I’ll be spending most of the coming week preparing for Montreal’s Draconis gaming convention (where I’ll host a Dungeon Reality Show game, 2 Swords and Wizardry games and both a French and English Seminar on DMing 4e).
While I initially thought I’d take the week off from Blogging, my evil backstabbing mastermind lieutenant PM mentioned that I could, you know, write short posts instead.
…
The implication of such a suggestions were just too staggering for my fragile little mind and I must have blanked out for some time…
When I eventually recovered, my bruised mind had settled on a compromise. It decided that I would post a 3 paragraphs review per day for the whole week and would participate actively in the comments whenever I could manage, answering questions and such.
For the purpose of these reviews, the three paragraphs are going to be:
- A neutral description of what the product is
- What I liked about the Product
- What I disliked about the Product
Followed by a one sentence conclusion.
Here are the products I intend to review this week:
- Turbine’s Dungeons and Dragons Eberron Online Unlimited
- Cryptic’s Champions Online
- Rio Grande Games’ Dominion
- Mythmere Games’ Swords & Wizardry
- Archaia’s Mouse Guard
Also note that I have purchased (except DDO) each of those games. So let’s get started!
Dungeons and Dragons Online Ebberon Unlimited
What it is
This PC game is a reboot of Turbine’s DDO Stormreach relaunched as a freemium MMORPG. The game chronicles the exploits of groups of adventurers in and around the Eberron city of Stormreach. While the core game remains free, users are invited to purchase additional content (new classes, races, instances) and items (magic items, buffs, cosmetic upgrades). Subscription is available but it mostly gives you X credits per months to buy store elements. The game features a new tutorial zone designed for easier group play. played the original version for a while and downloaded the new version to play with my son without having to pay for 2 accounts.
What I liked about it
I liked how it brings the D&D (3.5) brand to life, Giant Spiders are BIG, Ogres look like they do in the Monster Manual and they hit HARD. Game play is fast and the interface can be mastered relatively easily. It is by far the BEST dungeon crawling experience I’ve seen in a MMORPGs and playing with buddies over voice chat can be really fun. You get a lot of game for the amount you paid (i.e. 0$) and that’s hard to beat
What I didn’t like.
The game is seriously flawed in lot of things. The one issue that made me quit in disgust was instances within instances in the early game. If you happen to die in the nested instance before you discovered the first resurrection shrine, you have to run through the city (again), then through the first instance (with full re-spawns), then the second… alone. Other annoyance: brittle equipment and equipment busting monsters, minuscule equipment icons, treasure behind locked doors (here buy a key in the store!) and too many of the same freaking monsters. I have better things to do with my evenings.
What it boils down to
It’s a great way of playing D&D online with friends and for free but as a MMORPG, it ignores many lessons that Wow has fixed a long time ago.
You can download the game here.
There you go! If you have specific questions about the early game, let me know, I’ll happily answer them as soon as I can find a few moments.
Yeah, I was unimpressed with DDO when I tried it for free. I have no familiarity with the Eberron setting, but the idea of playing D&D 3.x online was appealing. However, compared to my experience with NWN1, this felt little like D&D. Perhaps if I had formed a party it might have been better, but I wasn’t playing with friends and the interface for teaming wasn’t very intuitive. I’ve uninstalled DDO and if I ever go back to MMOs, I’ll resub CoH or try out Champions.
.-= Kameron´s last blog ..Shrine of the Night Caller =-.
I liked DDO’s gameplay better than NWN but that’s not saying much… I’ve stopped NWM while in Luskan and that’s about it. Never tried anything else.
I currently enjoy Champions Online but something tells me I’m just biding my time for World of Warcraft Cataclysm to start.
DDO was fun at first, but the level grind got old quickly. I got a trial account a week before the game was supposed to go free, but when that date got pushed back by over a month I decided to pick up a copy of Guild Wars. Needless to say that I haven’t gone back to DDO.
When DDO (original) became available, I got my hands on a demo copy of the game. Installed it, played it for an hour, quit, uninstall.
I logged on my NightElf Druid in World of Warcraft.
I understand that Wizards are trying bring DDO back to life, but I don’t see how they can compete with WoW.
I’m waiting for Cataclysm too.
P.S. I play an Orc Warrior Tank/DPS level 80 now. Northrend is awesome!
It seems to me that very little people I know has played the game for long, which speaks volume.
It’s just a shame because the game could be a LOT better with just a few tweak. I’m beginning to suspect that DDO unlimited is a bid by turbine to recycle their game.
I played a demo version of the game back in 2007 with a friend and we both stopped playing in favour of other games. It just wasn’t something I wanted to pay for…
Once I got the email that it was free, I signed right up again. Now my 4e group is saying we’ll play regularly.
It’s a pain to get used to the differences from 3.5, but it’s great fun. Even solo, I enjoy going through the instances and beating everything down. I haven’t left Stormreach yet, though, so maybe it gets a lot harder really fast.
As to your comment on recycling their game… I’d tend to agree. I suspect they were feeling that the game wasn’t bringing in the revenue they wanted and it was a good way to try and revive it. I’ve actually considered putting some money into it to get extra character slots and whatnot.