"A foul stench rises from the sewer below. Harlan Darvan has informed you that a clutch of troglodytes have camped beneath his store, filling the business with their flatulent gases. He promised your band a rich reward if you clear the troglodytes from their lair and remove the blockaged from the sewer vents."So that was me last night.
As most of you know, I'm no stranger to the world of MMORPGs. I cut my eyeteeth on Everquest, dodged through the incredibly buggy world of Anarchy Online, wandered the Norse Realm of The Dark Ages of Camelot, shot down TIE Fighters in Star Wars Galaxies and buckled my swash in Everquest II. These were all fun while they lasted, but inevitably, they all got to a point where I could no longer justify the time I spent playing them.
Vanadorn and I had a conversation about these games a few weeks back. The gist of the conversation was the flaw that these games all have. The "Time Sink." In order to advance to the next zone of the game, you have to invest time into leveling your character to the next phase. If you don't spend that time, well next thing you know, all your friends are off fighting Oglamess, the Giant Uberlord of Guthnar Valley, and you're still whomping snakes on the head just outside of town. In games like EQII and SWG, the sink is even greater if you decide to pursude a career as a craftsman. You're faced with the "fish or cut bait" connundrum. Do I go out questing or do I spend the night making end tables for that saucy elf cleric I met on the last raid? (You know the one I'm talking about. Her real name is Earl and he works the night shift at the Piggly-Wiggly.)
Having lately been vicariously adventuring in EQII, I got a shock a month ago when SOE decided that the player base doesn't want to work for their rewards and just decided to award everyone with their goal class. Previously, this had been a three-stage process. One that I had enjoyed as I worked my way up to Swashbuckler. Suddenly, I felt I had no goal to work for. My interest in the game subsided greatly. Ultimately, I decided that the $22 I tithed to SOE's coffers each month wasn't worth it. I lacked both the time and interest to feed into the Time Sink.
Then something happened.
Just prior to my canceling of the EQII account, an online buddy gave me his Beta code to try out Dungeons & Dragons Online. Now as my geek cred attests, I've been engaged in the home-invasion of innocent monsters since the late 70's. Given the chance to see what the online version of D&D had in store, I jumped at the chance and spent roughly two weeks adventuring in the virtual world of Ebberron.
My final analysis: I didn't really like it. It seemed to lack the things that made games like Everquest and SWG so immersive. No crafting was a big factor. No player based economy. No banks to stash your stuff (or so I thought at the time.) In general, it seemed more like a single player RPG than a MMORPG. It was a real "beer & pretzels" MMORPG. I decided that I'd keep an eye on the game to see how it would develop, but not plunk down the cash to play just yet.
Then the game got released. The same guy who gave me me the Beta code talked me into trying it out again with his guest code. Ten more free days of playing. I hemmed and hawed, but eventually agreed to give it one more shot. Within two days, I bought a copy of the game and now play an hour or two each night.
Why the 180? Here's why:
It's a "beer & pretzels" MMORPG. The game isn't about time sinking. It's all about "let's grab a group of folks together, take on a quest in an instanced dungeon, wack some monsters, solve some puzzles, loot some chests and then head back to town".
It's not about soloing. In order to achieve anything, you have to be in a party. You have to have some fighter-types to beat down those kobolds. You have to have a thief to find those death traps and disable them. You have to have a cleric to heal you battered carcass and turn those nasty undead. You need a wizard to unload holy hell on the baddies and to solve those nasty puzzles.
Voice chat is built into the game. You don't need a third-party program like Team Speak. All you need is a $20 headphone/mic set from Best Buy. This, to me anyway, was the aspect of the game that really sold me. Suddenly, I'm not typing away my responses or what I'm going to do or the fact that two ochre jellys are currently eating my legs. Instead, it's like I'm sitting around the table with these folks. And just like playing table top growing up, the jokes and bad puns start flying.
I can log on at night and within a couple of minutes I'll usually get a /tell or and /invite. "Hey! We're doing the Seal of Shan-To-Kor. Wanna come?" Some nights I literally log into the game and get an invite before all my hotkeys load. The server I'm playing on is moderately populated and I've grouped with so many people now, I'm actually somewhat known to the general populace. That's very cool. A legend in the making.
I'm actually playing with one of my old D&D buddies from college too. When it's just him and I grouped, both of us on voice chat, we can catch up with what's going on in our lives. When we're grouped with others, we can engage in the art of obscure film references. (Case in point: our group was exploring some dungeon when the party got seperated. Moments later, we see one of the party perched atop a ledge high over our heads, looking down on us. Since the rest of the party could find no obvious path that led from the level we were on, up to the level he was on, the question posed was, "How'd you get up there?" To which my college buddy and I replied, "Wasn't easy!". Give yourself 100 Film Faction points if you get the reference. Mr. Ledge sure didn't.")
(Another quip: while fighting kobolds, they started yelling "Yark! Yark! Yark!" Being the old-timers that we are, we stated that "Yark means they're surrendering! Oh, wait. That's 'Bree-yark'.")
The current level cap is 10th level. It's not a godlike 50th or some such. And it uses the D&D level system. For those of you who ever played the pen and paper version, you know how long of a haul it can be to level 10. I'm just about half way through level 4 myself, and if you've ever played a magic-user/mage/wizard, you know what that means. 5th level's just around the corner, which means 3rd level spells, baby...
Ultimately, I'm in love with the game right now. I love it because it captures what D&D is all about almost perfectly. Why no crafting system? When was the last time you spent a whole adventure making bookends in a D&D game, Bunky? I'm fairly sure the answer is: never. Hey, I need to choose a new spell. Let me take a look at at the list. You know, I'm pretty sure that I know what that spell does, just because I've had characters who've had them in tabletop. I found a suit of +1 Plate armor. Let me ask the fighter, paladin or cleric if they want it.
DDO does not measure up to EQ as a MMORPG. Why? Because it's not supposed to. It measures up to Dungeons & Dragons and does a damn good job. Sure it's got a few flaws, but so does the pen and paper version and I've loved that for almost three decades.
Now, if we can just convince Jim to start playing...
BTJM
Amitville Mike a.k.a "Zeke the Mad, Sarlona server"
