Dungeons and Dragons Online: WarCry's Review

When the first anniversary of Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach ticked by in February, our own JR Sutich decided to take a second look at the game. While it had launched originally to less than rave reviews, after a year, many MMOs hit their stride. Find out if DDO is one of them in our review.

Dungeons and Dragons Online is a game that I have really not been interested in playing since it launched. Part of that had to do with some of the changes that were made to the game right at the end of the Beta. I see now that I may have been denying myself what could end up being an enjoyable gameplay experience.

I started out by installing the client and patching up to the latest version, which went smoothly. After that, I created an Elf Paladin on the Argonnessen server, and saw DDO for the first time since Beta. Thankfully, it was familiar enough for me to navigate easily through the Tutorial, and get into Stormreach Harbor.

The first thing that became evident was the fact that in order to accomplish many of the quests, grouping is necessary. Sure there is a Solo option, but taking a 50% XP hit just isn't worth it. After finding a good group and running some of the quests, I had managed to gain Level 2. That's when I ran into a problem. The Paladin build I had found and decided to use was out of date by a few updates. I had managed to gimp myself right off.

I deleted my character and re-rolled, and started out again. At the lower levels, the game can be fun, but it all depends on whether or not you can find a group. Soloing in DDO is a tedious and frustrating experience. Sadly, most of my play style centers on soloing, but I managed to get into a good groove of running the quests that I could by myself. I managed to gain a good amount of experience and Faction with the Drow. Paladin seems to be a good class choice for this, and I think that choosing a Cleric would be good as well.

One thing that I don't like is the having to grind Faction to unlock the Drow as a playable race and also unlocking the 32-point characters. The Drow race and 32-point characters should have been made available freely when Module 2 went live, either straight out or rewarded for having an active account for a certain number of months. Having to make a character just to grind up Faction in order to make a better character is the kind of catass hijinks that one would expect from Everquest or Vanguard. This gives me serious concerns as to how Half-Orcs, Druids and Monks will be handled when they are added to the game in later months.

My first weekend in DDO turned out to be more fun than I expected, and I look forward to getting to the point where I can check out some of the new features and areas introduced with Module 4. Now onto the stuff that reviews are for.

Graphics
The graphic quality of the game is great. I was running it at 1280x1024 and was able to turn up most of the settings without seeing any performance problems. The character animations seemed to be smooth as well. The amount of detail shown in the environment was good too. Most of the environments I saw were sewers, but they looked like high quality sewers and the city itself and indoor locations were nice to look at as well.

Sound
Sound effects were good, with plenty of sword hits and monster growling. I gave the game music a short listen, then turned if off, as per my usual. One thing I did leave on was the Dungeon Master voice-over done by Gary Gygax. I liked the feel that the narration gave the whole experience, although it would have been more awesome if Morgan Freeman had done the narration. The sound effects are also varied enough as to not make them seem too repetitive, which is good because repetitive is where we are headed next.

Quests
One of the detractions from DDO that I found was the necessity of repeating quests. The quests are fun and interesting the first time, but after the fifth or sixth time I ran through them, I began to lose my sense of fun. It became even more evident when I found groups and they were just running straight through them without pause and I didn't get a chance to really enjoy much of the discovery elements from being in them for the first time.

Combat
Fighting in DDO can be fun, but it takes some getting used to since combat isn't like other MMOs. Auto-attack is your main focus, and Special Attacks don't do much that I can tell. Sundering Armor and Tripping didn't seem to have any effect at all. I was also a little surprised at how long some fights could go if you and your target got low die rolls. I don't think I had ever missed 10 straight times in an MMO before.

Overall
I was honestly surprised by my reaction to playing Dungeons and Dragons Online. Sure there are still many issues that I do not agree with, but after spending some time in the game I can say that it's not as terrible as I may have made it sound in the past. I don't think that I would become the number one game where I spend most of my time, but I can see myself playing 5-10 hours a week and still feeling like it was worthwhile.

Pros and Cons

• Stable client and servers
• Repetitive quests/content
• Graphics look good
• Necessity to grind Faction to get best characters
• Graphics can be scaled back for older machines
• Gimped solo experience

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I'd just like to comment, as one who has played MANY mmo's, that DDO is for people who want to play an MMO, but hate auto-attack, and all that it stands for! Honestly, if JR used auto attack at all, that's why he didn't like the game :P DDO is about ACTION, I actually use my PS2 controller to get a more direct feel. For me, nothing beats fighting so intensely with death a short blow away and winning with a blistered couple fingers.
I'm aware that the entire concept behind DDO is completely alien to the standard MMO genre, what? party?!? I'd like to assure potential gamers that the grouping interface is easy, there is BUILT IN voice chat capability, and you will meet more friends in this game than any other MMO out there. I've always found that other MMO's make you feel isolated from the get-go, but NEEDING to be in a party, while horrifying to contemplate, becomes the true joy of your game. I like the fact that someone notices when I do a good job, or wants to know my build, or tries to help with opinions. Find that in your other MMO's every day..
One last facet I'd like to address is the true multi-classing capability. Have you ever played a game before that you could multiclass at 2nd lvl if you wanted to? Most games give you one class, then you have itty-bitty customization capabilities, but for the most part if you are that class, your playstyle falls into one or two cookie-cutter rolls.. I actually have a wizard that charges into battle in Mithral Fullplate with a big honkin' greataxe, totally shattering most player's preconceptions of my build and tankin' with the big boys!
By the way, Drow has it's merits, but it's still not the end-all, be-all that JR makes it out to be.. I STILL play humans and dwarves, in fact, dwarves beat the pants off a drow when it comes to being a cleric.

Overall, I'd say

Add to the Pros

Action Based Content
Voice-chat enabled parties
True Multiclassing and custom builds
Friendly Community

Cons
Unfortunately, it is too true that you grind quests
(but you won't be killing the same rat over and over for it's tail, and each party will be different)
Grinding faction for the Drow race DOES sound awful, but having played the game for a year, I assure it's within grasp WITHOUT going unduly out of your way, I'd say I probably only ran 4 quests that I wouldn't normally run to achieve the necessary faction. And.. Faction is actually designed to pull you away from your normal 'grinding runs' and take you on quests you don't see all the time.. is that bad?
YES, solo is gimped, and purposefully so.. after all.. how often do you play DnD table top without a party?

I've been playing since about 1 month after it came out. I never, ever use auto attack. It detracts from the gameplay (at least for me), as it is most more fun to actually attack them yourself. Abilities play a key roll in this game. Trip, Sunder, 2 combat feats pretty much every melee class gets. They have short cooldown timers, and are extremely effective. Its great fun knocking the feet out from under a unsuspecting monster, rendering them helpless to your blows. Or decreasing the enemies armor class by a collossal 4, which would make them even easier to hit even while you are moving. Other abilities, such as the paladins Lay on Hands, is extremely useful for healing yourself during adventures, and the smite evil attack delivers massive damage.

As for "needing a party", you my good sir, are sadly, horribly, and enormously incorrect. I have personally solod a ranger to level 6, and have solo'd a paladin to level 3 in about 2 and a half hours earlier today. Its easily possible to complete the earlier missions by yourself on solo, normal, hard, and even elite difficulty. This is just using the gear aquired during the course of that characters adventures, nothing sent from higher level characters. I often solo with many of my characters.

Again on abilities, did you try playing a spell caster? No, clearly you didn't, otherwise you never would have said something like that. Try one, you may actually have fun with it, and be able to write a informed and educated review.

As for "Repetitive quests", again, it's easily possible to get to level 10+ without doing any quest more then twice (And note: the quests usually have 3 difficulty settings, showing that you can do it 3 times, and it will be at least slightly different each time). True, some quests are more popular then others, and it can often be more effective to repeat quests, but nothing is forcing you to do that. I would also like to point out that Turbine and DDO DISCOURAGE repeating quests, by giving exp penalties for multiple times doing a quest, and by constantly adding more low and mid level content (Every month or two there is a free expansion for all members, which so far has included raising the level cap by 4, adding tons of new spells and abilities, feats, dragonmarks, raids and other quests).

The "Necissity to Grind", well, it is true that you need 400 favor to get drow. 400 favor not very much in a game with aproximately 2300 favor available. You should get before or around level 10, without even going out of your way to gain it. Drow are equivilant in strength to the 32 point builds available at 1750 favor. Also, a 28 point build is hardly "gimp", most people don't even know or care if you aren't 32 points. I have a level 14 (Max level) human Sorcerer who is 28 point, whose build is hardly what is considered the 'best'(He is my first character, I didn't know what I was doing), but he still manages fine in all the endgame quests on elite, and managed throughtout the early and midgame without a problem. There is no need to grind, and no need to have the perfect character.

As to missing 10 times in a row. Wow, did you completely ignore the suggestions for stats the game provides, and have like 8 strength using a non-proficient weapon while wearing a tower shield or something? Or did you just have horrible luck and roll a one 10 times in a row? I don't think I have ever missed 10 times in a row on any of my melee classes, and if you even follow the build ddo provides (which is hardly perfect), you'll still have no problem hitting things at low level.

In short, mabye you should have tried some other classes (At least one caster class would have made some sense, as you can hardly make a informed opinion without trying one). You shouldn't have forced yourself to mindlessly repeat quests for no reason, and mabye tried it for a bit longer before posting such a completely uneducated review that will give many people a incorrect assesment of the game, driving off more people, which is the last thing this game needs (I admit, the player base isn't as big as some games, but reviews like this are partly to blame).