With the re-release of Turbine’s Dungeons & Dragons Online as a free-to-play title I just had to take it for another spin and see how it compared to the classic DDO I remembered. I briefly played the original release for a few months to get a good grasp on it, but soon my wanderlust pulled me off into other games. I couldn’t get sucked into the original, it frustrated me on several fronts. My greatest pet peeve at the time was I couldn’t get experience from killing monsters, I was coming from good old EQ1 where grinding meant glory. In itself I didn’t think DDO would do poorly, just wasn’t up my alley despite my love for D&D. There didn’t seem to be any major flaws, just minor pet peeves. Over time it became apparent that it was definitely a niche game, and unfortunately the majority of mmo players were into more standard styled mmo’s.

Then not long ago word came out that it was going free to play, I’d always had it ticking away in the back of my mind that I wanted to check it out again since my tastes in mmo’s had expanded a great deal, and this was the perfect opportunity!

Some Things Never Change

One thing that has always driven me crazy(er) about DDO in any form is how instanced the world is, aside from the City areas you are in private zones. I could understand the value of this method and from a classic Dungeons and Dragons standpoint this makes sense as the game was strictly built off the pen and paper games, however from a mmo standpoint it is one of the odd ones out. I debated this at great length with a friend, who in the end finally realized I had more experience, points to ponder, and estrogen than he could possibly out-argue. After a while he resorted to the ‘realistic’ argument and it went a little something like this:

Him: “But if a Dragon were to attack a village they would all pitch in to fight it, not send out a party of five at a time to try their hand”
Moi: “Realistic eh.. Dragon attacking village.. “
Him: “You know what I mean, if you were in a magical world where Dragons existed..”
Moi: “.. and this is your ‘realistic’ argument?”
Him: “Alright, shut up”
Moi: “Besides which, general consensus would show 99% of the villagers on the verge of fleeing, with that other 1% screaming to sacrifice the most attractive and well endowed fair maiden”
Him: “……”
Moi: “Ugh, so now you’re going to drag Gordan Freeman quotes into the argument”

The debate went on for far too long, longer than any sane person would proud of, but not so long that fellow geeks wouldn’t understand. DDO is still heavily instanced, but now I can really find value in playing through the private dungeons and zones. The one thing that was a major turn off for me when DDO was first released is now something I look forward to, the years have left me jaded towards constantly playing amongst the masses and while there doesn’t seem to be an undying population of wankers in DDO it is still very refreshing to be able to escape the crowd and play in peace.

Some Things Do Change

Let’s face it, mmo’s are an escape. The issue is when you need to escape within the mmo to regain your equilibrium and don’t want any company for awhile, if you can’t solo as a mini escape within the beast you log off and go find something else to escape into.

Solo-ability was another issue DDO originally had, I can be an extremely social player at times and will spend a disgusting 16 hour stretch tearing through content with pick-up groups just so I have new people to chat with while I play…but I also need to get the hell away from everyone when a foul mood hits or stress levels are too high. With the original DDO I couldn’t pull that off without intense effort, if I had been able to then my previous gripe about instances would have been a blessing.

Turbine looked at the game, realized that while it is intended to be a group focused game there was also the solo friendly aspect missing. They added a new feature to help cater to the crowd wishing to solo; Hirelings. These handy NPCs will follow you around as a group and assist you in questing without forcing you to actually be social or struggle to find a partner or group at those odd times of night when everyone else is sleeping. Many of the current subscribers may be disappointed with the addition of ‘Hirelings’, they make it easy for one person to solo the content with their NPC pick-up group but they must keep it in perspective:

• Firstly, if you want more than one hireling you’ll have to actually purchase them in the micro-transaction store… this can get pricey after a while;
• Secondly, most of us that are using the Hirelings tend to do so only on rare occasion, it is easy to get a real group during typical play-times, but nice to have an alternative; and
• Thirdly, Hirelings can also be serious wankers to deal with!

Let’s talk about that third statement for a bit. Running a full group of Hirelings can cause a lot of grief! Many people in game will proclaim the cleric Hirelings are the only ones worth getting, however I play as a cleric so I tend to grab the barbarians and fighters which suit me fine. When I have a hard dungeon ahead of me I’ll pick up a cleric Hireling as well and hotkey her heals. I have yet to find the right setting to get the cleric to cast or heal reliably without being told to do it. Micro-management ftw, this is perfect for the types of people who bark out endless commands in real groups…you can finally have your own private bitch who will bow before your every command and never complain. The fighters I find are a bit more reliable for my playstyle, they will attack anything that moves without my forcing them to do it…they’ll run around and smash up all the breakables for me, aside from their needing the occasional heal I can just plod along behind them doing what I do best, nothing.

Alas though, even the melee Hirelings can convince the cleric (or other craptastic Hireling casters not worth mentioning) to form a picket line and block your view. You see, they tend to follow on the players heels until it is time to charge forward. On several occasions now I’ve gone into a small cubby hole to pick up some phat lewt only to find it is actually a trap and due to camera angles I can’t see over the heads of the damn Warforged Hirelings to easily find which way is out resulting in a whole lot of wall humping and camera spinning. It is due to that particular experience that my family is avoiding me and my dogs scramble to get out of my way today. Nothing beats roaring “Move you f’in wankers!” at the top of your lungs with all the rage you can muster at your monitor, hoping by some small miracle those pixelated bastards will actually move out of the way in time for you to see how to escape the trap. No go, dead.

The Everlasting

That brings us to immersion, one thing DDO has managed to pull off is the ability to become completely oblivious to your actual surroundings and become fully immersed in the game. Not many MMO’s can pull that off today. The storyline is just as compelling as any Dungeons and Dragons storyline has ever been, quest text is usually interesting enough to keep even the most ignorant players (a.k.a. Me) reading, and the dungeon masters narrative is perfect. It doesn’t overwhelm the game and its timing is impeccable, always giving you the chance to fully listen to the narrative before all hell breaks loose again.

The graphics are beautiful, even on the standard version they hold up with freshly released titles. The environmental effects could use some work but aren’t overwhelmingly awful. The games engine itself makes for some seamless play, no graphic related lag… using old drivers on the newer video cards can cause some interesting developments though. When I first loaded the game and created a character I became acutely aware of her boobs, she was taunting me and feeding off my almighty curse of boob envy. They defied gravity and did a hypnotic bounce and spin endlessly while she just stood there mentally laughing at me. Getting into game with my crappy old video drivers still chugging along forced everyone to have a healthy sunny glow around them, again taunting my pasty geekness with their sun kissed look. Despite the oddities of not having compatible drivers running the game still played out wonderfully, however I did feel forced to update my drivers to put an end to all the hypnotic spinning boobies once I hit the newbie town, they were everywhere!

Touring the many quarters of Stormreach I couldn’t help but notice the healthy population the game finally had, and it hasn’t even gone fully live yet. I have to wonder how populated the world will be once those flood gates open. As far as free-to-play titles go Dungeons and Dragons is as premium as they come. It may have been released as a niche game originally and had low appeal with the general populous, but the many updates and the latest free-to-play game changes will ensure that this title will be around for many years to come.