Amber Night

In my
DDO review, I wondered if the game would hold up over the
long term.  It's only been about 3 weeks since launch, so that
question is still very much up in the air.  But so far, it's
looking good.

Likes:
- The monsters are as smart as
they should be.  Slimes, for instance, will come at you and
just want to kill you.  Kobolds will maneuver themselves
around, try to outflank you, and even run back to regroup. 
This is very refreshing.

- Unlike most other MMOs,
you don't get the sense that monsters are just standing around waiting
for you to slaughter them.  Slimes drop from the ceiling as
you pass over, kobolds wake from their sleep or respond to a rallying
gong, assassins pop out of nowhere.  This makes the
environment feel alive and unmechanical.

-
Traps.  Nothing gets a bigger chuckle out of me than the ninja
looter who gets cut down by a blade because he didn't wait for the
rogue to find/disable it.  The game rewards smart players; I
like this.

- Resources.  You can only heal
and gain spell points back in a tavern or a shrine, or of course
through spells or potions.  There is no resting after every
fight to recover life and mana.  As a caster you can't just
nuke away, dishing it out and then sitting down for a few
minutes.  Likewise, tanks need to watch their hit
points.

- Dungeons.  They're
beautiful.  They flow naturally, they go up, down, and under
water.  They feel like they were hewn from stone and earth,
not just plugged together by a 3D modeling team.

-
The game is about adventuring, not some kind of end-game
objective.  There are objectives and milestones, but the real
joy in playing the game is in the playing of the game, adventuring and
crawling through dungeons, not grinding to some maximum level so you
can finally experience the content that matters.  In DDO, all
of the content matters.

Dislikes:
- If you misspell the
intended recipient's name in a /tell, you don't get an error, you just
get the message echoed back to you like everything is fine. 
Your /tell just ends up in some bit bucket.  I'm really
surprised this bug made it through QA.

- There
absolutely, positively, needs to be a reply key.  There is a
/r key which will reply to the last person who sent you a tell, but
here's the problem: if you've just composed a nice well thought-out
reply, and someone else sends you a tell while you are composing that
reply, they get your reply.  The mind reels as to why this
wasn't included in the first place.

- To gain access
to the marketplace (and your vault) requires going through the Water
Works quest, a very long, albeit enjoyable, quest.  There
doesn't seem to be a convincing back-story reason for
this.

- Vault space is about 1/2 of what it should
be.

- Lag is still a problem.  I notice
that I get more lag with voice chat turned on.

-
Everything happens indoors, usually underground.  It makes the
world seem small and compartmentalized.  I'd like to see some
outdoor adventures.

- The names over the people in
your group are the same color as those not in your group. 
Makes it difficult to find a group mate in a busy tavern or
zone.

- There needs to be an auto-follow
key.  I've seen arguments on both sides of this , and
opposition comes mainly from the anti-bot
crowd.

Looking forward to:

- Player
housing
- Crafting
- More varied content
-
Bug fixes

One of the overused buzz phrases MMO
developers like to use is “next generation.”  Usually this
means better graphics, because very few companies seems interested in
developing an MMO that breaks the typical Everquest
grind-until-you-drop mold.  I'm not ready to say that DDO
delivers a true next generation experience, but it definitely gives us
a glimpse into what is possible.  Game designers take
heed.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 20th, 2006 at 5:22 pm and is filed under Game Design, MMOs - DDO, Main Page. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.