Ive been watching some videos on Star Wars Galaxies and how it was the best before the CU/NGE changes. Reading peoples comments on what it was like. Got me thinking about ddo. I know its subjective but I actually preferred the Pre-MotU era. Eberron Unlimited went from the the f2p launch (Update 0 technically) to Update 13.
Or September 1, 2009 to June 24, 2012.


Wayward Lobster PvP Pit: Basically a social hub. For those who don't know. A lot of people use to chill in the Wayward Lobster pvp pit in the Harbor. After a day of questing or just chilling the entire day. This was the shit. During peak hours you would see around 20-40 people just chilling in the lobster. Met most of my friends here.


Level 20 endgame: The endgame was amazing. You had VoD, HoX, Reavers, VoN, DQ, Abbot, Chrono, Shroud, LoB, ToD. You had the scroll/seal/shard system. Dragontouched armor. Epic quests. +4 tomes were the max and were only obtained by high end raids.


Loot longevity: Before MotU loot lasted a very long time. Shroud items, ToD sets, Claw set, Chrono items, Epic SoS etc. lasted years. These days loot doesn't even last a year until you have to farm new ones.


The simplicity: Pre-MotU you only had Heroic past lives, levels 1-20. One epic difficulty. That was it. Now you got 10 epic levels, epic destiny's, racial, epic, iconic past lives, three epic difficulties and ten reaper difficulties. Seems very bloated and im honestly not sure how new players can catch up.


Character builds/quest design: Pre-MotU it was 'Holy Trinity'. Which allowed one to focus purely on dps since you usually had a dedicated healer. Single target dps builds were viable as well as any build that didn't have that much survivability. With MotU the quest designs changed to fighting giant packs of mobs one after the other. Ranged self healing aoe builds were king. Single target builds/buff bots were made irrelevant.


No Raid Timer Bypass: Nuff said.

Yeah, the game used to be based on PnP, miss those days.

underlevel bonus : you could really challenge quest difficulty trying to do quests with a party that was 5 level lower than the quest level and still have lots of fun and heaps of XP.

Level 20 : yeah definitely the best era of the game. And as the game is PnP based, every PnP player knows that D&D rules ( except for the old boxed D&D, but they had a hard limit at LVL 36  ) starts to unravel around LVL 20, and going above 20 just means that the GM needs to work a lot more to fix all the broken things.

Old Epics : again because doing them was challenging while being fun.

no permanent buff : no ship buff, the only buffs you could get were potions from the collecties and favor and they weren't long lasting. 

no Dungeon Scaling : Quests were scaled initially for a party of 6 and after a year for a party of 4 and that was it. If you wanted to solo you had to be able to handle mob sized for 4 to 6 people.

no Dungeon Alert : we all know that the real reason for that one is not to reduce lag. It's just a failled tentative to stop zerging to completion and that it's completely broken.

Pseudonym wrote on Aug 14^th, 2018 at 2:00am:


Exactly! I still cant believe DDO is missing a simple 'Inspect' feature. We had to resort to using third party websites like YourDDO just to see who was gimp. Of course by playing the game so much you generally knew what classes were subpar anyways. Its a shame they removed MyDDO, no more inspect (not that its needed anymore).

Pseudonym wrote on Aug 14^th, 2018 at 2:00am:


Post MotU you could simply run EH quests and EN raids and get all your gear. No need to improve yourself. Then add in the insta-epics (no seal/shard/scroll) and you got yourself one easy method of gearing.

Edrein wrote on Aug 13^th, 2018 at 6:07pm:


The combat definitely needed improving. From what ive seen CU broke some armors? Its a shame that they turned a unqiue sandbox mmo into a WoW clone...

Pseudonym wrote on Aug 14^th, 2018 at 2:00am:


The issue with MotU is that it destroyed the endgame. There still isnt an endgame like Pre-MotU.

Flav wrote on Aug 15^th, 2018 at 5:31am:


Agreed.  They built a system where:

ToD - Rings
Stealer of Souls - DT Armor
Shroud - Weapons  and accessory crafting for specific needs
Chrono - Set bonuses for both DPS and Caster
6 Man Epics - Each pack had 2-3 items that BiS for one or more builds.
VoD & Hox & Reavers Fate - Easy to run raids with some base level functional items and a BiS item or two (Madstone boots, Tharnes, etc)

Chase items:  ESoS, ERoSS, EMarilith Chain, PLIS, etc.

With +3 and +4 tomes as the kicker for continuing runs even when you had the gear.  As they were in the 20th list and, thus, were attainable in game.

Until LoB and Alchem weapons, they didn't completely invalidate any prior content with new content.   Even then, they only partially stepped on Shroud Weapons.  Shroud weapons had flexibility, if not power, and shroud accessory options were still either BiS (Conc Opp for example) or really really useful. 

Until they can figure out how to stagger the loot again like that and build an end game library, it will be tough to have a sustainable end game of any duration.   

Even then, a big part of the duration was the gating.   6 man epics had a 1 day timer.   Raids had 3 day timer.  No bypasses.   No chest re-rolls.  That encouraged alting and the combination of running some characters at cap every day and running some PL's every day.   But it naturally took longer to acquire gear.  So content didn't get run into the ground so fast.   And the gap between your 40 hour per week + gamers and your 15-25 hour gamers was not so large.  The 40+ hour guys just had more alts that were better geared. 

But they can't undo chest reroll or bypass timers or implement 6 man timers.  So I'm not sure you can ever go back.  Even with a good, layered loot strategy.  People are just burning through content too quickly.

Friendship wrote on Aug 15^th, 2018 at 12:06pm:


Those were only around from Sept 2009 to Feb 2010.   But yeah.  That wasn't the best idea.

I miss the plat economy. Fuck astral shards.

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I don't think there is a quest where the trash hits so hard. it's like tempest spine trash.

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Yup. A DDO Classic Server would be amazing. If done properly I think it would be successful. Just look at all the other MMOs doing it. Rift, WoW, Runescape, Everquest, etc. The latest patch would be Update 13. The funny thing is as soon as you mention this on the shit mobos people run you off as if you're a lunatic. We are the vocal minority since the majority of those who even played Pre-MotU aren't playing anymore. One major issue working against the classic server are peoples mentalities. They're used to instant gratification (raid bypasses, re-rolls, no epic quest lockout, insta-epics). Considering it takes years to get max geared Pre-MotU they would lose their minds and ragequit.

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I still have no clue how a new player approaches current DDO. Its a bloated mess. Add in the terrible f2p model (very outdated now) and you probably have 5% or worse new player retention. How are they supposed to catch up? Pre-MotU it was much easier for new players to catch up. Basically as soon as they hit 20 they can run the majority of raids. Even dabble into some easier epic quests like BoB and VoN 1/2.

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MotU and on destroyed single target builds/buff bots/healers. Then incentivized the ranged aoe self healing builds. Eventually went full retard with the power creep to where getting 1 shot is the new "challenge". Its a shame really.

Zehnpai wrote on Aug 16^th, 2018 at 7:27pm:


Fixed. I think you've mistaken then for now.

Rubbinns wrote on Aug 16^th, 2018 at 9:34pm:


I completely forgot R1 is the new elite when leveling. People were bitching on the mobos since bravery bonus was added (2011?) about how only running elite will hurt new players. With Champions and now R1 I’m positive the new player retention is close to zero. I was lucky enough to start a month after the f2p launch so korthos was busy. Must be a ghost town now.

Rose-tinted Goggles wrote on Aug 16^th, 2018 at 8:04pm:


Obviously the answer is to roll out a couple of hundred bucks and buy iconics, adventure packs, and enough AS to get into some decent gear, plus level crafting up to high levels.

But yeah, personally I tend to think the shitty customer service and completely toxic community has more to do with derailing new player retention.

A while back, I tried out a game called Archeage. I really enjoyed it, I shelled out $150 for a premium membership and a bunch of perks, spent a lot of time reading forums, wikis, etc, learning about the game and how to be good at it.

Then I got high-enough level to experience the horrific griefing that dominated the game. You can solo basically the whole way to level cap, so I hadn't experienced much interaction before then. The in-game community rates a solid "Lake Karachay" on the toxicity scale. Long story short, I quit playing immediately after a bad griefing encounter and cancled my account within hours. I then contacted customer service about a potential refund, it took them 2 weeks to get back to me with a generic form response. I will never play that game again or any game by that company.

DDO is lucky not to have issues with griefing, but the motherboards are pretty high up there on the toxicity scale.

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In other games veterans are not 2000% better than a new player with "blue" gear. This is some of the attraction of DDO for us vets, but the gap gets bigger every time Cordovan and his gang of hacks invents a new grind.

Back in the time with the stuff, I did things. Now I don't do those things, because the stuff and reasons.