Dungeon and Dragons Online

I installed DDO yesterday, having picked it up in the bargain bin for £5. Downloaded a patch at 100kb/s and it took about five hours to complete. Guess Farlan aren't the only ones who think a "patch" should be used to describe the bit that's left out of the download rather than included. But once I was through that, the game was surprisingly user friendly. It goes to show what a decent budget can do for the polishing of the start-experience. And it's so important too, if a player is hooked on a game and there are some irratations or bugs, then likely, they'll not leave unless they are too severe (like no endgame in WoW) but if you frustrate early users, you're introuble. So the upshot is that I had an enjoyable enough hours play from a noobs perspective. Graphics - pretty basic looking - even my aged rig allows for near MAX on everything, but they're OK Sound - other than having to reload once, the sound has been ok in VISTA. The acutal sound content is OK, though some tunes have a tendency to cut off after ten bars or so. That could be the local bard getting cut short of course... There's a GM style narrator too which is a nice touch for PnP style emmersion - likely it gets frustrating to listen to the "You here muffled sounds behind this door" for the 100th time. controls - everything worked straight out the box and you can jump on boxes, climb ladders, "tumble" from enemy. The targeting is interesting too, in that you don't just lock on to the target, you actually have to be close to it in order to hit it. combat - my first attempts to kill stuff were largely enjoyable. skill - they seem to be as varied as I remember them from my PnP days, there seems to be enough differences between classes to make each interesting. MMORPGability - I think, sadly, that this game's perception of not being a "real" MMO is fair enough. As far as I can gather the only time you see other players is in the quest staging areas. But as I'm only using DDO as filler, that's fine for a month, it's like having a single player game with an option for grouping if I feel sociable enough. So that's an early one hour in Noob's perspective. Clearly much to learn and places to see. I'll report back maybe at the weekend or so! If anyone is interested in joining me, I'll likely be playing for an hour or two each night around 20:00-22:00 GMT. You can pick up free 10 day trials on teh website!

Tue May 08, 2007 4:52 am