The way the loot worked in the game also inspired a working-together mentality, which in turn lent itself to having an overall generous and friendly community back when I played. When a party killed a dungeon boss, they would get to loot a chest. Unlike many other games where everyone gets to roll on all the items that drop from a boss or a chest, everyone got their own unique loot. If people got something in their loot that they couldn’t use, a vast majority of players would be more than happy to trade the loot around to people who could use it, or just outright give it to them. Helping your teammates meant helping yourself, and while this is surely true in most MMOs, there is a great amount of selfishness present in the overwhelming majority of them. This wasn’t the case in DDO from my experience which was extremely heart-warming and reaffirmed to me that yes, this was indeed a cooperative game in the purest possible sense.
Useful/Fun DDO Terminology:
- Favor: One gains favor points through completing quests. These favor points can be turned in at special NPCs for a variety of benefits
- 28-point build: The normal amount of points allowed for stat point allocation on character creation
- 32-point build: Once your garner enough favor (or if you make a purchase at DDO store), you can make a 32-point character where you’re allowed 4 extra stat points to allocate on character creation (note: drow are not allowed this option as they already receive substantial stat point perks inherently)
- Crowd Control (CC): the act of rendering mobs helpless so the party can focus on eliminating mobs in the most efficient manner possible
- Feat: The active or passive skills you choose while leveling up your character that define what kind of character it’s going to be (e.g. Medium Armor Proficiency, Great Two-Handed Fighting, etc.) Fred: An extremely special NPC where players can respec their feats
- Lay on Hands (LoH): A extremely powerful healing skill unique to Paladins which can only be used a very limited amount of times
- Use Magic Device (UMD): a skill often pumped by bards and rogues which allows them to use various wands, scrolls, etc.
- THAC0: To Hit Armor Class 0 (zero) Multi-class: Your character has two or more classes
- Splash: Refers to taking a few levels of a class to enhance your main class and chosen playstyle
- d20 (also 1d20, 2d20, etc.): a figurative twenty-sided die. If there is a number preceding, it refers to how many dice a rolled, so 1d20 would be 1 die, 2d20 would be 2 dice, etc.
- Armor Class (AC): The number that a mob must roll in order to hit you (i.e. its attack roll must be the same of greater than your AC). The higher your AC, the less you get hit
- Intimitank: Any build that pumps the skill Intimidate in order to handle mob aggro
What has your experience been with DDO? Do you have any great team-focused moments you’d like to share, or any specific co-op-like feature you think deserves a nod?