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Dungeons & Dragons Online Review
There are few institutions in gaming like Dungeons & Dragons. From humble beginnings as a pen-and-paper RPG, D&D has proven to be one of gaming's most enduring franchises. There was a time when you simply couldn't get your geek papers without playing it. Not only has it been directly adapted into countless video games, but it could be considered the mother of all RPGs, so it's not surprising that a MMORPG based on this dearly loved classic has raised a lot of interest.
Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) stays acceptably close to D&D 3.5 rules for a real-time game. D&D fans will be in familiar territory, but even if you're new to RPGs it's not difficult to adapt to, and the community is usually helpful. The DM has been replaced with bits of audible "DM text" and the computer handles all the dice, so the pace of gameplay is brisk.
Technology
The graphics in the game are excellent and they've managed to capture the essense of D&D in a believeable way. We've come to expect these games to look terrific, and DDO lives up to this expectation with a complete array of visual bells and whistles.
The engine allows your character to jump, fall, and climb, giving you more freedom of movement than some games of this kind.
Because of the instancing system and the fact that Stormreach is itself broken into numerous zones, loading screens are a way of life. During quests the game runs smoothly, but running across city zones can still cause extreme lag and irritating crashes to the desktop.
Despite the heavy use of instancing, players are spread over more than a dozen separate servers. I was sort of expecting a more unified system like that of Guild Wars, where no server selection is required.
DDO includes integrated voice chat, which seems destined to become a standard feature in online games. Voice chat always presents some problems, but this version seems to disagree with about half of the microphones on the market, and has poor sound compared to Teamspeak, Ventrillo, or any number of other games with voice chat. It works, but there is room for improvement.
You might also find that teenagers burping into the mic doesn't necessarily enchance the roleplaying experience, and very few players are willing communicate by keyboard when voice is an option. Refusing to use it will inevitably make finding groups a little more difficult.
Living Constructs
They've used the city of Stormreach from the Eberron campaign as a setting. Subsequently, there is a playable race called Warforged that are a combination of machine and magic, which is something a lot of people don't expect to find in a D&D game. They are a central part of campaign's lore, and while they are a bit peculiar, many games have far stranger playable races.
The current level cap is 10. These are broken into 5 ranks each to bring progress more into line with what people expect from a MMORPG, and I suspect that the cap will be bumped up to 20 in conjunction with future content releases.
The Instance Factor
As I mentioned in my beta impressions, there are no large persistent areas in DDO. Taverns and city zones serve as meeting areas, from which parties of up to 6, or raids of up to 12, depart on instanced dungeon crawls.
There are advantages to the heavy use of instancing. Different parties doing the same quest cannot interfere with each other, and there are no line-ups to kill boss monsters. Puzzles, traps, and dynamic environments can be offered that would be impossible for everyone to experience in a persistent world.
Image © 2006 D. Spohn licensed to About.com, Inc.The downside to instanced content is that being in your own private copy of a zone is a long way from "massively multiplayer." Even though large-scale events in persistent worlds don't always go smoothly, they tend to be some of the most memorable occasions people have in these games. 12 player groups, even with busy taverns to congregate in, is much closer to Neverwinter Nights or Guild Wars (which don't describe themselves as MMORPGs) than it is to EverQuest or World of Warcraft.
To gain experience you must complete these instanced quests; you can't progress simply by sitting in one spot and grinding mobs. Apart from a few early dungeons, soloing is not a viable option in DDO, and there are no NPC henchmen for hire. The game does have a good search system that makes finding a group quite easy. I usually have a group within minutes of logging on, although it can get more difficult if you don't play during peak hours.
D&D was never meant to be played solo, and you have to wonder why people in a MMORPG would want to solo when there are plenty of single-player games available. The answer is that they don't want to solo all the time, they just want the option to solo between groups, or to experiment with new skills, and so on.
While these games are clearly not about soloing, I miss it more than I thought I would when it's not there, and it's among the most common complaints I hear about the game.
Engaging the Enemy
When you get sent into the sewers to rescue someone, you can bet that the Kobolds aren't going to be happy about it. DDO follows most RPG combat conventions, with a few notable exceptions. The shift key lets you block, and your right mouse button lets you perform a single swing of your weapon, although you have an auto-attack toggle as well. I'm still not convinced the single swing is really useful for anything aside from breaking barrels.
In keeping with the original D&D, your health does not automatically regenerate. You can recover only in taverns or at the single-use rest shrines found in some dungeons, making healing classes highly valued. This also forces players to give some thought to their strategy, as they can find themselves without enough health or spell points to complete a quest.
Quests can be undertaken at 3 different difficulty settings, but you have to start with the easiest and work your way up. Repeating quests is inevitable, so difficulty settings help to keep it challenging.
As you would expect, hits, misses, and damage are calculated according to the D&D ruleset. I used to think this was a good idea, but now I'm not so sure. The d20 system used in PnP D&D was designed to keep things simple enough to allow for fluid gameplay with dice and graph paper. It's simplicity seems to work against it in a computer game, where a much more sophisticated real-time combat system can be implemented. For example, in the early levels your chances of missing are very high, and when you do hit something you frequently kill it in one or two blows. Fortunately, it does improve somewhat as you advance through the game.
Traps and Puzzles
DDO has some of the most imaginative traps, puzzles, and side quests I've seen in a game of this kind. It brings to light the biggest problem with traps and puzzles in MMORPGs; word gets around very quickly, making secret doors anything but secret. If you're playing DDO with a random group, odds are at least one person in the group knows exactly where the traps are and how the puzzles are solved. Naturally, the best way to enjoy content like this unspoiled is with a group of friends at a similar level.
Crafting and Economy
Traditional D&D didn't have crafting, so it won't come as a shock that there is no crafting in DDO either. While you can trade with other players, they've made an effort to avoid a player-driven economy. You can exchange items through NPCs at fixed rates, but there is nothing akin to the auction houses some other games offer. The chat system in DDO does not even have a trade channel.
Many people have mixed feelings about player-driven economies because they can be unpredictable. They invite real-money trade and they're not immune to such things as inflation, however, in my view they're far more interesting than static economies controlled by NPCs.
The Content Race
Turbine has already released one new module for DDO, and I would guess that there is enough here to keep casual players busy for months. Gamers that put in several hours or more every day, however, cover all the ground in the game pretty quickly and tend to run out of things to do. To be fair, hardcore gamers are probably impossible to satisfy in this regard.
Image © 2006 D. Spohn licensed to About.com, Inc.Part of the problem is that PvP, crafting, and a player-based economy can extend the life of a game tremendously. DDO has none of these things, so when you hit level 10 with a couple different character classes you don't have much alternative but to wait for the next module to come along. Turbine has a monumental task ahead of them addressing bugs and adding more dungeon crawls to the game quickly enough to keep their player base paying.
Bottom Line
Oddly enough, DDO suffers from being a little too much like its PnP counterpart. Traditional D&D was always best among a group of close friends with a similar play schedule, and the same holds true for DDO. With the right group on the right quest it's an exceptional experience near the top of its class. The rest of the time, not so much. It also inadvertently takes the massive out of massively multiplayer. A few years ago this game might have blown everyone away, but given the monthly payment plan and aggressive competition from other online RPGs, the appeal of DDO is bound to be rather limited. On the other hand, if you're disenchanted with the current market leaders in this genre, then DDO certainly deserves your consideration.
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