History YMMV / DungeonsAndDragonsOnline

* {{Altitis}}: The extensive character customization and the number of paths you can take tends to encourage this in players. Equally encourages is reincarnating a singular character, which maintains certain attributes (tomes, epic destinies, reaper XP) while adding past life bonuses and allowing the same experimentation of different classes.

** {"City of Sharn" module): Lucian Vaunt is a relatively [[FromNobodyToNightmare ordinary man]] with no special skills or abilities, besides being an intelligent entrepreneur trying to make a name for himself in the city of Sharn. He discovers a way to bring magic to the masses by inventing a device that can allow ordinary people to cast spells, and gets rich building a business empire around his product. Unfortunately for his customers, his devices [[CastFromLifespan drain their life energy]] to work which slowly kills them off. Also, the necromancers he employed to help build his devices are the only ones who [[LeaveNoWitnesses know of this]], and they all suddenly die [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident in a horrible freak accidental explosion]] in the industrial sector of Sharn, but not before casting a curse against Vaunt that will [[MurderIntoMalevolence cause anyone to die in relation to what Vaunt did]] to be resurrected as a Forgewraith - a [[VengefulGhost ghostly undead flaming revenant]] with the goal of murdering Vaunt and anyone else still living in Sharn. Finally to combat the Forgewraith problem, Vaunt steals the Stormreach beacon - a magical artifact that will [[PowerNullifier paralyse the Forgewraiths]], but is also the only thing holding back an ancient madness curse that will turn all of Stormreach into a bloodbath of insanity. Vaunt does all of these horrible deeds which kills hundreds if not thousands directly or indirectly, and does not care one bit about any of it. His only concern is to gain as much wealth and power as possible amongst the elites of Sharn.

** {"City of Sharn" module): Lucian Vaunt is a relatively [[FromNobodyToNightmare ordinary man]] with no special skills or abilities, besides being an intelligent entrepreneur trying to make a name for himself in the city of Sharn. He discovers a way to bring magic to the masses in the form of a device that can allow ordinary people to cast spells, and gets rich building a business empire around his product. Unfortunately for his customers, his devices [[CastFromLifespan drain their life energy]] to work which slowly kills them off. Also, the necromancers he employed to help build his devices are the only ones who [[LeaveNoWitnesses know of this]], and they all suddenly die [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident in a horrible freak accidental explosion]] in the industrial sector of Sharn, but not before casting a curse against Vaunt that will [[MurderIntoMalevolence cause anyone to die in relation to what Vaunt did]] to be resurrected as a Forgewraith - a [[VengefulGhost ghostly undead flaming revenant]] with the goal of murdering Vaunt and anyone else still living in Sharn. Finally to combat the Forgewraith problem, Vaunt steals the Stormreach beacon - a magical artifact that will [[PowerNullifier paralyse the Forgewraiths]], but is also the only thing holding back an ancient madness curse that will turn all of Stormreach into a bloodbath of insanity. Vaunt does all of these horrible deeds which kills hundreds if not thousands directly or indirectly, and does not care one bit about any of it. His only concern is to gain as much wealth and power as possible amongst the elites of Sharn.

* FandomRivalry: A somewhat {{downplayed|trope}} example -- being two [=MMORPGs=] based on the same franchise, this was bound to happen between ''VideoGame/{{Neverwinter}}'' and ''VideoGame/DungeonsAndDragonsOnline'' players. The rivalry come more from the fact that DDO uses the way-less popular ''Eberron'' setting while ''VideoGame/{{Neverwinter}}'' uses the more mainstream ''Forgotten Realms'' setting (DDO eventually got the ''Forgotten Realms'' setting in an expansion, funnily enough) and the obligatory discussions about what game respects the spirit of their namesake Tabletop Game more.

** {"City of Sharn" module): Lucian Vaunt is a relatively [[FromNobodyToNightmare ordinary man]] with no special skills or abilities, besides being an intelligent entrepreneur trying to make a name for himself in the city of Sharn. He discovers a way to bring magic to the masses in the form of a device that can allow ordinary people to cast spells, and gets rich building a business empire around his product. Unfortunately for his customers, his devices [[CastFromLifespan drain their life energy]] to work which slowly kills them off. Also, the necromancers he employed to help build his devices are the only ones who [[LeaveNoWitnesses know of this]], and they all suddenly die [[MakeItLookLikeAnAccident in a horrible freak accidental explosion]] in the industrial sector of Sharn, but not before casting a curse against Vaunt that will cause anyone to die there to be resurrected as a Forgewraith - an undead flaming revenant with the goal of murdering Vaunt and anyone else still living in Sharn. Finally to combat the Forgewraith problem, Vaunt steals the Stormreach beacon - a magical artifact that will paralyse the Forgewraiths, but is also the only thing holding back an ancient madness curse that will turn all Stormreach into a bloodbath of insanity. Vaunt does all of these horrible deeds and kills hundreds if not thouands directly or indirectly and does not care one bit about any of it. His only concern is to gain as much power as possible amongst the elites of Sharn.

* CompleteMonster ("Demon Sands" module): [[GodSaveUsFromTheQueen Queen Lailat]] is the [[OurDemonsAreDifferent demonic]] ruler of the Menechtarun desert and the one behind the region's perpetual violence. Summoned to Eberron by King Raiyum, Lailat helped him achieve lichdom and then imprisoned him in his tomb so that she could turn his kingdom into her own personal killing field. Lailat led the Firebrand gnolls to become vicious man-eating slavers, taught the Vulkoorim scorrow to adopt [[HumanSacrifice ritual sacrifice]], and set them against each other and Menechtarun's surviving humans simply to enjoy the violence. When the players raid her lair, Lailat is shown to have killed another adventuring party and revived them to fight for her as undead, [[AndIMustScream reanimating them each time they die to ensure that their suffering never ends]]. She also keeps a rakshasa bound as a SexSlave and considers replacing him with a player when he dies. A boundlessly cruel tyrant concerned only with causing as much violence and suffering as she can, Lailat is a vicious monster even among demons.

** Taken UpToEleven with Reapers, which can spawn in any quest that's on Reaper difficulty, hit even harder than the aforementioned Champions, have 50% incorporeality, and slow down their targets when they attack. Try to range them from far away, or from a high ledge they can't move to normally? They'll just warp right up to you.

** "Proof is in the Poison" is very much a nightmare for any low-level party that does not know what they're doing, mainly due to the many casters in the dungeon that like to throw nasty spells on you. The Quickfoot Caster ambush on the bridge at the beginning has led to many a TotalPartyKill. Also, there are 3 rooms almost completely filled with acid, and you either need to navigate across pipes on the ceiling or jump on small platforms to the other side to pull a lever, causing walls to go up in the pool, making it so you need to return a certain way.. Also, there's a room with acid in front of the staircases, as well as an earlier room where you will likely need to walk across a pool of acid. As if that's not bad enough, the third pool of acid has spinning blades in it.

* {{Altitis}}: The extensive character customization and the number of paths you can take tends to encourage this in players.
* DemonicSpiders: Kobold Shamans on elite mode know lightning bolt spells. And use them a lot. Failing a reflex save means bye-bye to half of your health if you're a fighter, or all of your health if you're a wizard. At higher levels, you meet beholders, one of the game's nastiest monsters who tend to repeatedly use a Disintegrate spell from their EyeBeams, which is likely to kill you in one shot as well as damage or destroy all of your costly equipment.

*** Some Elite monsters cause extra damage or add a damage-over-time effect every time they damage you. Combined with spells or abilities that cause damage multiple times at once such as Magic Missile, or monsters that attack very quickly, this can very quickly kill an insufficiently-protected player.
** Taken UpToEleven with Reapers, which can spawn in any quest that's on Reaper difficulty, hit even harder than the aforementioned Champions, have 50% incorporeality, and slow down their targets when they attack. Try to range them from far away, or from a high ledge they can't move to normally? [[VillainTeleportation They'll just warp right up to you.]]

* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments: Creator/GaryGygax, co-creator of the original ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' game, actually narrated one quest arc, Delara's Tomb. After Gygax's death in 2008, the developers of DDO created an in-game memorial in Delara's graveyard (which includes a twenty-sided die on the stone memorial). A similar memorial appears in the Threnal quest chain for D&D co-creator Dave Arneson, who narrated that quest series.
* ScrappyMechanic: Poison has become this after Menace of the Underdark. It used to function much like it does in D&D 3.5 and was not a serious threat to a veteran adventurer, much like on the tabletop. However, with this expansion and its focus on drow and poison, they redesigned the Poison system completely so Poison can also deal hit point damage as well as ability damage and there are multiple poison types with various conditions and protections and different saving throws for each type based on what type it is. This has led to a great deal of frustration and confusion over how Poison actually works and what protects you from what, since there's no easy way to tell anymore.

* ThatOneBoss: Numerous examples.

* [[ThatOneLevel That One Dungeon]]:
** "Proof is in the Poison" is very much a nightmare for any low-level party that does not know what they're doing, mainly due to the many casters in the dungeon that like to throw nasty spells on you. The Quickfoot Caster ambush on the bridge at the beginning has led to many a TotalPartyKill.
*** Also, there are 3 rooms almost completely filled with acid, and you either need to navigate across pipes on the ceiling or jump on small platforms to the other side to pull a lever, causing walls to go up IN THE POOL, making it so you need to return a certain way.. Also, there's a room with acid in front of the staircases, as well as an earlier room where you will likely need to walk across a pool of acid, so your hireling will probably walk into the acid, killing him/herself.
*** The third pool of acid has ''[[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill spinning blades in it]]''.
** "Kobold Assault" gets this for being the first Challenge Dungeon most players meet, It's a massive ZergRush of Kobolds, including their spellcasters. You have one rest shrine. It is also out in the open, this tends to involve players getting hopelessly overwhelmed even on casual.

** The entire Threnal adventure pack, not for its difficulty but for its hair-pulling frustration - It blends GuideDangIt, EscortMission, and GoddamnedBats in equal proportions on top of being incredibly long and not particularly worthwhile except for the end rewards. What makes this quest chain so bad? For starters it's ''extremely'' long, having three quest arcs of three quests each to finish it, and those quests are not short (except for, ironically, [[DisappointingLastLevel the finale]]), not worth a lot of experience, and don't have great loot apart from the reward for finishing the whole nine-quest arc. Of those nine quests, three of them are [[EscortMission escort quests]] where you have to lead [=NPCs=] around or protect them, or both. Two more of those quests involve hunting down keys in a winding network of tunnels unless you have a lockpicker, and one of them requires you to [[GuideDangIt shoot a target lever at the very end]] when you're most likely to have run out of ammunition (and unlike in quests produced or retouched later, none is provided). Assuming any of you were carrying a ranged weapon in the first place. And if you're solo, it's possible the quest might reset while you're leaving to get one, making you do the whole thing over. The quests are a melee fighter's nightmare on top of all that, featuring monsters with high damage reduction you probably can't overcome at the recommended level as well as tons of weapon-destroying oozes and rust monsters in addition to aforementioned target lever. Later on you'll begin to find beholders, including a CR 17 elder beholder (in a level 9 quest on Normal!), which can nullify all your buffs or even kill you instantly. If that weren't enough, it's also possible to bug out the quest-givers, forcing you to repeat parts you've already done unless you speak to the right people in the right order.
* UnfortunateImplications: Upon completing Bragdil Wyvernbone's quest, your character says to her "You're a horrible Woman. Don't you ever smile?"

* FandomRivalry: A somewhat {{downplayed|trope}} example -- being two [=MMORPGs=] based on the same franchise, this was bound to happen between ''Neverwinter'' and ''VideoGame/DungeonsAndDragonsOnline'' players since both games are from two different eras (DDO from the early 2000s, and Neverwinter from the early-TheNewTens) with different priorities and developers with DDO being a more co-op focused dungeon-crawler and Neverwinter being a more story-driven MMO. The rivalry come more from the fact that DDO uses the way-less popular ''Eberron'' setting while Neverwinter uses the more mainstream ''Forgotten Realms'' setting (DDO eventually got the ''Forgotten Realms'' setting in an expansion, funnily enough) and the obligatory discussions about what game respects the spirit of their namesake Tabletop Game more.

** The entire Threnal adventure pack, not for its difficulty but for its hair-pulling frustration - It blends GuideDangIt, EscortMission, and GoddamnedBats in equal proportions on top of being incredibly long and not particularly worthwhile except for the end rewards. What makes this quest chain so bad? For starters it's ''extremely'' long, having three quest arcs of three quests each to finish it, and those quests are not short (except for, ironically, [[DisappointingLastLevel the finale]]), not worth a lot of experience, and don't have great loot apart from the reward for finishing the whole nine-quest arc. Of those nine quests, three of them are [[EscortMission escort quests]] where you have to lead [=NPCs=] around or protect them, or both. Two more of those quests involve hunting down keys in a winding network of tunnels unless you have a lockpicker, and one of them requires you to [[GuideDangIt shoot a target lever at the very end]] when you're most likely to have run out of ammunition (and unlike in quests produced or retouched later, none is provided). Assuming any of you were carrying a ranged weapon in the first place. And if you're solo, it's possible the quest might reset while you're leaving to get one, making you do the whole thing over. The quests are a melee fighter's nightmare on top of all that, featuring monsters with high damage reduction you probably can't overcome at the recommended level as well as tons of weapon-destroying oozes and rust monsters in addition to aforementioned target lever. Later on you'll begin to find beholders, including a CR 17 elder beholder (in a level 9 quest on Normal!), which can nullify all your buffs or even kill you instantly. If that weren't enough, it's also possible to bug out the quest-givers, forcing you to repeat parts you've already done unless you speak to the right people in the right order.

* GoddamnBats: The actual bats are hard to hit if you aren't using auto-target, and auto-target is slower than the manual mode. Go figure. There's also rust monsters that pretty much have to be dealt with via ranged weapons, a wooden club, or magic (they eat metal), oozes that similarly eat whatever hits it other than ranged weapons and are best handled with GoodOldFisticuffs or a rare crystal Muckbane club, spellcasting enemies that know Hold Person/Hypnotize/Daze Monster, trolls that have to be [[KillItWithFire finished off with fire]] or acid (unless you have epic damage output), the large spider enemies that keep jumping around when they attack, etc. etc.

** "In The Demon's Den" on elite difficulty. A base level 18 quest, you must kite an invincible [[MultiArmedAndDangerous six-armed]] 30-CR red name boss while wearing down and simultaneously killing '''three''' other 29-CR red name bosses just to remove the first one's invincibility. Even worse, dispels are going to hit you left and right, so spells like Haste and Greater Heroism can't help you. Nowadays, six level 20's with strong builds and maxed epic destinies can expect to breeze right through. Back when it was first released[[note]]in 2010; epic destinies were added mid-2012[[/note]], or with weaker groups who are expecting difficulty comparable to other level 18's, this quest will ''murder'' you.

* CompleteMonster: Yaulthoon the Mind Flayer, who casually inflicts irreversible BodyHorror on at least a couple hundred Stormreach citizens ForTheEvulz. According to a review of Update 9, he seems to be designed so that players genuinely hate him by the end of the arc. [[spoiler: You don't get to kill him, but you get to [[AndIMustScream kill his mind, leaving him a harmless, babbling wreck that no longer retains any form of sentience]].]]

* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments: Creator/GaryGygax, co-creator of the original ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' game, actually narrated one quest arc, Delara's Tomb. After Gygax's death in 2008, the developers of DDO created an in-game memorial in Delara's graveyard (which includes a d20 dice on the stone memorial). A similar memorial appears in the Threnal quest chain for D&D co-creator Dave Arneson, who narrated that quest series.

* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments: Creator/GaryGygax, co-creator of the original DungeonsAndDragons game, actually narrated one quest arc, Delara's Tomb. After Gygax's death in 2008, the developers of DDO created an in-game memorial in Delara's graveyard (which includes a d20 dice on the stone memorial). A similar memorial appears in the Threnal quest chain for D&D co-creator Dave Arneson, who narrated that quest series.

** "Kobold Assault" gets this for being the first Challenge Dungeon most players meet, It's a massive ZergRush of Kobolds, including their spellcasters. You have one rest shrine. It is also out in the open, this tends to involve players getting hopelessly overwhelmed even on casual.