Dungeons & Dragons Online BETA

http://www.ddo-europe.com

As a quick sound bite, I can sum up DDO in one sentance. "Neverwinter Nights with better graphics".

Each quest is a crafted storied instance, with varying lengths (short, medium and long) and difficulties (normal, hard and elite). Nothing in the game allows "free form" hunting, theres no experience gained from killing more or less monsters. Finishing the quest is where you reap your rewards. The emphasis is heavily placed onto the goal and sub-goals of the current dungeon, rather than falling back on the xp grind of slaying endless spawns. Even in the dungeon instance, the quantity of kills is irrelevant to your rewards. Loot is rarely dropped from kills made in the dungeon, the little that is dropped is usually a collectable 'turn in' item, that equates to very little worth really. The majority of your questing loot will be gained from treasure chests, usually found after a quest goal has been acheived, or rewarded to you by the quest giver.

Real time combat interaction (your positioning affects the damage done). The combat relies on you to keep the monster in front of you, for attacks to be successful. Shifting position during combat can modify the chance of you being hit. Turn your back on an enemy and you'll no doubt suffer a critical hit. You can force a direct swing of your weapon by right clicking the mouse, or you can initiate auto-attack and swing automatically. Positioning still plays a part even with auto-attack toggled on. You can also react to the monsters attacks and try to block, using the shift key. Combat can become quite an intense session of keyplay, and to truly do it justice requires your attention and concentration. I enjoy the dynamic it adds to the gameplay, it makes it more real to me, more important to control my avatar as an efficient combatant. Encircling an opponent, to swipe at their side or back becomes a viable tactic, as does trading blows with blocks and counterattacks. It takes some getting used to, especially in third person. But I think it does give a more organic, less predictive flavour to the combat and its outcome.

To complete a quest, quite a bit of thought and planning is often required. There are stages where you just can't throw everything in and to hell with it. You often find yourself having to conserve Health and Mana because once you're in the dungeon, you have limited resources available to you in terms of Healing abilities and Mana regeneration. All casters have a finite amount of mana when they enter, and the only place you can regenerate that mana is at a resting shrine. Even then its a one shot deal. Once you've used it, no more. Your only other option is to stock up on health and mana potions. However, these items are incredibly expensive and are difficult to find a vendor with them available. Perhaps you'll buy one or two and use them in extreme emergencies. Since all casters have to prepare their spells before entering the dungeon, spell selection and spell/feat conservation (eg. level 1 clerics can only Turn Undead 5 times before they need to rest to regenerate) are also issues that need to be decided on.

Overall, the party requires a lot of co-operation to get through the quest. Since the players are quite interdependant on each other, you have to 'care' more about the other players. If the party splits and charges off in different directions theres sure to be a death or two. Since your reward (xp and loot) are dependant on completing the quest and its sub-quests. If you have a death, the party has to take the responsibility to get all their players back into the dungeon so they can continue, and so that the downed player gets his reward. This opens up a method by which gung-ho players can leave their comrades in the lurch, if they're about to complete the quest, and you have two or three other people dead and waiting to get back in for the completion update to their quests. By and large, I have been fortunate enough to have been in groups where everyone looked after everyone else. If a death occurs, we would try to heal/repair them back to life, if not, you'd try and carry their soulstone to the last resurrection shrine, and if not, they'd recall to a tavern and everyone would wait for them to run it back. If you die and recall and then re-enter the active quest dungeon, the overall XP you will get is dimished by a percentage.

The game does seem to promote the need for a slow and methodical way to exploring and questing in the dungeon. Take your time, conserve your skills, use the right person for the job, look after each other, and get the job done. I like this. As I said above, it reminds me very much of my time playing on a Neverwinter Nights Persistant World Server. The 3rd edition D&D ruleset sits perfectly with my idea of how dungeon exploring should go. The more I play this game, the more I seem to fall in love with it.

My greatest concern for the game is whether it will have enough storied quest content to justify the subscription fee? Guild Wars already provides similar storied instance questing (plus a very complete team PvP experience, PvE "free form" hunting with a rudimentary crafting mechanism) for only the box fee - no subscriptions. Repeating the quested content for diminishing returns on XP rewarded will only push the progressing characters forward into the new content, will there be enough of it? They haven't released information on subscription fees, or how that would relate to content provision. I hope they strike a balance that makes it affordable enough for people who like adventuring in the D&D ruleset online, and also provide enough regular new quested content.