DDO Discussion / Grouping Thread

The game has no mana potions if i remember right, so being a healer in a game like that is super ultra hardcore.

There are some, but they've always been extremely rare and valuable drops. You'd only ever use them for raids, and even then most players would hesitate to use them. There was a whole thing about people giving a healer mana potions post-raid, to help make up for any they'd used [again, they're valuable, so it hurts putting that all on one player; really discouraged end-game healers if you didn't compensate them the losses] or to reward them for a run well handled.

I loved playing healers as well, though dealing with the fact that healers often took the brunt of hostility on a failed PUG run [regardless of whether such criticism was warranted or not] definitely led to some discouraging moments when playing a healer in public raids.

I played the game dedicatedly enough that the payments never bothered me much, since the in-game premium currency dropped easily enough. Definitely became daunting once they started releasing all sorts of end-game content and they redesigned the game so that only the most high-level, recent content mattered for end-game play. A lot less "what do I want to unlock next" and more "I need to unlock this, if I want to play with anyone". Really picked up a lot of the worst aspects of other MMOs, at that point.

Also remember a time when i played my bard and my noob party went and wiped themselves out so i had to cast my invisibility sphere and go fetch their tomb stones... was thrilling because the mobs, even though they could not see me, could still hear me.
This game is truly unique, no other mmo comes anywhere close to it's DnD mechanics, this is why people still play it.

For sure. Some of the content was a bit too shallow or, in the end, too grindy and lengthy and demanding on builds. But when the game played well, the mechanics, teamwork, and opportunities for awesome events.. the game definitely highlighted what makes MMOs (or multiplayer games in general) compelling in the first place.

Khyber and Orien always were good for guilds. Kyber was one of my secondaries (as opposed to primary or tertiary), so I should have some decent toons on there (ie, TRed them a few times). I'd definitely welcome the introduction, just to give it a look. :)

[I wonder just how rusty my gameplay skills have become? :X]

Doesn't seem like it.

Presently, Thelanis is the default starting server for new players [it rotates over time] so it's likely to be more active at lower levels. Further, going off comments in the promotion thread, it seems several SGers ended up there as well. Not sure about whether or not an SG guild can be managed, but that seems like the best server for establishing SG-based connections, going off what has currently been posted, as well as being oriented towards new players. Meanwhile, while I'm maining Khyber, I do have toons on every server. Given that, Thelanis seems recommendable at the moment to any SGers looking to join the game.

That said, the servers are a hot mess at the moment [as of last Wednesday], so I'd recommend waiting until they fix the current stability issues before making an introduction into the game. As the servers currently are, the game likely isn't going to encourage anyone to stick around and keep playing. :S