Dungeons & Dragons Online for Windows
- PEGI Age Rating: Age 12+
- Publisher: Atari
- Genre: Role-Playing
- Platform: Windows
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A first look
Pros
- No ninja looting or spawn camping. - Fun tutorial. - Integrated voice chat.
Cons
- Forced to group with other people in order to get ANY character advancement.
Recommended it?
No
The Bottom Line:
Only for die-hard MMO fans, or people who really, really like grouping and hate ninja looting/spawn camping.
To be fair, the only reason I write this now is because there doesn't seem to be any other review out there and I wanted something for people to think about. I will start with the caveat that I have *not* extensively played DDO, am not intimately familiar with the end-game content, etc. etc. I played the beta and can give you my impressions of DDO and that's all. My impressions are also from the beta and a tad 'not fresh', so I apologize for anything vague and I sincerely hope nothing has changed since I played.
I was rather excited to hear that there would be an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online roleplaying game) of Dungeons and Dragons. I have played D&D since it was in its original box set form back in the early 80's. I love RPG's, and I love MMO's. Getting into the beta for DDO was a big thing for me.
Graphics & Sound:
I found the graphics predictable, if somewhat updated. DDO looked exactly like every other MMO out there. DAOC, EQ, etc. Yes, they're all 'fantasy MMO's', but surely there could be a little originality in the costuming! EQ manages that just fine! New races were interesting but again, somehow dungeons all look the same, and you can spot a warrior from a mile away. Pretty, but nothing to get excited about. Screenshots can be found http://www.ddo.com/index.php?page_id=66&siid=25.
Character creation was limited. Choices were very static and few. You had the basic hair (less than 10 choices per model), eye color, a few facial feature modifications and skin tone, but that was all. Given that City of Heroes came out years ago with an OUTSTANDING character creation engine (one that was perhaps TOO flexible) you'd think we'd see more options available today but that was not the case.
World graphics were good. Buildings and creatures were detailed and interesting. There wasn't a lot of environmental graphic ambiance, but I was in a city and wouldn't have noticed it as much as I would have in the wilds. (Loading did seem to take a bit because of this, I think.)
Sound was fairly standard, but adequate. Swordplay, death sounds and the like added well to the game. Sound ambiance changed with the environment (such as pubs having noisy background voice chatter).
Gameplay:
DDO has 5 different races and 9 classes to pick from. This is fairly standard among fantasy MMO's. (By "fantasy", I mean sword and sorcery, dueling dragons and mosters-style MMO's. Star Wars Galaxies is a sci-fi MMO.) It is based on Dungeons and Dragons v3.5 rules (for those that this means anything to). Advancement is from questing), and removes the 'grind' factor. You don't just go out and kill random creatures to level your character (although some people really enjoy this). Voice chat is integrated into the game itself, removing the need for a third-party VOIP program like Teamspeak or Ventrilo to talk to your friends and party-mates.
Turbine had attempted to fix several large problems of existing MMO's. One of these is an issue called 'ninja looting'. This is where some really good loot will drop after killing a creature and someone will click it before anyone else can (or while it's being decided who should get the loot) and then disappear. In DDO, each creature who dropped loot would drop loot specifically for each person, and ONLY THAT PERSON could pick up that loot. No more warriors picking up that uber-item that really should go to the priest.
DDO also made it so that every quest takes place in its own 'instance' (or virtual world away from all other players). This ensures that your party doesn't overlap with any other players and won't have to deal with someone else killing your goal target first, or repeatedly (known as spawn camping). Your instance is yours alone.
Movement was fairly easy to get the hang of and combat was explained well during the tutorial. Combat consisted mainly of 'click target, select attack' style which is common to MMO's and great for the majority of players.
The tutorial was actually quite good, leveraging quite a bit from the learnings of Star Wars Galaxies. It was a playable tutorial that guided you through a series of quests, each one advancing your character and giving you both equipment and skills while allowing you to progress a storyline. Missions increased in difficulty allowing you to use newly acquired skills and explore new areas. The tutorial would also introduce the player to new aspects of the game itself, such as types of movement (e.g. strafing) or new parts of the User Interface (like the minimap) or gameplay, like grouping.
And that brings us to my biggest complaint with DDO. After about the second introductory mission, you are basically FORCED to group with other people to get anything done on your missions. Turbine took the term "massively multiplayer" quite literally and determined that all missions should be quite un-soloable (unable to be completed by a single player). I *like* to solo. I don't mind grouping occasionally to get big events done, but it's not my thing constantly. In DDO, soloing is just not an option past the second mission. There are no, let me repeat, NO random creature spawns to level off of.
DDO, like most other MMO's, allows for guilds/player associations/kinships (groups of players that have banded together to form a permanent online group for friendship, accomplishing missions, socializing, etc.). They think that this will help you get your missions done and level your character. Well, if your other guild mates aren't on and available when you are, then you are forced to find random people that are on the same quest you are on at the exact same time. I know from my experiences in other MMO's that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. If there are enough people playing at one time that there are ALWAYS people on that quest at the same time, then the servers are going to be straining.
And that was when I decided that there was nothing special enough about DDO to make me put up with having to group with people and shell out for it. I confess that I did NOT stick around to see how the crafting or trade turned out. I have no feedback on that. I know this isn't the most detailed of reviews, and I apologize again. What I do know is that what I saw of DDO was nothing special, and the drawbacks far outweighed the few gains Turbine made. On the plus side, they are offering a free 10-day trial. I *strongly* advise anyone considering buying DDO to take advantage of this offer first. You can always upgrade to the full version later. The 10-day trial can be found http://trial.ddo.com/.
I was rather excited to hear that there would be an MMORPG (massively multiplayer online roleplaying game) of Dungeons and Dragons. I have played D&D since it was in its original box set form back in the early 80's. I love RPG's, and I love MMO's. Getting into the beta for DDO was a big thing for me.
Graphics & Sound:
I found the graphics predictable, if somewhat updated. DDO looked exactly like every other MMO out there. DAOC, EQ, etc. Yes, they're all 'fantasy MMO's', but surely there could be a little originality in the costuming! EQ manages that just fine! New races were interesting but again, somehow dungeons all look the same, and you can spot a warrior from a mile away. Pretty, but nothing to get excited about. Screenshots can be found http://www.ddo.com/index.php?page_id=66&siid=25.
Character creation was limited. Choices were very static and few. You had the basic hair (less than 10 choices per model), eye color, a few facial feature modifications and skin tone, but that was all. Given that City of Heroes came out years ago with an OUTSTANDING character creation engine (one that was perhaps TOO flexible) you'd think we'd see more options available today but that was not the case.
World graphics were good. Buildings and creatures were detailed and interesting. There wasn't a lot of environmental graphic ambiance, but I was in a city and wouldn't have noticed it as much as I would have in the wilds. (Loading did seem to take a bit because of this, I think.)
Sound was fairly standard, but adequate. Swordplay, death sounds and the like added well to the game. Sound ambiance changed with the environment (such as pubs having noisy background voice chatter).
Gameplay:
DDO has 5 different races and 9 classes to pick from. This is fairly standard among fantasy MMO's. (By "fantasy", I mean sword and sorcery, dueling dragons and mosters-style MMO's. Star Wars Galaxies is a sci-fi MMO.) It is based on Dungeons and Dragons v3.5 rules (for those that this means anything to). Advancement is from questing), and removes the 'grind' factor. You don't just go out and kill random creatures to level your character (although some people really enjoy this). Voice chat is integrated into the game itself, removing the need for a third-party VOIP program like Teamspeak or Ventrilo to talk to your friends and party-mates.
Turbine had attempted to fix several large problems of existing MMO's. One of these is an issue called 'ninja looting'. This is where some really good loot will drop after killing a creature and someone will click it before anyone else can (or while it's being decided who should get the loot) and then disappear. In DDO, each creature who dropped loot would drop loot specifically for each person, and ONLY THAT PERSON could pick up that loot. No more warriors picking up that uber-item that really should go to the priest.
DDO also made it so that every quest takes place in its own 'instance' (or virtual world away from all other players). This ensures that your party doesn't overlap with any other players and won't have to deal with someone else killing your goal target first, or repeatedly (known as spawn camping). Your instance is yours alone.
Movement was fairly easy to get the hang of and combat was explained well during the tutorial. Combat consisted mainly of 'click target, select attack' style which is common to MMO's and great for the majority of players.
The tutorial was actually quite good, leveraging quite a bit from the learnings of Star Wars Galaxies. It was a playable tutorial that guided you through a series of quests, each one advancing your character and giving you both equipment and skills while allowing you to progress a storyline. Missions increased in difficulty allowing you to use newly acquired skills and explore new areas. The tutorial would also introduce the player to new aspects of the game itself, such as types of movement (e.g. strafing) or new parts of the User Interface (like the minimap) or gameplay, like grouping.
And that brings us to my biggest complaint with DDO. After about the second introductory mission, you are basically FORCED to group with other people to get anything done on your missions. Turbine took the term "massively multiplayer" quite literally and determined that all missions should be quite un-soloable (unable to be completed by a single player). I *like* to solo. I don't mind grouping occasionally to get big events done, but it's not my thing constantly. In DDO, soloing is just not an option past the second mission. There are no, let me repeat, NO random creature spawns to level off of.
DDO, like most other MMO's, allows for guilds/player associations/kinships (groups of players that have banded together to form a permanent online group for friendship, accomplishing missions, socializing, etc.). They think that this will help you get your missions done and level your character. Well, if your other guild mates aren't on and available when you are, then you are forced to find random people that are on the same quest you are on at the exact same time. I know from my experiences in other MMO's that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. If there are enough people playing at one time that there are ALWAYS people on that quest at the same time, then the servers are going to be straining.
And that was when I decided that there was nothing special enough about DDO to make me put up with having to group with people and shell out for it. I confess that I did NOT stick around to see how the crafting or trade turned out. I have no feedback on that. I know this isn't the most detailed of reviews, and I apologize again. What I do know is that what I saw of DDO was nothing special, and the drawbacks far outweighed the few gains Turbine made. On the plus side, they are offering a free 10-day trial. I *strongly* advise anyone considering buying DDO to take advantage of this offer first. You can always upgrade to the full version later. The 10-day trial can be found http://trial.ddo.com/.
