The game uses the standard D&D level progression system for the most part – experience points, leading to level advancements, new feats, spells and other abilities. However, Core D&D stops at level 20 before you get into epic level content. This works well in the pen and paper environment, given the pacing and time between levels. However, MMORPG players are used to a greater number of milestones in developing their characters, and we wanted to be sure that expectation was served as well.
Using four ranks per level allows us to add these milestones within the Core Rules’ system. While a character progresses through each level, they will gain ranks along the way, which will also give them points that they can spend on various enhancements, such as attack or saving throw bonuses. Once a character has earned all four ranks within a level, they will be ready to move up to the next one.
When Guild Wars was released, so many people were moaning that you could "only" be level 20. It seemed like the Developers worked hard to create a game which wasn't centered around a mindless grind to reach the maximum level before people could start playing... and people complained about it. Fine, whatever, but the 4 ranks per level thing sounds like the DDO team were a bit worried by their level 20 cap - so now, its 20 * 4 (that's 80 for those of you who can't be bothered running calc.exe).
I'm dubious about DDO I have to say. Puzzles and quests are fine, but sometimes MMO players just want to kill stuff - or kill each other - or both. I think alternatives to grinding are great, but making advancement exclusively through puzzles and quests is going to exclude some players as well. I'm thinking back to Guild Wars here.. there were missions required to advance the storyline which some people bitched and moaned about. Constantly. And so the Developers reduced the difficulty of the quests - which pissed off people (like myself) who had managed to complete them fairly easily while they were in their "hard" mode. This kind of crap can kill a game. If there's a hard quest, it should be hard for a reason, and no compromises made on the difficulty of it.
This following quote is from one of the lead designers, about progression and the level 20 cap:
This is one of those areas in which we’re adapting the rules of D&D to make more sense in an online medium. Because the pace of play is a lot more frenetic in DDO than in your typical D&D tabletop campaign, we want to make sure you have more moments of advancement where you get an opportunity to customize and grow your character and abilities. We’re working with WOTC on a system in which your character is still equivalent to its tabletop analogue, while providing an advancement curve and duration more suitable to a persistent online experience.
I hope they adapt it well. Here's my take on this, and why so many games fall flat on their faces here;
Your first and most important goal is to make the progression to level 20 something which doesn't need to be a race
You do that by making sure there's content about for everyone
You also need to make sure there's group content for everyone - ie, things that a level 5 player can pickup and do with his level 16 friend. I'm not saying every single thing in the game, but if those 2 people want to party together then that should be an option, somehow.
You need to take the solo player into account as well as the groupies
I've played so many games where level difference penalties meant I played a game, on a server, with many friends - and never saw any of them. We'd all be off in our seperate zones doing our seperate things, waiting for the moment when we'd all hit the maximum level and could actually DO something together. Again, I've talked about Legend of Mir here before - it had no level cap (well, not one that anyone had found, or one that was published anywhere), and it had no group penalty system. Once you got into your 20's you were set to go - group PvE. group PvP, bring it on, you could take your whole guild to a dungeon and not have to refuse anyone because their level was too low. There was never a feeling of "needing" to level so you could partake in high end raids, levelling was just something people did when there was nothing organised going on. I *liked* that.
Following on from the levelling question, is the one of large scale content, such as raids and such, which is answered (albeit fairly bluntly):
MMORPG.com:The claim is that DDO will focus on group adventure and questing. Are there any plans for large scale player content (i.e. raiding) as seen in many other MMOs?
David Eckelberry: Yes.
Well that's then I guess, isn't it. I've been pulling all these quotes from here - and there's a lot more in there. They talk briefly about the multiclass system (which sounds pretty cool, but nothing like FFXI's job system), and reiterate that there are no plans for PvP at launch time, but mention it's a possibility for an expansion.
Despite the lack of PvP, I'm kind of interested in how DDO turns out.
Currently mmorpg.com is listing the release date as: 15/02/2006