Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach (Second Look)
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Massively-multiplayer on-line role-playing games (MMORPGs) are notoriously difficult to review. That's because the developers intend for you to play their games for months if not years on end, and reviewers typically have a week or two where they can look at a game before moving on to the next. And so you see a lot of reviews where more is known about the beta phase of the game rather than the actual retail release, or where the reviewer only experienced the low- and mid-level content, or where the MMORPG was only played during the initial rush on the game's servers.
And so you might be left wondering what the rest of the game is like, or if the game is worth a long-term commitment. Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach (DDO) has just reached its six-month anniversary, and so our goal here is to answer some of those questions, and to comment on how well developer Turbine Entertainment has been running and modifying their game. If your interest lies more in what DDO is about and how it is played, then you might want to check out our initial review of the game.
A Better Set-Up
When I reviewed DDO back in April, I was on a different computer and had a different Internet connection. My old computer was nice about three years ago, but still, DDO ran pretty well on it. With my new computer I've been able to turn up the graphics options, and I've noticed some differences -- like fancy water effects and mirrors that actually work -- but for the most part the game looks about the same to me. So I suspect that as long as your computer meets the minimum system requirements, it won't have a huge impact on whether you enjoy the game or not.
My new Internet connection, however, makes a world of difference. When I first played DDO, I was on dial-up, and I think it's safe to say that Turbine didn't consider dial-up users when they developed the game. I couldn't play with a full group, I couldn't do certain quests, and even after Turbine made some improvements (such as implementing a setting for your connection speed), I lagged so much that DDO was more frustrating than fun.
But now I have DSL, and as I've continued to play DDO, I've enjoyed it more. The game looks good and it runs smoothly, and since I'm no longer restricted against joining certain groups and doing certain quests, the freedom to the game makes it much more appealing. I'm not going to take back anything I said about DDO before -- I wouldn't recommend anybody with a dial-up connection going anywhere near the game -- but for people with a high-speed connection, DDO can be an enjoyable experience.
What's New
DDO went live in late February, and since then Turbine has released two modules, an update, and a series of minor patches. Combined, they've included about 25 new quests, a new mail system, a new race, several new spells and enhancements, new monsters, and a new favor system.
Let me start with the quests. When DDO shipped, it only had about 110 quests in total, and those quests weren't nearly enough. To make it to level 10, players had to repeat quests numerous times, and then when they created a new character, they had to go through the same sequence of quests, repeating them again numerous times. But now there are something like 135 quests, and the problem isn't as bad. You might take a character to level 10 and not complete a few quests, giving you something to do with your next character. Still, DDO could use some more quests. Heck, it could use a whole new town.
Turbine also created a new mail system for the game. This mail system allows you to send money and items as well as text to other characters, including your own characters. That means, for the most part, the system was designed to allow you to move equipment between your characters, so that you don't have to grab an innocent (but trustworthy) bystander to enact a couple of trades to do the same thing. The postage for the mail system reflects the value of the item being sent, so it's not cheap, but it makes moving equipment around much easier and more convenient.
Another major change is the favor system. There are various Houses in Stormreach, and each House has been assigned some of the quests in the game. When you complete a quest for the first time on a new difficulty setting, you get favor with the quest's associated House. (There are three difficulty settings. Completing a quest eight times on (normal) won't gain you any additional favor, but completing it on (elite) once will net you three times the (normal) favor.) Then if you gain enough favor with a House, you get some sort of bonus. For example, if you get enough favor with the Coin Lords, you get a new bag for your inventory, and if you gain enough favor with House Deneith, you're allowed to buy special equipment from a Deneith shopkeeper.
The favor system works pretty well. DDO has definite (good) quests and (bad) quests in terms of the experience and equipment you receive from them, but the favor system gives you a reason to try all quests, and at higher difficulty settings to boot. Plus, if you accumulate enough total favor, you unlock the drow race and a sixth character slot on the server on which you're playing. The drow race is fun, because it gets better attribute point bonuses than other races, not to mention the potential for a natural Spell Resistance 20, but because it's the new and trendy race, that means half the population seems to be drow right now.
Turbine also added some new spells (like (firewall) and (dimension door)) and enhancements (including ways for spellcasters to get critical hits with their spells), and, in total, the changes have helped the game. They've given players a new reason to play existing characters, and they've given players new reasons to start over with new characters. That's about as much as you can ask from a game's updates.
What's Coming Up
Turbine has already announced an update for September that will introduce a new line of quests involving House Deneith and duergar dwarves. Other things I can only speculate about, but since about half of the races and classes got new spells and enhancements in Module 2, I think it's safe to assume that the other half will get new things in Module 3, whenever that comes out (probably in October or November).
I've also heard some rumbling about new player-versus-player (PVP) content and an increase to the current level cap. These changes have me worried a little. Right now at level 10, some characters can reach attribute values of 30 (in a system where 20 was supposed to be good). What happens if the level cap is increased to 12 or 20, and better equipment and higher level enhancements are added? It would have been nice if Turbine had showed a little more restraint with their equipment (for example, you can get +3 strength gloves at level 5 with no problem), and had planned a little better for future updates, because I don't see how they can do anything but further escalate player power even more than it's escalated now.
As for PVP, that seems like a bad idea altogether. What makes DDO unique right now is that it's a cooperative, group-oriented MMORPG. Turbine has already added some (solo content) for low level characters, and if they add PVP content as well, that will just start the game towards being like every other MMORPG on the market. Worse, once PVP comes in, you just know that Turbine will have to try and re-balance the classes, and, from my experience, that never goes well.
Conclusion
In some ways I'm optimistic about DDO. Turbine has shown a willingness to add new content to their game, and the new content has worked out pretty well so far. But in the process they've shown that they're helpless when it comes to designing an interface (somebody needs to lock them into a room and force them to play Blizzard games for a month), and they've shown that they don't have much regard for the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 edition rules that the game is purportedly based upon.
Turbine also has a problem in that it takes less than a month to advance a character to level 10 and to see most of the quests in the game. Their character development system is rich in ways to create characters, and so you might want to try out a few variations.. but I just don't see DDO right now as being a fun game to play over a long stretch of time. There just aren't enough things to see and do, and so once you've taken a couple characters to level 10, that's just about it. But if you don't mind that your MMORPG might wear thin after only a couple of months, then DDO can be some solid fun in the meantime.
