Blog FeedDungeons and Dragons Online: An Early Look
Dungeons and Dragons is probably still along with Lord of the Rings, the real 500 pound gorilla in the room of Fantasy Worlds. Their Greyhawk setting really established fantasy role-playing and Forgotten realms, Dragon Lance, Planescape and others have all added a whole lot to the table. It would seem there are very few properties that would be more suited to a massively multiplayer role-playing game than D&D. Sadly however, Dungeons and Dragons Online doesn’t really live up to the legacy of D&D on the PC; and if the game remains as it has been in the latest beta I can’t recommend it. As it is, this is a game that can’t compete with the great D&D based games of yore, nor can it really make a move on the reigning kings of online roleplaying - WoW & Guild Wars. I know this is an unfinished game so I won’t nitpick but at the same time it’s ship date is very near, so I know they won’t have too many major design changes left if they make their dates.
Just like any MMO, the first thing you’re going to do is create a character, and here the first glaring omissions start to come up. Several of the classic D&D races aren’t in the game. You won’t be able to play a Half-Elf, Half-Orc or Gnome. And then you’ve got a class selection to undergo. Your choices include Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Cleric, Barbarian, Mage, Sorcerer and Bards. So I hope you weren’t looking forward to playing a Druid or a Monk - you’re out of luck for the time being. The rest of the character creation is fairly nice. You can do quite a bit with your face to give your character a unique look and the stats and feat selection works pretty nicely. I rolled up a Cleric, Paladin, Fighter and Sorceror just to try some stuff out. Lastly there aren’t any epic abilities as the game is a “low level” game with a max level of 10 and no prestige classes either, so you wouldn’t be able to roll a Red Dragon Disciple or a Champion of Torm or something cool like that. Further the really awesome epic powers aren’t going to be in the game. There may be an upside to keeping it low level but I’m not really sure I understand it. All this stuff just annoys me and makes me yearn for Neverwinter Nights 2 or even just more modules for Hordes of the Underdark.
One of the design choices made on D&D Online that to me was a real turn off was the lack of a living world. You’ve got one city, that’s it—and then a bunch of virtual dungeons. Which really limits the appeal of the game as it takes away from that feeling of verisimilitude that other MMOs use to get you to feel like you’re a part of something bigger than just a silly game. Like Guild Wars all the content is instanced, however unlike Guild Wars there isn’t any way to go play PvP, so all you’re going to be able to do is go on quest after quest. I don’t really care for PvP but this strikes me as a real limiting factor for the game. Further, Guild Wars is free whereas they’re going to want a fee for this game so it certainly limits the appeal against one of the two reigning champions.
Then we get to the actual in-quest gameplay. The game starts you off with some solo quests to get you familiar with the combat system. The first shock to me was how the real time combat system played out. It really didn’t feel very D&D to me. If you’re looking for a great representation of D&D on the PC let me point you to The Temple of Elemental Evil and Neverwinter Nights Platinum or Diamond. The interface is a mix of ugly and clunky, especially when compared to Warcraft’s far more elegant minimalism. Everything has too much crap on the screen and this just detracts from the whole of the experience. Also unlike WoW not everything is viable as a solo-able approach for any length of time. If you play a Cleric, Bard, Wizard or Sorcerer you’re going to need to group with a melee class almost from the very beginning to be much in the way of effective. Unfortunately the same isn’t true of the melee classes. If you play a fighter you’ll be able to get by easily for a good while without any troubles.
Technically speaking this game is pretty vanilla. I didn’t have much in the way of lag issues despite seeing tons of people almost everywhere. But graphically speaking the game is pretty unimpressive. It’s not ugly per se, but there just doesn’t seem to be anything to make you go “ooh” in the area of graphics. It’s technically average and artistically average. Unlike WoW where the game is technically below average but artistically superior. The audio presents a mixed bag as most of the sound effects are pretty vanilla but I really did like the narrator they used to try to simulate the DM experience.
All in all I’m not sure what I’m supposed to like about this game. It’s a bit of a tweener. It does too much like D&D to be a good MMO experience like World of Warcraft. It’s just not easily accessible enough, not beautiful enough, not fun enough for that. It’s also not a great D&D simulation to replace Neverwinter Nights and Temple of Elemental Evil. It feels a lot like a game that’s trying to appeal to two large groups and is going to end up pleasing neither. I wish they would have gotten this right as D&D is an awesome ruleset, but there is just too much here which is not right for me to be excited. Mabye after a lot of work this game would be worth my money but I can’t see it as is.
24th January | Reply
From what I understand, Worlds of Warcraft has really thrown down the gauntlet (Gauntlet Online?) to the MMORPG industry and it’s a game that I really want to play. In contrast, D&D Online isn’t something that I’ve either read about or have that much interest in playing because I’ve not had much invested into (A)D&D over the years.
When the computer is replaced this year WoW will be bought with it but I doubt that D&D Online, assuming that a Mac-client was made, would be. It all seems a bit generic…
26th January | Reply
I can’t believe they would take the first part of the D&D name so literally. I have a personal gripe with dungeons, I hate’em. In any RPG when I end up in a dungeon my interest really starts waning. Dungeons are quite possibly the most boring titleset available for an RPG. Stone walls, spider webs, some coffins and what not, just blah, meh, vanilla. I want goregous forests, magical coasts and hell, why not the heavens? With a lore so rich as D&D why can’t we go to the underdark? Or one of those astral planes?
If you can’t guess I too played the D&DO:S beta. I didn’t even use up the full 3 days. It has nothing to “grip” you. Most MMORPGs, even pedestrian knock-offs, can suck you in for about 10 hours in the beginning. From Lineage II to junk like Savage Eden the first couple levels should always be easy to nail. A whole world to explore, pretty stuff to look at, combat or questing that is not yet repetitive. DDO has none of that. The world is muddled, brown and gray. All of the armor looks very lame and often cuts into the character’s hair/face. The weapons are uninspired, and all the characters (minus warforged) are very boring looking. I’ve never seen such unnattractive elves.
DDO has come up with some really cool novelties and put them in a very tame and uninteresting MMO. The Warforged race has a neat history that works into gameplay. Being half living and half machine you cannot fully heal them with cure spells. You need “repair” spells or kits. Also the combat just screams for some PvP since you have an active hand in blocking, dodging and attacking. I would have actually prefered if they took those things alone and plopped them into a WoW-ripoff kind of world.
The idea of many instances could still work if they were actually interesting instances. Say, I dunno, not a dungeon? Wouldn’t it be pretty badass to take a group of rogues on a rooftop heist kind of quest? Instead of some dank and dull dungeon the instance is a whole section of the city. Complete with some drunk NPCs wandering about the streets at night (whats up with everything being an enemy in an instance?). Some guards too that you would have to avoid. You could crawl along the rooftops in shadow dispatching guards of an estate and break in to steal something for yourself or a client (quest).
Guild Wars did a decent job of “faking” a huge world. There were towns occupied by NPCs in their instances, huge expanses of land filled with life and what not. DDO really just feels like a hub with a bunch of doors leading to another boring collage of brown and gray. And in all the MMO betas i’ve played I am pretty certain things will not improve.