Hypocritical Design Method and Greedy Management
The potential for offering extensive factional interaction, extensive and interactive adventure panoramae, and a wide range of ways players could operatively influence the total game experience and campaign plot were lost on the developers although it was clear they understood how to achieve these goals. It was also clear the designers did not want to offer players quality entertainment, but rather gain the greatest money for the least work and slightest planning.
For a game that offers less in long term breadth and depth of play than most single-player computer role-playing games, D&D Online and its design team are quickly trying to patch up their errors but only so much as does not invalidate their cynical philosophy of consumer gullibility. In this way it does not exceed the design methods of Cryptic (City of Heroes), SOE (Everquest, etc.), and all the other MMO design companies that appear operational at present.
If I were seeking a new computer game, I would not choose D&D Online nor any MMO until there was a game that had as much to offer as the best of single-player computer games (such as Medieval 2: Total War, Elder Scrolls 4, and Baldur's Gate 2).
If I were a reviewer, I'd hesitate to rate any MMO highly that does not match design values of a single-player computer game, despite supposed problems and issues facing such a purportedly complex design problem as an MMO. Text-based MU* such as MUDs, MUSHes, MOOs, and MUX have been dealing with these issues for decades and the best of these far outstrips the meager offerings that have appeared commercially although at present the MU* crowd tends to be as unpleasant and deceptive as the corporate administrata of MMO.