Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach

Recently Turbine has been pushing to get more subscribers in their MMO, Dungeons and Dragons Online. I grabbed a friend, a free ten day trial, and a bunch of caffeine.

This game, under the correct circumstances, could be excellent. To create those circumstances you’ll need three to five friends who’ve owned a d20 sometime in their life, schedules that match frequently with at least two hours to dedicate to the game per session.

Each class is made to feel useful; dungeons are laden with traps and locked doors where rogues excel; some doors require Wisdom (cleric/paladin’s primary stat) to open, others Intelligence (wizards). You’ll often find valves and controls that require strength to open, making fighters slightly more than front-line fodder. The only classes that don’t directly contribute to dungeon exploration are the Charisma based characters, bards and sorcerers. Fortunately their respective party buffs and deep mana supply more than compensate.

Can’t get a group of people together to pretend-spelunk? Most quests (not all) have the option to go through solo. You should be warned that many classes are virtually unplayable solo. My rogue struggled getting past the initial four quests in Stormreach. My sorcerer had problems dealing with hp bucket bosses. My cleric couldn’t deal any damage without getting stomped on by by hordes of kobolds. The only character I was able to be somewhat effective with was the fighter.

The rewards for playing in groups are so potent it’s hard to recommend trying to play alone. Groups afford you better exp per dungeon by giving you access to higher difficulties. Finding treasure chests in higher difficulties yield better rewards, and of course most of them are hidden behind stat-specific doorways.

Leveling is slower here than most MMOs. The maximum level is 16, and each level is divvied into five tiers. With each tier, or rank, you get an action point. You can spend these action points on talents. Talents grant you a variety of perks from additional stats to special abilities. There seems to be a lot of room to customize your character in this system, but I never really felt like I was progressing.

It doesn’t seem terribly difficult to max out your attack and defense in this setting. I found most of my characters benefited more from armor that had “rebound damage” (sorry for the old MUD term, I think you catch my meaning) as apposed to a better armor class.

DDO did a good job of breaking out of the “stand in front of the monster and attack” mold. When dungeon crawling I often found myself thinking about the layout. Be it looking for secret doors, ambushes, or traps I was constantly alert. Using the topology for strategy was remarkably successful. For example one or two melee characters could be used to block a doorway while casters and rangers stomp out the hordes of enemies attempting to overrun the group.

Skip it: If you don’t have a regular gaming group this game will be a tough sell.

Get the Demo: If you have one or two friends that are tired of WoW/AoC this game is certainly one to try.

Buy it: If you have four-five friends that work well together this game is a no brainer. There’s a lot to love if you can get people to commit to it.