In the beginning
One of my biggest mistakes playing DDO as a new player was thinking premium was a great idea. It might work for some people but it was a mistake for me. I originally started out with the plan to only purchase the content needed to level from 1-20 and nothing more. The idea was to save money in the long-run by not paying the monthly fee of $14.99. I’m sure a lot of new players think the same thing when looking into the option of going premium. After doing the research and asking around in chat, I purchased one low-level adventure pack, two mid-level adventure packs, and lastly one endgame adventure pack (well what was endgame in 2010). What I didn’t realize at the time was it would never be enough.
Making friends and keeping up
So as I continued my path to glory in DDO, I came across in-game friends. Friends with subscriptions that wanted to run content I didn’t own. Content I didn’t want to purchase because it wasn’t apart of my plan. More importantly I didn’t want to get left behind. I wanted to dungeon crawl with friends I met during my journeys so I bought more Turbine points and more adventure packs. I told myself it was fine, I had a good job and plenty of cash to spend. Again, my spending didn’t end there.
That looks classy!!
So now I’m at the point I’ve got a good amount of adventure packs and enjoying my adventures with my friends. My V.I.P. friends, however, are playing classes and races that I don’t own. Classes like Monk and races like Warforged. They did look fun to play but I tried to resist buying them. Then my friends start saying things like, “dude, Warforged Favoredsoul is so much fun!!”. Guess what I did? Just guess! I bought more Turbine points and purchased more playable classes and races.
Expansions and Expenses
As time pasted I continued buying more and more content. More updates and 2 expansions gave me even more reasons to spend. Keep in mind that expansions need to be bought regardless of account status. There were so many more things to buy especially after Menace of the Underdark. Tomes of experience, iconic hero races, and the nail in the coffin…Otto’s IRRESISTIBLE boxes. My spending got out of control. In a single week I put out $120 for Otto’s boxes. That’s over the cost of a yearly subscription.
Stepping back
In September of 2014 I took a well needed break from DDO. I found a need to take a look at Warcaft’s latest expansion, Warlords of Draenor. I played Warcraft off and on throughout the years. Funny how I was completely fine with paying $14.99 a month for another mmorpg. They have no premium option like DDO does. What I quickly learned was simple; I spent a heck of a lot less money having just as much fun. I literally had all that WoW had to offer for one low monthly price. In fact, the Warcraft store only has a handful of items to buy and only a fraction of what is contained in the DDO store. My problem was WoW is not DDO. I love DDO.
V.I.P.
So what does paying for DDO monthly have to offer versus just paying for the content?
- 500 free turbine points per month
- 6 additional character slots
- Monk class
- Druid class
- Half-elf race
- Half-orc race
- Warforged race
- All adventure packs
- All challenge packs
- All difficulty levels unlocked
- Free guild creation
- Shared bank
- Priority login queue
- Priority beta access
- 40 seconds additional idle time before getting logged out
- Additional experience boost
- Free weekly gold roll
Honestly there’s probably a few other things but I can’t remember all of them. Premium accounts don’t get these perks. They are in fact great perks.
Lesson learned
Sure now that I think about it, I kind of feel dumb. I spent more money than I would like to admit. In fact I was a premium player for over 4 years and bought everything. Now I’m returning to the game after a six month Warcraft break I’m finally going to simply pay for the game. I plan to pay three months out at a time which brings the cost of DDO down to $9.99 a month.
Final thoughts
I highly urge any new or a current player not paying the subscription fee to make the change as soon as possible. If you’re going to go with the premium option I have a little advice.
- Pay for epic supported adventure packs only.
- Don’t pay for races and classes that can be unlocked with favor.
Happy Hunting
-Musk of Argonnessen
A VIP sub can be purchased for as low as $6/month during sales. VIP is definitely the way to go once someone decided that she or he likes the game. VIPs also get a 10% speed boost in public places which you omitted from your list of benefits.
Hm, well I have been a Premium player since probably 2010 or so (I was free playing before, but with old hardware it really wasn’t easy to play much). I think that in all that time I have bought a TP bundle 2 times (ages ago some 30 EUR and recently another 50 EUR) during a double points sale.
Then I have bought the second expansion in pre sales to get the Bladeforged iconic (and 2000 TP, the Druid class, a couple of expansion packs, and 2 extra character slots, etc) and I bought the first expansion when it was on sale for about 10 EUR (including another few packs and TPs). I have bought many packs with those TP, but almost always when they were on sale (averageing out at about 50% price), although I have at times splashed on cakes or things like that.
For me the difference is, that I don’t like the subscription because I feel I HAVE to play to get more out of it. The trick with Premium is to not want everything NOW but wait for sales to buy the bigger things. And not be upset about others running faster and having to either group with them or run a quest several times to get to open it on Hard/Elite.
It all depends on how much you play the game really. If you are committed daily team player, VIP is a way to go.
If you are guy like me, who can only play 1 or 2 evenings per week and is otherwise a long-term player, because he enjoys the game, but has a busy RL – you are better off spending that $99 on Turbine Points that will last you 2 or 3 years. On top of that I frequently play solo, because let’s face it – a lot of people who tread DDO like if it was their only goal in life (and feel an urge to “keep up”) are not that much fun to begin with – those are the people who are constantly pestering you about “Dude, it is so much fun being a Warforged Favored Soul.” or will kick you out because your character not being min-maxed enough and not fitting in one of the “approved” builds.
Well, I enjoy being a human wizard so you (meaning that DDO Nazi guy) go and run few more meta-game simulators to see how you can max out your character after 20 reincarnations, while I actually, you know – role-play… 🙂
One great thing about DDO is that it gives options that each have advantages and disadvantages. With free/premium/VIP it’s similar – free might be good for kids who have no money to spend on the game, people with no bank account or who otherwise can’t pay, etc. It might even work for people who like self challenges, as it might work as one.
Premium is good for people who know exactly what they want and what they don’t need. I wanted to play monk, so it was the first thing I bought. I’m yet to buy any other class. I haven’t bought any races because I’m fine with playing Dwarves all the time. I bought all the heroic adventure packs and Menace of the Underdark, because that’s something I wanted. I also bought shared bank and maybe some other account upgrades. I never bought any consumables, cosmetic stuff, gold seal hirelings, etc. I prefer lasting things and long term investments. I consider buying largest bags and additional backpack slots for my main toon, but I wouldn’t do it if they didn’t last through reincarnations. Tomes that can’t be farmed (such as Tomes of Fate) fall into this category as well. Oh, and I once bought a guild charter.
I also only buy during discounts. I’ve never bought an adventure pack at full price, and yet I have (almost) all of them. In fact, I bought most of them when there was this option to buy turbine points with MotU at about twice the ratio that the best “normal” TP/$ is… so I suppose it was about 200 TP/USD. And then there was this discount where EVERYTHING was 50% off if you spent at least 2000 TP on the purchase or some such thing.
Overall, over the years I’ve played DDO, I’ve spent about $100 on turbine points and I guess $50 on MotU.
Now VIP subscription… I would definitely recommend new players who wish to spend money on the game to buy at least one month. Then they can see if they like the game in it’s full glory, they can choose which adventure packs, classes and races to buy, if they choose to continue with premium. They can see if they’d rather stay VIP. It’s definitely a good choice if you want to play the game for only a few months, or even less, but you want to experience it fully.
But long term, I think it’s cheaper to play Premium. If you manage your money wisely and wait for discounts.
Also, don’t forget that even VIPs have to buy many things with TP or real money, and 500 TP per month might not be enough. Expansions? Larger shared bank? Astral Shards for running a guild or auctions? Even cosmetic stuff if you’re into this. If that’s the way you want to play, even as a VIP you’ll have to spend way more than $99 a year. And at least in my case, it’s cheaper if I don’t waste money on the subscription (a measly 60 TP/USD) and buy 200 TP/USD instead, which I can spend on exactly the things I need.