The Best Dungeon Crawler of all time?
81You can't be serious....
I play MMO games quite a bit, and experiment with them a lot more than my peers. Agreed, they'll sit and play DC Universe Online for 24 hours before giving up, but me? If the game works, I'll sit and play with it for a week or so, heck, even give a review.
So you know I'm an MMO gamer. What's popular with MMOs? Social guilds/clans, all cities and the wilderness filled with players, people of different backgrounds and beliefs. But my favourite thing? Dungeons! While these are available in single-player RPGs, I still prefer to do it on an MMO. Why? Because they seem to be the ones who truly get it right. Be it WoW, DC Universe Online or Runescape, I've been there and done that. WoW's Patch 4.3 hasn't been released yet, even though a new expansion has been announced, so I'm waiting for new content. I'm playing Dungeons & Dragons, which has recently become free to play (excluding premium features).
A Dungeons & Dragons review?
Not at the moment, as I've only played it for approximately 2 hours. Yes, in that time I have decided that I prefer DDO's dungeons to one of the most famous MMORPGs of all time. Raids often get repetitive in WoW, despite having different tactics and some variation, but dungeons? Very boring - mastered the normals, blasted the Heroics and have gotten what I can from the Zandalaris.
So, in two hours I've already accessed a dungeon feature? Nope.avi, well, not entirely. You see, like WoW or most/all MMORPGs, there are instances so you can go as a group. A lot of games are starting to bring LFG (Looking for Group) to form a party for you, to prevent meeting up and going to the instance. In this, I can just walk into an instance on my own and fight whatever's there. And I'm only level 2. Amazing? I think so too.
Captain Obvious strikes again....
At my level, the loot is pretty good (not so obvious), but items will vary. Usually health potions or coins, possibly a weapon you don't need in a chest. You'll be facing the usual low level creatures: rats, spiders, skeletons and zombies, in crypts, basements and what-not. So, it does seem pretty bland. But later on, the content will evolve into something much.... much.... better.
Making assumptions, even though you've only played for two hours?
Yes, I am. The game is called "Dungeons and Dragons", is it not? Dragon Age: Origins (awful subtitle, and means very little) barely had any dragons in it, until the sequel was released. If you're going to include an element like that, boast about it in the trailers, and then plaster it everywhere throughout the game's dialogue, why do you not have it in-game?
Dungeons and Dragons does it perfectly. I'd compare the game to TESV: Skyrim, with the different element dragons, etc. but I don't mean to make it sound like they're ripping each other off. I've never played the boardgame and I don't think I ever shall, as it seems very complex and board-games-turned-MMORPG have an effect on me where I'd rather play the video game. I tried Neverwinter Nights but didn't get the jist of combat (similar to this game). Sorry, I'm rambling again.
In this game, the dungeons aspect is a major aspect of questing. It's not all fetch quests (go kill [x] amount of this, then collect [y] amount of that), and some of the quests have a rather exciting story to them, making players eager to enter them. And as a level 2, getting into the spirit of that is pretty useful.
How long does it take to get into the Dungeoneering aspect of the game?
Not very long. Believe it or not, it's part of the tutorial. You wake up on a shipwreck, enter a cave and immediately do battle with dangerous creatures. Hope I didn't spoil it, but you're thrust into it within ten minutes of gameplay, if that.
Dungeon delving is similar to WoW, but this time it actually feels like a dungeon. It is a dungeon, not an instance or another room of the castle. It's not a cellar, it's an underground lair teeming with deadly foes. The Dungeons part of "Dungeons and Dragons" is certainly more accurate than the Team in "Team Fortress".
Would you recommend the game, just for the dungeoneering?
I'd have to say, for a six gigabyte download it's certainly worth trying. The game's graphics are similar to that of LOTRO (also due to it being made by the same developers, Turbine, Hasbro and Warner Brothers), and the game-play too is comparable. Plus, it's not a button masher, and its combat system relies mainly on the left mouse bumper, so you have a sense of involvement and rotation/combinations.
In all, I have to say that if you're a dungeon enthusiast like myself, give it a whirl and I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
Just because I'm curious
Would you rather play the video game or the board game of D&D?
See results without voting
I haven't played any of the board-games or any other console games they may have made. But I only spent under 24 hours of playing this game before I made the review, so I never made it to the capital city.
With most F2P games though, I'm not surprised that content "dries up" as you say, and players "hit a massive pay wall". This occurs even with LOTRO, where at the beginning, you might end up paying real money to do a quest in the tutorial. ^^
I find that there are very few "truly" free-to-play games in the world today, as they often bar content to non-paying customers, as mentioned in my previous comment. The exception that comes to mind is TF2; it gives free players everything, but limits the amount of items they can hold. Another reason TF2 is great.
Maybe someone should make a list of F2P games that give you the most stuff.
As much as I'd love to create that list, TF2 is the only game I can think of that offers such things. But I wouldn't recommend it for its lack of social abilities, and the BOT-filled servers. ^^
William157 Level 3 Commenter 8 weeks ago
I still think that DDO is one of the best F2P MMOs available today. I played it for about a week and a half with some internet friends about two years ago. After you reach the main city (Stormreach I think?) the questing content begins to dry up. A few more levels after that and you hit a solid pay-wall. To be fair, they really do a give a lot of stuff during the "free" portion of the game.
As for the "board game" version of D&D, I think it's worth playing at least once. Unfortunately it requires a group of people and the game will be made or broken by the GM. That's the whole reason we play video games; they can be played when nobody's around.