Dungeons and Dragons Online Beta Impressions 148
The NDA for the Dungeons and Dragons Online Beta is now a thing of the past. F13's piece prior to the lifting of the NDA is a good place to get started. They also have a lively discussion going, discussing all aspects of the upcoming game, which launches February 28th. From the f13 piece: "The most important thing to understand about DDO is Turbine is trying a different take on the genre. People looking strictly for a WoW clone in a D&D flavored wrapper won't find it. For some that may be a good thing, for others not so much. Oh to be sure, it has a lot of the same trappings as your previous favorite graphical-Diku-mud; after all, most fantasy computer role playing games owe a little or very large portion of their structure to the granddaddy of all pen and paper rpgs, Dungeon & Dragons. So it comes as no surprise to find this game with familiar fantasy races, defined character classes, and easily recognizable fantasy monsters, magic items and spells. But, as I have grown fond of saying these last several years, the devil's in the implementation. To that end, DDO is almost as easily defined by what it is NOT as by what it IS."
Not much difference (Score:3, Informative)
Not so much, really. From the article: all quests take place in private instances.
My thoughts... (Score:5, Informative)
Don't get this game expecting to solo. A lot of folks have pissed and moaned about that, but they are trying to be pretty true to the Pen and Paper (PnP) rules and designs. You almost never see a DM spend all this time to create a world, dungeons, and the like, and then have them sit down at a table with a lone player with a lone character. Get over your wish to solo. It's a MMO. You are supposed to be grouping!
With the launch set for the 28th, there are a ton of bugs still in the game. They finally got the party and voicechat server fixed after a week of downtime. They have a good half dozen important quests that are broken. They have had to close one dungeon due to an exploit that was being done ad naseum by players abusing invisibility. Characters are still in their skivvies on the Character Select screen. Some characters die and can't rez when they release from their corpse. Some folks have gotten stuck in the Marketplace for more than a week. And the bank has been known to randomly lose items.
They are taking their time in between beta patches. I'd like to see some of these things tested in house and then pushed into the beta quicker, but they are making progress. The fix some things, and have proven to be cautious in how they work. Circle-strafing was a huge problem, so they did a tweak to make the mobs work better against it. Now it is a little less effective, but still works darn well. I expect another fix to that tactic.
There is a significant lack of content. While Turbine expects characters to repeat dungeons to gain XP and gear, it almost borders on the ridiculous. It is so bad that same folks deliberately don't level up, so they can gain XP at their last trained level, instead of the level they could be. Instead of losing out on groups due to their level, they just make sure they form their own groups. This lack of content means that they will have to have some expansions ready to go within 3 months, to keep customers happy. Not a healthy sign.
The system of collectables to gain minor magic items gets really old after a while. They fill up your inventory, and many of them aren't worth the time, especially as you gain levels. By lvl 5, over half of them aren't worth the effort, but unless I keep a list out, I end up collecting the stupid things.
Inventory space can be crowded, depending on your class and other things. But, there is a reason. Fighter types tend to carry one of every type of Bane weapon they can find, so they can whip out whatever works best for every mob. It borders on the absurd, really. Realistically, a character carrying a half dozen 2-handed weapons would trip over them constantly.
Mob AI is pretty darn good. The mobs tend to choose spells to much better effectiveness than most MMOs, where they just cast 1-2 spells. Having an Arcane Skeleton cast CloudKill on your group, then switch to Fireball or Lightning Bolt is pretty effective. Ray of Enfeeblement, Curses, and the like are also thrown about liberally.
There are more traps than you can shake a stick out. Rogues become a necessity for once in MMOs. However, trap placements are static in a dungeon. Do that dungeon a few times, and you start to remember where they all are. Really hurts, since the previously mentioned lack of content means you learn those dungeons by heart. I think I can find my way through some easier than I can get to the grocery store, now.
The social part of the game leaves a lot to be desired right now. I hope it improves. Pickup groups, like in most MMOs, sucks. And at release, new players are going to get stuck playing with beta testers that know all the lvl 1-5 dungeons by memory, and are going to push through at breakneck speed in the grand effort to be highest level of that class, first. (The MMO version of the e-penis award, I guess.)
I really want to track down my old PnP group, which has scattered around the country after coll
Re:My thoughts... (Score:2, Informative)
Actually I believe what has happened with this, is that theres Stunted content for the Beta. From what I understand, when the game opens up, there will even be such things as Prestige classes in the game.
My experience with the stress test... (Score:3, Informative)
"I played it last night for an hour. It looks pretty especially the indoor places, but for some reason the engine wasn't smooth like WoW. I thought it was lags, but it was still not smooth even at 6 AM PST. Taverns (those are cool -- better than WoW's inns) are so laggy for me. Solo instances(?) are smoother, but not that smooth. Outdoor areas lag too for me. The game was choppy for me with everything ON and without antialias on my XFX NVIDIA GeForce 6800 (128 MB), Athlon 64 3200+, and 1.5 GB of RAM. I had turn things down like use billinear, distance view lowered, etc.
I did not like its GUI. I think it was just too big especially when my maximum screen resolution is 1152x864. I prefer WoW's.
I loved the character setup. I made a hot chick with red long hair [grin]. Its setup reminds me of City of Heroes and City of Villain's. I also like the video clips (I wonder how much disk space these took up) showing each player class. I played as a barbarian since I like meelee fightings. I only got off the second boat after training. I will play more later hopefully. A lot of commands are similiar if you know WoW like:
To compare, I still like WoW more so far."
I wonder how much has changed since then.