Dungeons & Dragons Online

File planit is doing a stress test this week.

 

At least Spork went to a place he would, obviously, be appreciated more than SOE...

 

oh hell I'd do models for that if they'd pay me... won't happen, though

 

Get us beta invites for DDO!

 

I got into the beta, and I've been playing it for the last couple of days. It's kind of a pig on system requirements, and doesn't run very fast (it requires the .NET framework, so at least part of it is using that interpreter, which isn't the best performing thing out there). With some of the graphical options dialed down, it runs better, and still looks reasonably good, so I did that.

Gameplay is decent. The controls are fairly standard for the game genre, and work about like you would expect. The character sheet/inventory control and all that aren't the most intuitive, but I figured them out without too much trouble. There's a decent tutorial that helps you get acquainted with the gameplay.

There are four races, each with male and female versions (Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings). Eight or nine classes, which are about what you would expect (some fighting classes, some casters, and a healer). I played a dwarf, and chose the barbarian class, which is essentially a tank. One nice thing about character creation and advancement is that you can customize your stats and abilities any way you want, even to the point of picking some skills that are intended to be used by other classes, so you can make your own hybrids. If you don't know what to pick, the game can give you reasonable default choices. If you've ever played D&D in any of its various incarnations, this will be pretty familiar.

The game world is interesting for an MMO. There's no big open world to explore, it's basically a series of very small instances all connected together. Some of them are common areas where everyone ends up in the same instance even though they aren't grouped (and even those will generate separate instances if they reach a population limit). The dungeons where you go to have your adventures are more traditional, each group gets their own instance to adventure in. I loke to explore, so the world really feels too constrained to me (it feels a lot like Neverwinter Nights or something like that). I do like the private instances to quest in though, there's no waiting for quest mobs or anything like that.

Loot is handled very well. There's no contention for items -- when the game drops items, it gives everyone something that's tailored to their class. No need for loot rolls, DKP, complaints about someone else getting a coveted item, and all that crap. I started the game with a suit of leather armor and a club, and after doing about three quests I had mail armor and an axe and shield, as well as various food, scrolls, and potions. I couldn't figure out how to vend my old stuff, though -- the vendors I found wouldn't buy my old armor and weapons. Also inside the quest instances are mushrooms you can pick, and in town is a mushroom collector who gives you random useful things in exchange for mushrooms. You get random mushrooms when you pick them, and different mushrooms give you different rewards, it's fun.

No PvP that I could see, but they could always add it in later. Everyone's the same faction, so realm-vs-realm battlegrounds or something might be fun.

Overall, the game isn't too bad. It's fairly true to PnP D&D, which is fun for me because I used to play that a lot (still do occasionally). The gameplay is good, and it's fun to play. The only downside for me is the way the world is constructed, and that's honestly not a big deal. I don't think I'd play it by myself, but I'd put my WoW account on hiatus and play this instead for a while if the clan were going to have a division.

 

Nice rundown Symen!!! Thanks for that! I too am an old school D&D person and spent many long hours playing, designing items, and tailoring my character and utilizing all the neat character sheets they had then.

This game really appeals to me for some reason and your description is very intriguing.

 

Great Discription
when is this slated for market ? looks like something i will be checking out if only for the costumery (okay, for those that dont know, i love to sew and do alot of costume work and collect that sort of thing , i know, sick and wrong )

 

sign me up for when it comes out. I want to swing my axe with Mani

anyway, Just because its D&D pretty much garuntees ill be getting it. Cant wait till release

 

I officially nominate Symen our resident reviewer...

 

/agreed!

 

I am looking forward to this one and the Conan MMO as well.

 

Conan ? the barbarian ??????? oooo... redsonya here i come!!

 

We'd all love to see you in the Red Sonja outfit....wohooooo!!!

 

Well. Turbine.

I was in the beta of their last game. Asheron's Call 2.
(Good timing. I just posted on my site about MMORPG implosion)

It was a damn pretty game. Second to none. They were still doing massive combat and skill changes to AC2 on a monday. Wednesday they announced it was going live. The beta community was in an uproar. We were pretty much ignored.

December 31st AC2 is shutting down. Went live in 2002? 2003?

To illustrate my point. Asheron's Call 1 went live in 1997. AC1 is still going.

So they can make a good game. They can make a good engine. Hopefully they will get them both in one package.

 

AC1 is where we did some great adventuring with Val. Good memories...

 

Val was alot of fun in that game for sure , makes me sad wishing he was around for Wow and City of Villians. Gasp also we had LAser and his mom in that game lol. But ya i hope this game turns out to be a good one as well.