Dungeons and Dragons Online

Dante | 20 Sep 2009

So, myself and many other internet mates have all decided to pick up DDO (Dungeons and Dragons online: Stormreach)

It’s a rather simple game based on the world of Dungeons and Dragons. Meaning its not your usual spam-all-hotkeys game, you have to plan out what skills you wanna take in advance (well if you’re a healer/mage) for every other class, you will hardly use skills…just run out there swinging.

Firstly a major issue with the game is that there are no Oceanic servers, making us NZ/AUS guys rage rather hard at the often chokey servers…life goes on however.

Anyway, the game is all based on bonuses…typical DnD stuff really. You add to Dex to get bonuses on your dex rolls. IE. evade might be a 1d6+dex (1 roll of six sided dice plus dex bonus)…You might need say a “5″ or more on your roll to successfully evade an attack, and the more you slam into your dex the higher chance you have of evading (obviously). Also you actively see the dice rolls happening on your HUD as you attack and take damage which is kinda neat.

OH MY GOD…One thing I LOVE about this game. In games like WAR and presumably WOW as well, you can move like crazy and spam your attacks…meaning if you have 60 ping to the server and your opponent has 250, you will be able to hit and move away from him before he can register you nearby. HOWEVER in DDO there is a rather large penalty of between 2-4 on rolls to hit when you move as you strike, meaning the more you flail about trying to hit something the less damage you will do…

Effectively it makes for awesome sewer hold-the-line fights

Anyway, its free (to an extent) you can create 2 characters with basic DnD classes and races (dont expect to be a monk or drow or anything cool on basic free account) and paying per month is a truly outrageous price. It costs as much as Warhammer online does and WAR is a far more refined game with more classes and diverse skills, it seems like the creators of DDO are simply trying to milk out money from the DnD fanboys by locking all the “cool” classes from previous DnD games like Neverwinter Nights and charging stupid prices just to let them be happy.

If I’m paying $40US a month I damn well want more stuff than just being able to play Warforged/Drow and being able to be more than just a Monk or Favoured one (or w/e they are).

However if it was $20US I would likely look at paying…not sure how sub works with characters though, could I pay for one month just so I can have unlimited new chars and play new races then what? What do they do after the month? meh…who knows.

Anyway gameplay is simple yet challenging to master, its actually a lot of fun and its got a lot of the cliche DnD stuff which really keeps it different among other games. While the customization on characters lacks a fair amount and the voices/emotes are completely generic from one class to the next, its still fun…especially for a 4gb free game.

Also having a “Dungeon Master” constantly voicing over the game is priceless, I love that they incorporated it into the game.

Anyway, keeping in mind that its a free game I would give this game around 6.5-7/10 …while its fun to play with other people, theres little staying power but its still very entertaining.

Here’s a Screenshot of our party of 6 dungeon crawling on a Saturday night/Sunday morning: