DDO Unlimited: To DDO or Not to DDO

With my trusty +2 dice bag equipped, I forked down cold hard cash for the box back when it came out 3 1/2 years ago. It was fun (some of the funnest melee combat at the time), but just didn't have enough to sustain a group of hard core gamers like me self for too long. After we were stuck at 10 forever, we pretty much spent our time buying +5s from the pawn shops seeing if we could get better armour models (or in my case, swanky new Greater Resistance Robes for my Rogue and uglier leather for my Bard), pretending we were level 3 and running with PUGs through WWs and finding new places to kill ourselves).

(One of our Dragon Teams. =HP= was the first to down Velah on our server. And that hotness in front is moi.)

Anyhoo, so gave it a few months but got distracted by more awesome games, like Silkroad Online and its loot fetching monkey. We did go back once a few months later before the Titan showed up with its buggy, invulnerable ass, but the level cap was still 10 and there was still not enough content to fetch the $14.99 tag, and 2 months later, we were done. This time for good...or so we thought. Fast forward a few years...

News comes out that DDO Eberron Unlimited would be F2P (I think it launches 8/4 for VIP subscribers, and 8/6 for the free to play folks), and so we landed ourselves a spot in the beta to relive the "good times." They have added...a little content, a new beginning tutorial which is much better than the original, "Whoa, I'm in a dungeon and...what the fuck do I do now?" They added a dragon for one, making it truly Dungeons and Dragons (unlike when it was first released, it was only Dungeons and Dragon), so we're thinking, woot, this ain't bad. Enter the Harbour and everything looks the same--some stuffs been moved around, AHs added and a bank, but so far so good. And you can buy these nifty Jewels which give you a chance for BEDDAH LOOTZ. Awesome! Time for Waterworks, biznitches!! Same run as always, sexy times, get held by the yarkin' shamans and die on Elite, but still good times, good times with the new Slayer/Rare Encounters counter.

And then we hit the Marketplace. Where you're free to do the shitty ass missions, but god forbid you want to run Shan-to-Kor again, plunk down 10 bucks (well, 6). Or the Catacoooombs, another 10 bucks. Oh hey, at least we can run Sorrowdusk...NO! Another 10 bucks. *cry* No Cult of the Six for us. Guess the DM was right about us fools not having the book. :( Well, for 10 bucks we could, but really, in a beta? NO. Fuck, you can't even play a shitty ass Warforge unless you pay. (And oddly enough, people did, but then again, when we came back, there were things like STR Clerics/Bards and urr, Sword and Board Rogues--who btw, are always surprised when they failed their reflex saves or couldn't swim in lava like yours truly.) Fuck you Delera's Tomb for another 10 bucks and they don't even have Gary Gygax DMing it anymore (well, they removed that quite a while ago anyhow, but still....)

Some of my friends were actually still interested in re-activating, but then I bust out my trusty TI-82 and adding up all the points you need, it works out to be like $80 bucks + so you can run fuckin' Threnal, Vault and the other instances, which is great I guess if you are brand new to the game, but after paying for it for sooo long and purchasing the original box, it's kinda' like...FUCK NO! I check the boards and the dev thinking is, those who subscribed (and some a helluva' longer time than us for a total of $350) were simply "leasing" the game. With the Unlimited model, you're paying to "own" the game. And then a bunch of posts with a ton of DDO Vet Nerd Rage.

Golly, I get to keep 4 of my old characters as a Vet, but none of the old content which I paid for way back when everyone was making fun of me for sticking with Turbine. Hmm. Beta ain't over yet, so stuff might change, but bottom line, do I want to pay for something I already paid for?

With Aion, BF1943 and Modern Warfare 2 coming up (and my WoW subscription which I currently use to play Bejeweled/Peggle in game), for me, the answer is no. Maybe I'll log in and take advantage of the free to play (when my other games are down), but to double pay isn't looking so cool. But if you're new to DDO, and have always wanted to check it out, this is a great opportunity. There's still lots of fun to be had, Module 9 incoming raising the level cap to 20 (finally?), the games looks and plays better than ever (though that pesky memory leak still seems to pop up every so often) and they've done as good a job as they can with 3.5 rules. Just remember to not get tricked by the Harbour, and wait to see how much content is locked post Marketplace before you invest.

(Me and Velah, the way it's always been. And without the fuckin' bug to kill her ass.)