Was checking out the GameSpy first look at the game and it looks pretty cool. Was wondering if anyone here has tried it out yet…and what your thoughts on it are. Is it worth getting?
Thoughts? Comments? Wild musings?
-XT
One of my roomies was a beta test, in fact he gets on the beta list for EVERY mmorpg, and I happened to… err… uhh… stumble across his laptop while it was logged on. Yeah, let’s go with that.
It’s D&D put on the computer. You even have rolling dice and stuff. It didn’t impress me as D&D Online, as an MMO it’s cool but I guess D&D will forever be pen and paper for me.
Oh, no. No, no, no!
I already feel like I’m cheating on Blizzard with that flashy slut NCSoft. I can’t divide my attentions to include this one, too…
I tried the beta for about a week. Hated it, uninstalled it.
The combat system seemed really cumbersome to me- it’s much more “twitch” than I like my MMORPGs to be. You have to press a button to block incoming attacks, for example, and you have to manually dodge to avoid special attacks. If combat had been more like other MMORPGs, or maybe like NeverWinter Nights, I would’ve liked it a lot more.
You’re FORCED to group with other players, which I tend to avoid because, generally speaking, everyone else besides me and my friends in any given game is a moron. There’s one spot that will allow you to heal in a dungeon- a “rest shrine”. What’s worse, you can only use that particular rest shrine ONCE. Other than that, the only other place to heal is in the inn, and if you’re out of the dungeon for too long (five minutes, I believe), the dungeon resets and you have to start all over. In other words, you’d better have a cleric with you at all times.
There’s no such thing as a Monk or a Druid. Also no Prestige Classes.
At least in the beginning, everyone does exactly the same quests. There’s no variation.
During the beta, the game was quiet as hell. Nobody ever talked, even in the inn. It felt kinda like a ghost town.
Levelling is painfully slow, which I guess is a good thing, since you can only get to level ten. It makes it very difficult to do a multiclass character, though.
All dungeons and adventures are instanced. You only see other, non-grouped players in the town.
There are some good features, however. Killing monsters over and over will do you no good whatsoever- you only get experience for completing a mission. What’s more, you can solve the quests in any way you want- if you can sneak past the monsters and get the treasure instead of hacking your way through them, you still get the experience for solving the quest.
It’s a pretty game. You can really customize your characters face… although, in my experience, nobody ever gets close enough to see the detail.
Frankly, it felt like just some generic MOG, with the “Dungeons and Dragons” brand stamped on it. I didn’t see any unique feature in it that made me want to keep playing.
A friend of mine has bought it and was very disappointed so went back to world of warcraft. I’ve not played games on my pc since I bought Black and White and my graphics card was not compatible. The wife plays The Sims now and again though.
I played a little in beta.
It was boring. Character creation was kind of fun, as was the novelty of using height differences in combat (shoot spells down from high places to confuse the enemy) but forced grouping is not for me for the reasons stated above. I hate pick up groups, and no one was chatting, so it was hard to find people to group with in the first place.
I won’t pay a monthly fee for something I can’t just go play by myself should I want (like WoW).
Contrast this to the World of Warcraft beta, where I got two characters to 20th and played every spare moment.
I played in alpha and beta, and am good friends with one of the devs (mostly tool creation but he also worked on stuff like their social/group-finding interface, maps, etc.). It is definitely intended to be a grouping game, and to as nearly as they could manage be a computerized version of the PnP D&D where you sit around with a group of people and do your thing - here, the DM is just hidden really well, and behind a computer screen rather than a stand-up folding cardboard one. 
I have some friends who I played other MMORPGs with, who intend to have fairly standard playing times and all play together. That’s probably the only way I’d have fun doing it since I hate doing pickup groups, but I’m also playing CoH/CoV with my husband and some other friends on and off, and now WoW too, and can’t justify paying for another subscription plus having to keep up with friends.
So if you’re looking for a game where you can solo sometimes, this isn’t going to do it for you. If you really want to get together with others and recreate that old PnP experience of finding a “dungeon” and cracking it together as a team, this might well make you happy.
Uh, I need to add a caveat - recreating PnP in the sense that with this version, there are no “timeouts”, no “rerolls”, everything’s happening in real time. No pause button, in other words. But that’s typical for a MMORPG. I just wanted to be sure not to confuse anyone new to the concept.
Hm…well, thanks for the input everyone! I appreciate it. Doesn’t sound like this is the game for me unfortunately. I also hate pickup games. Almost as much as I hate waiting in queues (like in WoW), so doesn’t sound like this game will replace WoW for me. Not that I’m playing much WoW these days in any case. Guess I’ll have to see what ELSE comes out on the MMORPG scene (I heard they are making an MMORPG for the Warhammer universe…maybe that will do it).
Anyway, again thanks for the input. Saved me time and money.
-XT
Warhammer Online. No release date yet that I can find.
I played DDO during beta also and found it to be rather boring at the time. But I really wasn’t expecting to engage in great RP or do a lot of grouping either. It was a time that I viewed as getting familiar with the interface and the mechanics of how the game played (as well as actually looking for bugs). So when nobody was talking, it didn’t bother me at all.
Since the game went live though, I engage fully in these things. Finding groups is not hard to do at all (since everyone needs one), finding people to RP with can be somewhat of a challenge, but when it happens it puts me right back in good’ol pnp DnD. Taverns still tend to be quiet but I think is largely because people are talking in party lines. And I guess there are still a lot of people too timid to start a conversation.
I also found it to be a game not to be rushed through, but rather savored. I’ve been playing as a wizard since the headstart (2/27 I think) and am now just reaching level 2. In one case, just me and a warforge rouge made our way through a dungeon designed for a party of 5-6 of level 2. It was not easy, but we never died (though we came close) and the RP was great. We had some great laughs and many tense sweaty-palm situations. In the end, it took us 2 hrs to get through even though I imagine with a full party it wouldn’t had taken 20-30 minutes tops (if there was no RP).
So in sum, I’m loving DDO. This, after playing EQ2 and Horizons, is a very refreshing change of pace. I don’t feel like I have to grind in DDO. (In EQ2, I remember sitting for hours hit 3-4 buttons in sequence to level up my provisioner and run up some and jumping down for days to get my soft landing skill up.) I can play for 30 minutes or 2 hrs and get a lot accomplished. I love having to think more tactically. I love not being able to rush in to a room without thought, expect to hit a sequence of buttons every 5.2s, and coming out without a scratch. You have to think about everything you do like making tons of noise (i.e. bashing every barrel or crate around) where nearby monsters will likely hear the commotion and alerted to your presense.
There are definitely some down sides to the game I will admit, specifically the lack of a lot multiple direction content (having to repeat the same beginner quests for each new character made - a little variety would be nice), some missing races/classes (I need my gnome druid/monk yesterday), and some server issues. Oh and don’t expect to play with high graphics settings unless you have a really high end computer system (I play on low or very low with mine - but it still looks good). But overall this is the MMORPG for me. And I think that with patience and continuous addition of content, it will be for a long time yet to come.