Absolutely worth trying out....
I have been playing DDO for about a month now, since getting it for Christmas, and I absolutely love it and recommend it for any D&D fan.
(For those who "tried the beta for a week and never went back," why not be fair and give it another run? That's hardly an accurate evaluation of a current game to describe how your limited taste of the unfinished launch turned out. Of course, I had the same reaction to the absolute suckage that was Neverwinter Nights 2, and you would have to "Clockwork Orange" me to a screen in order to get me to ever view it again or waste my time on it, so take that comment with a grain of salt...)
What I love about DDO is that it is an accurate recreation of D&D adventuring. It is an electronic port of all the core things I enjoy about the Dungeons & Dragons PnP gameplay. It has the classes, feats, skills, equipment, spells, monsters, dungeons, puzzles, loot rewards, experience levelups, and so on. You can hack and slash your way through without a thought, or go into stealth mode and snipe your way slowly. The Quests are varied enough so there is a choice of which kind of adventure you want to go on when you are in a certain mood. It does have a sort of Dungeon Master as a voicover narrator, although he sometimes sounds like a DQDM (DramaQueenDungeonMaster), so I often just turn him off. (Wish I could turn my real-life DMs attempts at High Acting off!
)
My favorite aspect of DDO has to be, hands-down, the MULTICLASSING mechanic. This is just like PnP D&D, so those who love to run a Cleric/Ranger or Rogue/Wizard type build have that capability. (You can have up to three classes at a time currently.) This adds so much more to the game for me, and is ideal for solo play. I usually run my Ranger/Rogue as my soloing character to learn/discover a Quest for the first time (or my Paladin, the best overall solo-run character class). You can have up to five characters per server, and there are over a dozen servers, so plenty of slots to try out different builds. Or, don't like the way a character is turning out? Just wave buh-bye, delete him and reroll. I spent a whole day when I first downloaded the game having a blast rolling up and trying out different character class multiclass builds. How often can you do that in PnP D&D? (You get a standard 28-pt build for stats, but can later unlock a 32-point build option, as well as earn the ability to play the Drow as a character race.)
And yes, you *can* solo most of the Quests in this game, even the ones that are not marked as a "Solo difficulty" adventure. You just can't be *stupid* when you do so (you are
alone, eh?). You can use Summon Monster to add an extra body between you and the mobs, learn that Stealth mode is not just an optional way to move around, equip a lot of healing wands, etc. I've found many of the Quests to be quite fun and challenging with a solo character, and don't know why anyone would say that there is a "lack of content" in this game...
I still have maybe a hundred or more Quests on my Quest Log that I haven't even looked at yet...
But of course, the best times in D&D *are* the "full-party" playtime, and DDO allows this to be both a fund and rewarding experience. Because there is no Player vs Player in the actual Dungeon Adventures (each group gets their own instance of a dungeon when they open it too) it encourages actually working together. There is not the distraction of worrying about being attacked by another player to take the focus away from the adventure at hand. And all loot from Treasure Chests is on a "reserved" system, so that
each player gets his own reserved treasure reward that cannot be "ninjaed" away by a faster player beating everyone to a Treasure Chest. Also, absolutely *no* experience is given on a "per kill" basis, so all who participate will get the same experience point reward upon completion of the Quest objectives, whether they stood on front lines an hacked away, supported the tanks with healing spells, or used Rogue skills to disable traps and open locks for the group.
This "party mentality" game setup thus encourages players to
find a meaningful way to contribute, and fosters good party balance and focus. Tanks who enjoy combat challenges can hack and slash. Rogues can stealth and clear traps. Wizards can do massive damage, or provide Crowd Control to keep mobs from getting out of hand. Dedicated Healers are one of the most sought-after classes in the game, and since they don't lose XP by not scoring kills all the time, they are actually worth playing in DDO. The best parties I run with contain players who "pick thier schtick," and focus on it, allowing the
party to be one cohesive unit of skills, resources and capabilites.
I know that there is a complaint about the DDO player population being "thinner" than on other MMORGs, but I am more than happy with the "dedicated player base" and don't really need another 6.5 million casual idiots running around and trashing my server, thank-you. The maturity level in DDO is much better overall than in other games, with fewer "d00dz" to wreck a good adventure. Hooking up with a guild also helps get a group together easily that you know you can rely on. How easily would it be to assemble a different handful of PnP D&D players every weekend for a short adventure or two? How about @ midnight to 6 a.m. on weekdays (which is when I mostly have the time open to play)? Priceless to be able to just jump online and game @ 3 a.m. (even if I do often get drunk Australians around that block of time..oh, well..they can be a lot of fun...). The DDO team could solve a lot of this by merging all the servers together...as has been suggested many times to them...
So yes, Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach does get a hearty "thumbs up" from my experiences, and I do suggest that you at least run the 10-day trial to get a taste of it. I just wish that Wizards/Turbine would *advertise* this most excellent game more so that it would gain the visibility it deserves in the D&D Community...
