customization is weak, outfit customization is even worse.
Terrible jumping mechanics which the devs somehow think should be included as often as possible, like every MMO.

.

I recommend trying it and playing it. I do not recommend investing in it.

[Glitch]

I played and had a lot of fun when it first came out and was a subscription model. When I last played, the level cap was just raised to 14 and it was yet to go to f2p.

I imagine a lot has changed since then. It was always an entertaining game, but I wound up quitting as they started being forced to consolidate servers. The game was (is?) very group-oriented with next to zero solo play options. As the population dwindled it because impossible to run any instance if it wasn't about a 3 hour window during peak hours. They started to release more open-world style zones throughout the downsizing process, but it was a bit too late to save the subscriptions.

[Latrinsorm]

There's tons of solo play available, even if you don't have a solo-friendly build (you can buy a competent NPC healer for piddling IG currency). Some content can't practically be soloed, but it's a pretty small %, and the % of that % that gives good rewards is very frequently run in the LFG panel.

[Apotheosis]

Well, level cap is 28 and they introduced epic destinies a few years ago, which opens up more possibilities... They're on Update 22 and talking about update 23... they appear to try to release new content each update (or take older content and make it "epic content" changing some of the quest mechanics, putting in new loot and even introducing quests.

Not going to lie, it's buggy... they've made some effort to fix, but I'm not holding my breath on some things.. I can't say that I've encountered Latrin's issue with the client..

As far as classes/spells/etc... I would say there are few "pure" classes (ie, knight paladin, etc.)... a lot of people multi with monk or rogue (for evasion) among a few others... the point is that any build can be viable as long as you a) don't spread yourself too thin and b) have some sense of what you are doing.

There's plenty of different players and play styles out there: Solo, RP guilds and even Permadeath guilds...