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I don't think this is something ever discussed on the Vault before. But I'm curious to hear the general consensus from people who visit this forum, as I suspect it will be different from that of the mobos.
In a nutshell: how would you rank the expansions, from favorite -> least favorite? This would include both content itself alongside effects they have on the metagame. For instance, Ravenloft introduced Sentient weapons; Shadowfail Conspiracy raised the level cap to 28; etc.
Personally, my order would be:
1. Sharn
2. Ravenloft
3. Saltmarsh
4. Failwild
5. Shadowfail
6. MOTU
?. Isle of Dread (I don't have it)
Sharn is the only expansion, out of 7, to take place in Eberron. Very sad, considering the game used to be called "Eberron Unlimited." I would love to see more Eberron content instead of generic Forgotten Realms stuff that 1000 other games have already done. Sharn also has some solid quests, one of my favorite wildernesses in the game, and it didn't mess up the metagame in any way, i.e. no changes to level cap, no fundamental gameplay changes which would have lasting ramifications on the game. Sharn, for me, is the perfect model of what an expansion should look like.
Ravenloft was great too. Love the quests and atmosphere, even if it's not Eberron. Sentients are one of the better additions to the metagame IMO.
Saltmarsh quests are overall well done and faithful to their tabletop incarnations. Wilderness is pretty. I have to downgrade it for costing too much, relative to what you're getting; Gianthold basically has more content, and it's not even an "expansion." I also have to downgrade it slightly for giving really abominable exp. Aside from these things though, I like it, and believe it's one of the better expansions. I can live with an expansion like Saltmarsh.
Failwild is awful and uninspired. The quests are labyrinthine or open-ended messes with DM narrations that go on for way too long. The wilderness screams "lazy." On the bright side, the expansion itself didn't fuck up the metagame in any meaningful way. It's a bad expansion, to be clear, but it's bad in a way that you can just ignore it. Sort of like Necro 3. I hate it, but I can't rank it as the "worst" expansion for this reason.
Shadowfail I feel conflicted on. On one hand, I do like the Storm Horns. WGU is one of the prettiest quests in the game. Certainly a fittingly epic way to cap off the Heroic and/or Epic experience, before reincarnating. On the other hand, Wheloon is drab, depressing, and not as ambitious as the Storm Horns.
But what makes it the 2nd worst expansion in my book is the fact that it raised the level cap to 28, which paved the way for Epic Reincarnations one update later. This move would forever ensure that DDO would effectively be two games, rather than one, thereby cleaving the population into two and forever fucking up grouping. Another problem is that Shadowfail gave us Iconics. I don't care what anyone else says; they've always been a dumb idea, within the D&D context at least.
MOTU is, by far, the single worst thing that ever happened to the game. Reaper difficulty is dumb. Monster champions are dumb. Epic reincarnation is dumb. Legendary levels are dumb. Iconics are dumb. But Epic Destinies were arguably the biggest fundamental change to DDO's core system in the history of the game. They set the precedent for Turbine/SSG to completely break away from D&D's established norms, and start introducing a bunch of other stupid homebrew shit like Melee Power, PRR, Reaper difficulty, and more. All of these things probably would not have happened if it weren't for the disastrous precedent that Epic Destinies set. Plus, let's not forget how hideously overpowered Destinies were back in 2012; they essentially made the game P2W for awhile.
Even aside from Epic Destinies, MOTU established another horrible precedent: the decision to move the game away from Eberron. This marked a radical shift in the game's direction, and in the 10 years since, DDO really hasn't been the same. It's far more generic, it's far more streamlined, it's just not the same D&D/Eberron game that many of us fell in love with. There's no unified theme of Eberron anymore, and instead, it's just a patchwork of random shit thrown together. Predictably, many of the OGs whom I used to play with have long since quit.
Content-wise, MOTU is also arguably the worst expansion pack too, even worse than Failwild. I can't think of a single quest in the expansion that I have ever enjoyed.
Isle of Dread: I can't say anything on it because I refuse to spend money on it. But I will say that raising the level cap to 32 was a very bad move. D&D was typically meant to be played up until level 10. 20 at the highest. But 30? That's some stupid homebrew shit like I was mentioning earlier with MOTU. 32? At what point are we going to get to level 40, or level 50, or level 60? Even at level 20, our characters have higher stats than P&P deities like Lolth. At what point will the general DDO populace wake up and realize that this just isn't even D&D anymore? There are certainly still things about the game that are fun (mostly due to the solid foundation of the first 6 years), but there's so much shit in the game that just shouldn't be there. Level 32 is one of them.
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Ranking the expansions from favorite > least favorite (Read 16100 times)
