Customer Reviews

Dungeons & Dragons Online: StormReach

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO) is an above average dungeon crawler that has the potential to be a lot of fun for a while with enjoyable instanced quests and lively gameplay. Unfortunately, there are a lot of little things that will likely make the value of the subscription fee here questionable in a month or two, and even early on many will have issues with forced grouping. Having actually purchased the headstart, I am having a blast - but take a star off of fun for the grouping issue, and two stars off of overall for the rule implementations, lack of PvP, and value proposition, leaving this at 4 fun/3 overall, or 3.5 stars.

With Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) having spawned literally tens of thousands of imitations at the top of the family tree of RPGs, MUDs, and MMORPGS, publisher Turbine has both the blessing of an eager audience and curse of a really tough comparison. The good news is that they've done an enjoyable job of implementing the heart of the D&D experience, which is the dungeon crawl. Unlike many MMORPGs, support classes like rogues are a requirement for almost all dungeons - there's no uber single class build here - and a well designed group and careful gameplay is a more important than any particular player, item, or spell.

However, the group aspect is double-edged. Outside of the first 5 or 6 early dungeons (even less for certain weak combat classes), solo play simply doesn't work - meaning your entire gaming experience will depend on finding a suitable group or guild. The support for this isn't bad, with ingame voice chat and being able to select exactly what you want in terms of a class and level in group search, but even players within a good guild can have significant waiting times while everyone gets ready. Turbine could and should have come up with a way for solo players to do something to advance. All adventure is instanced, which in this implementation makes sense but does mean like Guild Wars the only 'massive multiplayer' aspect of the MMORPG feel is when you're at the taverns.

D&D purists will probably not like the rule implementations either. Monks, druids, and several races are left out as are any number of skills, but the biggest wildcard is adding 4 class and race 'enhancements' which provide benefits far above even the best feats (like +5 to all skills or +3 in a certain statistic). Given how the game is set up, it doesn't really affect balance much - can't solo anyway - but between that and loot drops that rival the taj mahal (down a bit from beta, but not much), it does annoyingly throw traditional character builds out the window. Why bother making an especially stout fighter with high constitution if you're going to get 25 free hit points from the start?

More significant is longer term viability. Advancement is quick enough so the current level cap (10) was actually reached by any number of people in the 10 day beta. This will shortly be raised to 12 and eventually to 20, but the real issue is the lack of any alternative to the dungeon crawl - PvP, crafting, or anything else - that encourages people to stick around to pay the $14.95 monthly fee.

Don't get me wrong. I'm having more fun playing this now than any game in a long time. The issue is that I can also easily see not playing this in 30 or 60 days from now, which is a real shame. Hence, why this is rated 3.5 stars, and why I hope Turbine thinks carefully about how to improve it.

This is the only MMORPG I have played, so look to the other reviews for comparisons. I beta-tested DDO for 5 months before it was released. I don't know how other games of this type are, but on DDO, if you want to level, you have to group. The quests and monsters are so hard, and the experience hits you take for soloing lower-level dungeons (which are the only ones you can really solo) are so severe, that you can't really get anywhere unless you group.

If I had a bunch of friends who were into MMORPGs, I would probably have bought the game and subscribed, but I don't. The player base that I encountered was breathakingly rude and intolerant of mistakes and inexperience. When it came time to decide whether to sign on, I realized I just had not been having fun. I don't know whether they've cracked down on world-appropriate names, but I didn't see a whole lot of roleplaying, and there were tons of characters with gangsta-type names. Since the place is marketed as an online version of the tabletop pen and paper game, I found that intrusive and disappointing.

But if you have the hide of a rhinoceros or a group of friends who will go in with you, the graphics are terrific, and you can have a lot of fun fighting monsters. The game as I played it didn't have a lot of customization choices for your avatar, though I can't speak to the current version. Also, my system with its 512MB and Radeon 9600 video card crashed probably once every 24 hours of play, so I'd want a higher-end system to get the most out of it, and, oh yeah, a gamepad because I was always hitting my CapsLock (no function) button instead of the Shift (block) key. There was some learning curve for me on the keyboard controls, but I think a gamepad would help that, as well as lengthen the life of my keyboard. Too bad. I was looking forward to Dungeons & Dragons Online.

I am a big fan of Dungeons and Dragons, however this game has some serious problems that make it worthless online. There will be fans come along and rip me up about saying so and claiming that this is a niche game and like arguments. It's just filler arguments to gloss over the fact that the game is seriously lacking in content.

I played all through beta and headstart and am now into the first free month. I won't be subscribing to the game and here is why.

The game had maxxed characters after the first 3 days of release.

The dungeons are repeating. You have to continually re-do the same dungeons over and over if you start new characters. There is no path difference between races. Ever race, every character starts in the exact same spot and levels up through the exact same dungeons. BORING.

There is no world to explore. This game launches from one city where you gather and try to find a group to quest with and then you launch into the dungeon. Fans will say yes thats good.. no time running or porting around.. blah blah blah. What it really means is boring time spent sitting in one place forever. Waiting to find a group to quest a certain dungeon with.

Which brings up the worst problem. The first few days it was easy to get a group to do the dungeons with. As the days go by though, it is getting harder and hard to find good people to quest with each time you log in. Most of the idiots I have ended up grouping with have now desire to run the dungeon as it was made. They only want to rush through the dungeon and get it finished as fast as possible. Rushers.

Another really big problem is that the experience you gain isn't assigned to you as you go along in the quest. Only at the finish. So there are tons of messages (happened to me 3 times so far) from people on the official boards for the game where they have wasted 2-5 hours trying to do a quest, only to have it bug up at the end and not get credit for doing it.

All in all.. the game is fun for what it is. Unfortunately what it is right now is a stand alone game. It's fun the first few times throught the dungeons. Then you find out the problems and the glitches and the repeat content and slowly you realize, this game isn't worth the money.

Sorry to have to put a thumbs down, but this game is really not an MMORPG.

Don't let the fans of the game tell you to just wait and Turbine will bring more content or fix all the problems. That's exctly what they said about Asheron's Call 2 and after people put a lot of time and effort into their characters.. Turbine closed the doors on that game. It wasn't profitable enough for them.

My advice... check out the official forums at ddo.com and pay read what actual players are saying. Pay attention to the tech forums and see all the problems they have. Then wait 6 months and see if it gets any better. I canceled my subscription and will do just that. Wait 6 months and see if they can do anything to make this game better.

good game it starts you out easy to get to learn game bascis then it's game on find a few friends and go questing

This game is as good as it gets for someone who loves the D&D world. Character creation was deep enough and the dungeons were good. Problem as said before is forced grouping. After advancing to level 2 solo play is nearly impossible at least for casters which i simply must play. I dont mind grouping, when i feel like grouping but the main problem lies in the fact that you do not really have time to make enough friends before you have to start grouping. Being totally fried on WOW i gave this game several hours and just cannot bring myself to pay for hanging around waiting to group with people who may or may not be fun to be around. Hopefully they will try again and do the D&D world with enough solo quests throughout to keep everyone playing. I would love to see it.

I just noticed that most of the reviews for this game are 2 YEARS OLD! The game has come a long way in the last 2 years and is a very enjoyable experience. You can now advance up to level 16 and even unlock the ability to create a Drow Elf character with enough Favor. I have been playing nearly every day for a month and I am only level 6 right now. Also, if you don't like having to group up to complete quests, you probably shouldn't be playing a MMORPG. This is an excellent game for any D&D fan and could be enjoyable to anyone who likes role-playing games. Next month the Monk class will be released, and so you see the game is still continuing to grow. At $9.99 a month it is, in my opinion, well worth it!

I sounded like the perfect blend of the Challange of an RPG and the Online Community of a Massive Roleplayer. Unfortunatly from a Roleplayers point of view it's just another massive multiplayer repeating the same quests over and over, grinding, farming, ect. ect. The only thing is it does have a nice D&D "Feel" about it with all the newly trademarked monsters, it's also got solid graphics and such but in reality it's not close to an RPG and the tech support for paying a monthly subscription service is terrible.

Browsing today I noticed that all the reviews for this product are very old. This product is VERY much alive!

The graphics compared to other MMOs, especially WoW, are phenomenal. Lag and crashes are less commonplace than other MMOs (but they do occur).

Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) has gone to a 'Free to Play' model which gives a pretty large amount of content for a player to do before they need to get anything from the 'store'. I've talked to a few pretty high level characters who claim they have never gone to the store.

It is VERY possible to do solo game play with the introduction of 'hirelings'. A player doesn't have to wait for a party to fill all the way out anymore as hirelings can often fill the gaps or there are tons of explorer areas to check out.

Last night I did a solo quest with a higher level character (no hirelings allowed on that one) that was a lot of fun.

You don't see as much grind as is present in other MMOs. There is some, but you can do other things. Most of the adventures are episodes and are divided into short, medium, and long.

I work a lot and have small kids thus most often I only get on for one or two hours at a time and there has always been plenty for me to do in this game to advance my characters.

Characters! This is the most detailed development system I've seen in any MMO. It is VERY much like the old D&D and a player has a choice to pick a template or customize there characters.

Once a player hits 20th level there is an option to accomplish 'epic' content and items or to reroll, 'reincarnate', creating a new character with a couple of extra points to spend on attributes and that starts with an extra feat.

Overall this game has many of the attributes of pen and paper D&D while providing a great MMO experience.

really great for lovers of the pen and paper. just not enough dynamic content to be the same experience of the pen and paper fantasy.

grouping is a pain. it takes forever to put a group together. I hope that the game gets better with more updates. It is fun, but needs work.