My flaming review!

Anofalye

If you want something objective you may want to ignore my review.  This come from a long term D&D fan who feel outraged and betrayed by a game that dare label D&D on it cover.

 

Before I start, I want to pinpoint that on the BOX, they say:  REAL D&D.    Why say REAL instead of experience or something more appropriate, they are suffering from the usurpers syndroms, they know it is not real D&D and only garb and they try to convince themselves. 

 

- ACTION.  This is not just a Real Time version of D&D.  It is WAY to fast for me to enjoy the simple game mechanic.  They hide treasures, loots, monsters behind coordinations and reflexs challenges that YOU, the player, has to possess.  Sorry guys, but I doesn't possess those reflexes and coordination skill and no amount of stats on my character will change the fact that I can't swim in RL or that type of stuff, so if you hide a treasure behind many JUMPING reflexes stuff, you enforce a gameplay I doesn't want.  If I want to play Sonic adventures, I won't buy a game labelled with D&D.

- XP...if you fail a mish, you should have XP for what you accomplish, D&D was never a winners-only scenario.  Most XP where coming from every single little victory you have, even if you fail something you usually get most of it.  XP for killing mobs was the core, than roleplay and other activities could be rewarded...now it is Mish and the rest is secondary.  If you fail, not only are you failing, but you get nada.  Now, I can live with such a bad design myself as I usually succeed, but this still annoy me highly.

- Items decay.  LOL!  Pathethic.

- Solo, even Neverwinter Night is solo friendly, even Dragonshard.  Why is this title the ONLY D&D product who is not solo friendly?  (I buy Neverwinter Night to try it, it is extremely solo friendly)  This is another betrayal.  (I play a MMO to group, but between groups I want to play, and solo is the logical answer...but solo need to be possible and rewarding, even if not helping me groupwise, it need to be significant and not an under-activity, some folks should pick solo over grouping...even if me I will never refuse a group, I want to play, and I want to play NOW).

- CLEAVE!!!  As the evolution of the "swept attack", it deserve a place in the game.  It is completely useless in it current form and it reduce the usefullness of whirlwind attack...and I am not even sure that Greater Cleave is even in.

- Grouping Strangers all the time is not D&D.  I like that myself, but I am in a flaming mood and I will pinpoint that in D&D, you group FRIENDS, not strangers.

- CAMPAIGN.  There is no campaign feeling.  This is a first for a D&D product.

- TAVERNS, I am sick of running to them before each Mission and everytime I stumble and fall...the ZONING time is LONG and it make you lag like hell for sometimes afterward.

- No duel/Arena.  I understand that D&D is about PvE, but fun dueling/arena should have been an option, heck just for the fun of it.

- Craft Feats, surprisingly I miss them in the multiplayers.

- Raiding?  I didn't get to experience it, but I recall they say it was the ultimate challenge with the ultimate rewards, again unacceptable.

- Mana is acceptable for D&D (Glantri), but they are stretching this point.

- The +20 HPS is not fair and breaks balance.  A wizard level 10 should have 26,5 hps...now he gets +20.  The barbarian level 10 should have 75 hps, now he get + 20 just like a wizard.

- No God for my cleric.  I expect that the Gods would be presents and a reason for roleplaying.

 

Now that I am done with those points, the bugs are many.  1 month before release is not just "Beta", it is nearly Gold and they let me in, despite the fact I never apply for anything, I merely pre-order!  I fall for about 90 points of damage in a 10 feets room, I doesn't see how a single D6 can deliver 90 points of damage.  I even find myself thrown outside of the dungeon to my bind point without having a word to say.  Thoses are unacceptable bugs when it is 1 month from GOLD!  (I think the "falling" consider I fall far more longer, I was kinda stuck mid-air for sometimes before hitting the ground, so the computer must have calculate in TIME, what was in fact 10 feets at most).

 

Even old EQ feels more D&D like than this.  As it is, I would recommend for a D&D fan to buy the Xbox version of Baldur's Gate before that, at least he would get the feeling of playing D&D to an extend, now there is as much D&D in DDO than there is tomatos in ketchup!  REAL D&D on the selling box.    Someone who justify IT IS D&D on the box is certainly knowing that he is wrong, to actually put the justification on the very box itself.

BACONX

Essentially that is why D&D is not necessarily doomed but it will never replicate the same intense imagination and emotions that sitting down with friends and having a human GM weave a storyline does.  We all love online games, original or not.  A lot of us love module games.  People looking for a decent game will play D&D for awhile and leave for the next big thing.  People who have played D&D all their life and think the same environment will reproduce in this game are going to be highly dissappointed.  Does D&D lose money because of this? Probably not.  Doe the game redefine online games as we know it? No.

GungaDin

Nice post.  Those are my exact reasons for not purchasing the game.  DDO does not stand out when compared with other D&D titles.  So I cant justify paying a monthly fee on top of it.  Its a shame, I was excited but just because the box says Dungeons and Dragons doenst mean its of the quality we are used to with that title.  I hope others enjoy the game, I myself will take a pass.