PnPers Assessment

*Introduction*
Not to slap out the gaming 'schlong' but to give you some idea of my credentials. I am a freelance and self-publishing Tabletop RPG writer. I have never been a particular fan of the D&D rules sets but I have written for d20, including fantasy worlds, before and have a broad professional knowledge of tabletop RPGs. I have also played several MMOs - most notably Anarchy Online and Saga of Ryzom, though I have dabbled in others.

These assessments are made upon having got to level 3 and the third area of the city. They are subject to change.

Graphics
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On previews, movies and stills the graphics look very nice, very smooth and capture the newer 'Dungeonpunk' look of 3rd edition D&D quite nicely.

In character creation they also look nice.

Once you get into the game though - and this may just be due to the stress on the servers - everything runs like a pig.

I do not have a shitty rig by any means, 2.5gig processor, 1.5 gig ram, 256 meg graphics card, plenty of cache space, nothing running in teh background, but even on lowered resolution and with most of the bells and whistles turned off it runs - at best - spastically. Slide show movement in towns, controls are slow to respond and any customisation you have put into your character becomes barely noticable.

The problem slackens off - a little - in dungeon instances, but not by that much.

These graphics issues wouldn't be a problem necessarily, if there weren't sheer drops and ramps you can fall off everywhere, and take falling damage. The graphical strain and lag in control makes plummeting to your doom somewhat likely.

As a PnP RPer character customisation is important to me. There are basic options but IMO they're not really enough. Equipment does look different from item to item however and that does make characters recognisable. The problem comes when your kick-ass bit of equipment looks lame and you have to substitute style for effectiveness.

Overall I think the graphics are good, but they seem to create problems in other aspects of play. Note that NWN similarly runs like a bit of a pig on my rig, as have the KOTOR games, all games that use a similar interface and playing mode. So it _may_ be my system, but I can't see how.

Oh, and your cloaks and things don't show.

Gameplay
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Character creation is pretty much spot on from tabletop, with full customisation options.
However, there are omissions.
No shapeshifter race, no half orc or half elf.
Class-wise they're missing the Druid and Monk and also Eberron specifics like the Artificer.

Once into the game you're deposited on a newbie island and the quests are pretty straight forward from there. You get a mission, you descend into a dungeon and things may or may not get complex from there. Rinse, repeat. Most of them being sewers or cellars.

If you create a continuum of gameplay with turn-based strategy on one end and platformers on the other, DDO falls somewhere betteen 60-75% on the platformer side. This has knock-on effects in other areas of gameplay.

Unlike with many D&D type games, XP and loot are kept under control and the level balancing seems approximately right. Combat is often challenging but you rarely feel gypped.

Controls in town are sluggish, slightly less so in dungeons but the poor controls do make you fall off things more often than you should.

That pretty much covers the raw physical side of things.

The real test for me is in roleplaying. That's my raison d'etre.

There isn't any.

All the quests are preset and there are no deviation paths, while you might choose (if solo) to sneak, or bash or take some other route the adventure and its outcome are all predetermined. This is a massive step back from KOTOR or Deus Ex where you did have some actual choice in how things turned out. Here, you're very much on rails and on rails more than many current generation single player CRPGs.

You can't roleplay very much, if it all, because it IS an action game. You cannot pause to type something because you need to be constantly moving your character, positioning and fighting for best effect.

Voice chat severely restricts your ability to play something not of your own race, area or sex, further screwing with the ability to RP.

While there are items such as food and drink, they have no graphic and the inns are just respawning, healing and teaming places. There are NO roleplaying spaces within the game and no props or opportunities to get into your role.

The emote list is inadequete for RPing also.

For a game drawing on the grandaddy of all RPGs, this seems... odd.

Teaming however is essential and I cannot stress enough how much difference having a decent team makes to this game. It makes it 10-100x better. Of course, with so many random pick-up groups going on you do get the asshats too, and they can reeeeally mess things up for a team. If you're lucky, you get a gem of a team though.

MMO?
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Massive? Not really, the areas are fairly pokey, dungeons feel quite big but that's because you scour every corner.
Multiplayer? Yes. Definately. Essentially.
Online? Of course

RPG?
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No, there is almost no chance to portray your character in any way, no scope for it built into the game. This is much more about action oriented play and the tactics of creating the 'optimum build' for your character class.

D&Dness
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It has the stats and the look but it is 'empty'. The fanatical concentration on dungeons overrides the possibility of any other real RPG effort getting into it. The narrator voice is a nice touch, drawing attention to things and acting as your DM but it brings to mind the module play of the 80's rather than the more freewheeling modern modes of play. It's like a timewarp to someone who still plays red-box D&D and only uses modules. Again, very strange.

It has D&D's body, but not its soul. Though the way some people play tabletop, perhaps it'll suit them (the Munchkins).

Instancing?
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Instancing kills immersion stone dead for me. Repeated quests that everyone else has done? What's the point of unravelling the same story as everyone else for the umpteenth time.

Worth Paying For?
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I like it, I could play it as a break from other games, but for casual play it isn't worth the charge being asked. It just doesn't offer what I want at that cost. $5 a month, maybe I'd pay to play, the current charge? No.

NWN is likely to look as shiny as this and will let me create and interact with my own content, and the online parts will be free. That sounds like a better deal to me.

Summary
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It's not D&D, or if it is, it's more like Xtreme Dungeonbashing (Sponsored by Pepsi Max). It makes me think of a game called Xcrawl.

http://www.pandahead.com/Xcrawl/background.php

Whatever it IS is done well, but it isn't an RPG in any sense that I understand it or apply the term. But it's much better than the slagging recieved here would have you think.