Dungeons And Dragons Online: DDO First Impressions

Now we skip ahead several months and Alpha begins. I start drooling, checking my email every 30 seconds, and waiting. Having had the short chance to play at E3 kept me wanting. Finally, my invite arrived via email. I felt it was going to be a good day. And it was.

Now, I was able to get a full first impression of DDO, from creating my character to looting the chest at the end of the quest. Entering the character generator, I went through and watched the different mini-movies of the races and classes. Man! Were they neat to watch! I couldn't wait to get out there and play. I created my first character, based on one of my Pen and Paper characters, a Human Ranger. I set my stats making sure to give good points in Dexterity and Wisdom, seeing as I will need Wisdom to be able to cast Ranger spells later. After setting my skills and selecting my feats including "Favored Enemy - Goblinoid," I am ready to enter the world of Eberron. Arriving on a ship, I set out onto the docks of Stormreach. My first thought was how awesome the graphics looked with the water rippling underneath the ship.

Walking along the docks I see a few NPCs, one of which tells me to enter the tavern and talk to the barkeep. So without haste, I am off. After speaking with the barkeep, I am offered my first quest. After accepting it, I check my inventory to make sure I have everything I might need on this adventure. Amazingly, the DM was nice to me and gave me a good starting set of weapons and armor. I rearranged my hotkeys a bit for my weapons and skills I knew I would use. As I readied my bow, I took a quick glance around the tavern. I noticed a few patrons hanging around as well as the door to the basement that I was asked to enter. I enter the door and am off to find what adventures await.

As I walk through the basement which had a few hidden surprises for me, I found myself walking through a hidden passage. Carefully stealthing my way as I was not sure what I was getting myself into, my Listen skill kicked in and I was alerted to the sound of a sleeping Kobold. Switching to my sword, I snuck up behind the sleeping Kobold. Thinking to myself, that in PnP D&D I get an advantage to my attack as the Kobold is lying down, I immediately attack the sleeping Kobold. The 20 sided dice appears on the screen and shows me my roll. It was a critical hit. The poor thing never saw it coming. It was a stealth attack at its finest and was impressive. I finished up the quest and headed back to the tavern to claim my reward.

I found the quest icons above NPCs to be a real big help. One thing that was nice was that the icons were not so overbearing as to take away from the scenery. The map also helped in finding quest givers as well as points of interest including shops, taverns, and collectors. This is rather nice as Stormreach is a large city as I found out while wandering through it. After accepting my third quest, I grouped up with a few others including a cleric and a mage. Looked like I was going to be the tank, but that was ok.

We entered a dungeon with sarcophagus against the walls. I remember realizing that bringing the cleric was a better idea than ever before. A small side note here about a cool feature they have in the game: the XP panel. The XP panel breaks down the stats for the dungeon. It gives all the stats of who killed how many, who broke how many items, chests looted, traps picked and so forth. The cool thing is that you get bonuses for some of this. So with that said, we busted open every one of the sarcophagus. Turned out to be a good idea, as we smashed up some undead. At one point, because we were just having a blast busting everything, the cleric and I were surrounded by about 4 skeletons. With light mace in hand, I was swinging away, tumbling a few times to dodge my attack. The cleric decided it was a good time to use his ability to turn undead. This light appeared over the area in a circle and poof one of the skeletons turned to dust in front of me, another two turned docile. This made the fight a bit easier. We turned our attention to the remaining skeleton that was unaffected and fought hard with it. After dispatching it, we turned our attention back to the remaining two. They were much easier to pick off. Looting a collectible item off one of the skeletons, we turned and continued down the hallway smashing away. The cleric was about out of spell points from healing us during the battle so we proceeded with caution. We walked through an open gate, when my Spot ability kicked in and warned me of danger. Too late, the gate closed behind us, and so did the one on the other side of a small pool of water. Before moving any further I used my Search skill and looked around the room. I was able to detect a trap on the wall as well as the control box. Well this was all fine and dandy, except we didn't have a rogue. We were trapped. It was awesome. We had to figure out something to do. The mage found a lever behind us, but it only opened up the gate ahead of us. This was good, but we had to figure out how to get around the trap. We managed (you will have to figure it out yourself) to get ourselves out, but not without taking some damage in the process.

Luckily we were able to find a rest shrine. After a brief rest, we were ready to go again. I found that the rest shrines are a great feature in the game. One of the biggest challenges in the game is healing and restoring spell points. To stick to D&D, you can't just rest anywhere and suck down potions to restore your points. There wouldn't be any challenge at that point. The rest shrines, which you can only use once per location, offer a small ability to rest in larger dungeons and resurrect if necessary. I have found myself many times finding rest shrines just when I really need them. They are few and often far between, making the challenge all more real.

So my first impression has been one of amazement and feeling of thrill. I have never played a game that offers the challenges and play style that DDO offers. The combat itself offers the ability to block an attack or tumble out of the way. I use my shield regularly to bash opponents. Rogues are invaluable to a party as they alone can disable traps. Speaking of traps they offer an exciting obstacle in the game. In places you have to either have a rogue or be very resourceful to make it past challenges. I have found that my stats are a factor in things such as opening doors or activating runes. The need and desire for a group is great but I have never had a problem finding people with whom to play.

The game play is by far the closest thing to Pen and Paper D&D that I have ever played. I have developed a good group of friends online and we find ourselves nightly wandering through the streets of Stormreach looking for our next adventure. My character is now a level 3 Ranger / level 2 Rogue. I love seeing what is out there to explore.

As you may have guessed, both of my "first" impressions of DDO were positive.