Dungeons and Dragons MMO Review

Once you get started you will instantly find yourself immersed in a lush rich virtual world. Stunning graphics and scenery which can be adjusted to optimize your game play and run on even the oldest computers. Quests are aplenty with in-game tips, clues, and narrative to guide you on your way.

The majority of the quests are instanced based allowing deeper story lines, more complex scenarios, and a different experience each time you run the quest. Along with the standard mobs to kill, you will find puzzles, traps, hidden passages and rooms, mazes, and more in your dungeons.

Raids start around mid levels and are often more than the typical tank and spank. They require strategy, planning, and a good use of your brain. Rewards from raids range from unique and powerful gear to items that can permanently increase your characters stats.

There is plenty of social interaction as parties are a must for most successful game play. Parties can range in size of 2-6 people for normal dungeons and up to 12 for raids. Finding a party is never a problem with their built in looking for group system and no matter what time of day you play you can always find a group to join.

DDO even takes the party experience one step further by offer a built in voice chat for parties. Its like having vent built into the game! Talking not your thing? No problem, you can off your voice and just listen to others or use the traditional party text chat.

Feel like being on your own? Then you can visit several NPCs in the DDO world who sell hirelings. Hirelings are Computer ran characters in the class you choose that you can summon in quests to fill your party. You can control and command your hireling to do what you want and they can be very effective in filling the rolls of missing party members.

Overall there is more in DDO than a single review could ever hope to cover. Gamers looking for a new game and a break from typical MMORPGs should make DDO first on their lists of games to check out.

The upside is that it has fantastic graphics and an easy to use and quick combat system. It is also one of the best online games I’ve played when it comes to the thief class, you get to find traps, pick locks, and other things making the rogue actually worth playing. The adventures all seem to be well thought out and well-crafted. As a free player you have decent access to adventures to play for your level, and if you want to pay to get access to other adventures for your level I think it would most likely be worth it.

The character creation isn’t bad. I like how my characters look after spending time upon their appearance settings. I love that I can multi-class and can multi-class into up to three different classes per character, and I also like that for those who want to be just one class that the game makes going single classed worthwhile. In fact, every class in the game seems to be well balanced, but what I dislike is that you need to go either lawful good or true neutral or else you will be missing out on the use of better unique equipment around mid-level unless you get your use magical devices skill to 20 or more.

I find the game a good relief from WOW type games, so for what this game is and what it offers in terms of play (expecially for free) I’m rating it a 10. If there were a better free game around, I’d play it, but so far haven’t found one, though I do like Wizard101 as its fun for arena play.

Interface: Not bad at all, I instantly logged in and found everything I needed, within a minute I had mastered their hotkeys. Definitely better than some games (*cough*LastChaos*cough*)

Movement and Combat: Wow, I cannot stress how good the combat is, the movement is basic but that’s fine. The combat works much like a LoZ game, my only qualm is that you can’t see your weapon in first person.

Character Customization: The character customization was quite in depth and on par to SWG, plenty of choices and races and classes (a few are locked and need to be bought, but I wasnt interested in them anyway). If you sleect customize, you can further choose what stat points and abilities your character has.
The classes are of course the normal DnD classes from 3.5 I believe (Though druid appears to be absent and favored soul in its place). Since you cna mix and match classes for skills and such as leveling it gives your character plenty of flexibility.

Community: Even in the starting town there are about 35 or so people at a time I noticed (and they cause no lag), the people are kind and active there, many looking for groups but a few trading or just talking. I have yet to get to mainland Xen’Drik but I like what I saw.

Gameplay modes: Whether solo or with people (which makes it more fun than it already is) Dungeons and Dragons online has great game play no matter what. While soloing you’ll do fine by yourself, but for real challenges and plenty of fun times, groups are where it’s at. Even by yourself you can hire retainers to act as group members for you, they sure did well with the instancing system which is undoubtedly the main perk of the game aside from 0 grind.

PVP: Havent gotten to yet, but I’ve watched videos, seems theres an absence of PvP in the game but still there are a few ways to do it.

Sounds: This is the one part of the game that doesn’t strike me as amazing in any particular way, but hey, you can always turn it off or mask it with voice chatting so it’s not a big deal.

All in all:
10/10

why? Well, If I were comparing it to P2P games like it used to be, I’d probably give it a 6-7. But as a free game it competes with Runes of Magic and Perfect World as my favorite MMOs. Since it is free I suggest that anyone who hasnt played it, or had payed for it, should play now.

Yes the game is making a slow downward slide, and if it stays a good, and great game it will level out with a steady number of players, because they aren’t there for the crap that can be found in nearly every other MMO. PvP, when the hell did that become a grading scale for a MMO game, For a fact, DID NOT advertise or even HINT at any form of PVP, and when they give tavern brawls to allow others to settle the pvp, It wasn’t enough for you people, and you bitched about it. The good PvPers left because they knew that Turbine wouldn’t ruin the game, and create a pvp game in the DDO world.

Here is a Hint for all you idiots. StormReach, Is a Campaign setting for a D&D world, and Like all settings, there is only so much that can be done with it and players come and go, stay for the interaction. I’m sure They will either make/adapt other settings (with permission, legal bs), let DDO:Stormreach Die slowly, or find a way to make it a free MMO, like Sony has done with some of their .. less popular MMO games, and create some form of a staion. (Hell I hope they sell to sony, that way the game won’t die, but will remain there, with minial changes)

This is exactly why we don’t see alot of good D&D games, because a true D&D game requires so much effort to create, and when it’s done, you need to make more story, expand it in some way. Not the best game to convert to an MMO.

I admit the trouble I had with the game was the communication system for some reason. *shrugs*

I loved the game, but I admit the flaws of the system it was built from doomed it to a slow death. I’m glad They refused pvp, so few games actually work on the storyline anymore without it being centered around pvp.

If I want to PvP I have other games, Games with better engines to pvp in, without having to go though hoops and spend hours(and in some games, Freeking weeks+) and hours to get equipment for a somewhat level shot at pvp. All the while missing out on what the game was designed for and being so competitive that you kinda get wrapped up in doing so you don’t help others or suffer in the pvp. Then without Fail, you can bust your ass off, to get the high end equip/Combo styles and have it down pact, and all you hear is “OverPowered, cheater” because they didn’t do what you did, and next thing you know it’s nerf ville for pc’s and in turn harms PvE because of it, while the only issues lied in pvp, and the stupid twinks want a *coughs* ‘Fair’ PvP they ruin PvE for everyone else.

The question is what will you do, when you beat the game? there is nothing is work towards or offer once you reach the max level of 16.

Talking from experience, I loved this game, I played for about 2 years, and had 15 or so characters at lvl 16(the current max level). What really made me quit was that once you reached 16, there was nothing to do. I was very interested in PvP as most games provide it, but DDO didnt. They had tavern brawls but that was not enough, because no one ever came. There was at one point when the taverns were always full of players wanting to PvP(a PvP community). Truthfully, those players had moved on to another game that can offer the aspect of PvP. The DDO community drove away anyone that was interested in PvP, If you were to search the forums, you would find countless threads about PvP. The truth? you see people saying such things as we dont need PvP, go find another game, DnD isnt about PvP! DDO is not a normal MMO. DnD die hard fans are the ones actually killing the game, not turbine.

Overall Rating: 4/10

For lack of content, Closed mind Community, and no PvP system.

Lastly, The game cant grow, if you wont let it grow, so the next time someone posts about how dead the game is. Think about why its so dead.

The second major problem is the enhancement system. Melee types get ridiculous boosts to AC, hit, dmg, and crits stats. Because of this MODS are generated with ridiculously high hit points and AC, and unreal immunities. For many of the quests you need an uber mage or uber fighter to be successful.

The final issue is the Monty Hall style loot. At L14 experienced players are running around with Vorpal/Disrupter/Banisher/Paralyzer weapons, +6 items for every attribute, +1 or + 2 tomes for every attribute, and a plethora of other stat boosters. Since there’s nothing else to do when you’re capped, people just loot, loot ,loot. If you don’t have time to do this, or you’re new, then you’re going to feel useless. The game is very unbalanced.

Currently it’s uncertain how long DDO will survive. MOD 5 is coming, but based past Necropolis series it’s not likely to be popular. The newness will soon wear off, and there’s nothing on the horizon. Much like OS2, Turbine has produced a superior product that will ultimately have a short shelf life.

I don’t say this game is not worth of try, but because those enchantments the DDO has nothing to do with Dungeons and Dragons. I bought this game and I feel I was cheated some how.

The cons of the game are:

If you are into PvP (there are options for it however) its not for you!

Most dungeons are just too difficult to solo, so groups are a must – if you don”t like this the game is not for you!

If you dont have more than an hour to play at a time then the game is not for you. The average lower lvl quests are fast but get longer as the lvl quest increases. Yes i have been in a quest for 3 hrs before but that is rare and only with a party full of inexperienced players!

New patches tend to open up a hornets nest of the problems before they can fix them

The repetition can get boring

Can be difficult to find a group for specific quest

Not always new player friendly!

On a final note: if you enjoyed D&D in the past this game is for you no matter what problems you might face!

Cons: Over-complicated! Speaking as someone who has never played D&D the paper and pen game, learning to play was like studying for a test. There were so many options to choose from and vague explanations for certain things. There were a lot of similar skills to choose from, which just seemed like clutter, and the in-game guide was of little help. Yes, I did read the manual (it was a 2.1 gig download + patches so I had a whole day to study it,) but Jesus lord almighty. It was too much.

I”d be willing to forgive all that for great gameplay but it wasn”t what I expected. You need a party for everything, which I thought was a GREAT, AWESOME, and WONDERFUL idea until I got in. On the top server in the list I couldn”t get one for the newbie quests, and so I had to reroll on another server.

Quests are… interesting at first… not very challenging… and quickly become mind numbing. You run through dungeons, looking for/disabling traps, killing monsters, and smashing crates and stuff for loot. Sometimes you have to solve a puzzle (which is the most interesting thing about it, and I am not a puzzle person.)

My biggest gripe is combat. Combat is basically the same old stuff you find in every other MMO, with a little WoW mixed in. You can”t be facing any old direction to fight, you must face the target, and that”s a good thing. The bad part is that you just double click on something and you”ll auto attack it. You can also just swing wildly (right click) and hope you connect. Either way: no skill required, not very exciting, and pretty slow.

Finally, I”m going to describe healing for you because I did roll a cleric (and have much cleric experience even if it”s not in DDO.) Healing in this game is a pain. You don”t recharge your mana passively, you get a set amount when you start your dungeon, and if you run out, then too bad. The only place you can replenish yourself is at a “rest shrine” which are placed here and there in dungeons. This is very, very annoying, especially when you have stupid party members who charge at the front when they should really be at the back. Normally, healing requires a little skill and time management. Well in DDO, it doesn”t, because you don”t recharge. All you have to think about is, “my god, where is the next damn rest shrine!”

All in all, I am not too impressed. I will give this game another go but I doubt it will cause me to raise my score. It gets a 5, mainly because the leveling system is very innovative, and in every other respect it”s on par with most other MMOs (which inexperienced players would probably think is great, but old hands know are trash.)

By: Kazloc, level 29 human captain in realm, Brandywine, Lord of the Rings online Shadows of Angmar.

Content
The dungeon system is fun but also makes the mmorpg seem less immersive as you cant just run outside and land in a bunch of mobs, what unfortunately makes this worse is no ability to solo as after the first few dungeons you HAVE to be in a group. Also severley lacking in any PvP content.

Suggest this to DDO fans but MMORPG fans will be disapointed.

Good graphics and D & D people may like it…….