Re: DDO
Yeah, I'm not swapping over to Cannith. I put a lot of effort to free-unlocking Drow on Khyber, and so it's ony unlocked on Khyber
Interesting note: Until you start to hit level 7+, Bards are probably the singe best class, with honourable mention to ranger.
A low level Bard can still fight well in comparrison to the fighter classes, and their ability to inspire courage boosts them and al others. They can also cast spells of comparable power to an equivilent mage, and although they run out of juice faster, they're not as dependant on their juice and can take more of a beating. And unlike other arcane casters, they can pick up healing spells as well; they don't have many zot/splodey spells, but they have some great utility stuff that can really ruin fights for monsters. (Charm person and charm monster, glitterdust, haste... still annoyed that certain boss monsters are randomly immune to glitterdust, I thought this was D&D, where your uber villian is one good spelchoice away from the ultimate player wielded nerf hammer ) And they've still got enough skills they can easily be good at stealth or agro control whilst getting ridiculous discounts via haggle.
I took my bard into spellsinger so I could get more spell points, and ended up having more to throw around than my friend's equivilent level cleric.
Rangers get honourable mention because a well built ranger is a melee blender. Even if you go archery focus, you're better in melee. My drow was built to be a melee blender, as I had planned to the full tempest prestive enhancement tree, and Drows get racial bonuses wielding shortswords; of which there are plenty of fancy magic ones. (Yay Sharn Syndicate) They've got skills coming out of everywhere, so they easily become a perception/stealth monkey although sadly, they cannot disarm said traps, might be worth dipping into rogue, I've never experimented with multiclassing yet. Their main drawback is their lack of healing, which they gain late at about 7th level, but a cure light wounds at that stage isn't going to cut it. Potions will get you by if you solo, but the expense will drive you nuts. (Not that there's anyhting better to spend gold on, really...)