D&D Online

[Jesse]

Dungeons and Dragons Online, or DDO, is available for free to anyone that feels like downloading it. I played it shortly after they made it free, but haven't gotten around to writing a review of it until now. Some friends asked my thoughts on the game, and I figured I'd share them with anyone who's interested.

At the outset, I liked DDO for being very different from other MMO games. The stat choices are very flexible, which lets you choose precisely how you want to play. And it's the first MMO game where my favorite class in D&D, the Thief, is actually useful for something besides just doing backstabs. In DDO, you get to scout ahead for your party, disarm traps, unlock chests & doors, and still do a sizable amount of damage. In other games, you do damage and that's it.

It also has some great dungeons that are lots of fun to explore. All the aforementioned traps, some complex puzzles, and interesting enemies add up to a really fun time. The problem, though, is that it forces you to replay the same dungeons over and over and over in order to get enough experience to move on to the next set of dungeons. Then you play them even more because it takes more experience to level up and advance to the next set of dungeons. Which you have to play through even more. And so on.

All those awesome traps, complex puzzles, and interesting enemies suddenly become tedious. Instead of being surprised by a fireball trap, you just dodge it and move on. Instead of spending 15 minutes trying to figure out how to arrange the blocks in order to open a door, you just shuffle them around and move on. And what was once an epic battle with an end boss has become just another forgettable stepping stone on your way toward the next level.

And the multiplayer aspect compounds this even further. Unless you're always playing with a group of friends who only play when you play, you'll quickly find people solving the puzzles and avoiding the traps before you even knew they were there. While this might be your first time entering a temple full of kobolds, the 4 other people in your group have already gone through it several times and just want to get through it as quickly as possible so they can move on to the next dungeons. Instead of gaping in awe of the Kobold Shaman's clever puzzles, you're watching the Paladin run ahead, flip a few switches in a memorized order, and fly through to the next room. No need to ponder the best strategy for the boss battle -- your teammates have already done it and are barking orders at you. In other words, the game's strongest selling point -- the excitement of exploration -- is destroyed by the very essence of its MMO nature.

Ultimately, I think Dungeons & Dragons Online has the potential to be an amazing game, but it ultimately falls flat due to the players' memory. The only way to fix it -- something that would have to be done for a sequel, if they ever make one -- is to use procedurally generated content. Instead of creating each dungeon by hand (which is a time consuming and expensive process) have the computer create unique dungeons based on various parameters. This would keep things fresh, since the players would never knows what to expect around each corner. Not only would that be a revolutionary game in the MMO genre, but it would hit at what the essence of Dungeons & Dragons is really about: Exploration.