Review: Dungeons and Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited

The MMORPG market is pretty packed these days.  World of Warcraft seems to have a grip on many gamers, with no signs of letting go.  There is another game that is worthy of your attention.  It is not perfect, but Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited for the PC is fun and free, while having a personality that is all its own.  If you have never tried DDO before, now is the best time to jump right in.

Yes, those beholders will kill you.

Meat & Potatoes.  Chocolate & Peanut Butter.  Dungeons & Dragons.  Some thing’s are just meant to be together.  For decades D&D has been synonymous with the pen & paper tabletop role playing game.  D&D has ventured into video games many times over the years, but never in a way that felt like the Tabletop game come to life, like the massively multi-player online Role playing game that hit shelves a few years back.  Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach was released by the folks over at Turbine, Inc. in 2006 as a standard subscription based service.  After seeing the success of the Asian online gaming market, Turbine, Inc. decided to try a different approach.  So DDO re-rolled their MMO and came up with a product model that was sure to be more successful, and give it more spotlight.  Turbine renamed their new MMO Dungeons & Dragons: Eberron Unlimited in September of 2009, and decided to let players go at their new world for free.  The only money you have to pay in the new set up would be strictly voluntary.  For a full list of what your money gets you, www.DDO.com has a very vast amount of info on VIP access and a Monthly subscription service if you are looking for a few of the games more unique features.

WTF is that?

The free version of the game come with 2 character slots, 10 classes (Wizard, Sorcerer, Rogue, Ranger, Paladin, Monk, Fighter, Cleric, Bard, or Barbarian) spanning 4 races (Human, Halfling, Elf, or Dwarf) with the option to multi-class in game.  If you want to play a Drow or a Warforged race, with Monk or Favored Soul class, however, that will cost.  With the new Update 3, D&D opened up the level cap and made the lands of Eberron a free for all, literally.  They also added added a casual level of play, but you want to know the best part?  It is a hell of a lot of fun.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS:

From creating a new account to downloading and installing your new adventure, you are looking at roughly an hour and 15 minutes.  That is less time than it takes to hop in a car, go to the local Best Buy, come home, and do the same.  A few minutes with a well thought out character builder, and you are off to Korthos Island, the games low level tutorial area, going on quests, killing a handful of monsters and exploring.  It is all painless, and fast.  Just like the game itself.
Whether you have been rollin’ the d20′s all your life, or only know about D&D through jokes in TV shows, you are no doubt familiar with the world Turbine has put together.  Elves, warriors, dwarves, and mages all seem like common fantasy fodder, but D&D, like Lord of the Rings, gets the benefit of using these ideas long before they became common place.

It's come to this. A Dungeon. And Dragons.

At 1st glance everything seems like a typical MMO.  Spells and abilities on a short cut bar, a chat and map window, almost as if it came from a paint-by-numbers MMO guide.  But then things get interesting.  An ominous voice will lead you along the way during your quest.  The 1st time I heard this “dungeon master” (DM) as I strolled through the early dungeons, I knew that this game had something your average MMO lacked.  In games like this, it seems commonplace to put in a nice cut scene at the beginning, and then leave the other plot points for the player to make up for themselves.  The DM provides personality and story that makes DDO: Eberron Unlimited a beast all its own.  The 1st time you come to a door and you hear the DM say, “A foul stench creeps from the door in front of you.” A smile will creep across your face.

As you swing your weapons around, and the numbers start to fly, you will notice that there is a 20 sided dice (d20) to the right of the screen that rolls every time you swing.  It rolls a zero, you miss, it rolls a 20, you do a critical.  It is a nice touch that is 100% D&D.  There seems to be hundreds of invisible dice rolling under the hood of this game.  There is no constant.  Everything you do has a chance to fail, from abilities, to opening a door.  You want to use a potion? The game rolls 1d8+1.  That means you could heal for 2, or 9.  Some of the MMO hardcore, might find this to be very annoying, but the D&D nerd-core will love the little touches that make it feel more like the table top game brought to digital life.  Even though the system is using the older 3.5 rule-set, the combat still manages to be very fast and frantic, which means there is never a dull moment when it comes to cleaving a foe in twain.

What sweet hell is this?

A couple other things that DDO does differently than other MMO’s is the leveling system and exploration.  You don’t get experience (XP) for killing everything at 1st.  As in the table top game, all XP is divided after a mission is complete.  So while killing a brown rat will not yield XP now, kill 25 of them and you complete a sub mission that will reward you accordingly with XP and loot.  You also don’t have to turn these in to anyone, so it is a nice system that keeps the pace brisk and doesn’t require you to stop return to town every 5 minutes.
In the same vein, the game rewards you for exploring the world and finding Rare monsters and Special Locals.  This gives you the feeling of adventure as you search every square mile of Eberron, and are rewarded for it in kind.  You acquire ranks that give you Action Points (AP) to purchase Feats.  5 ranks to a level, and it gives you the constant feeling of advancement.  And since the fights and quests are very fast paced, all your XP will come quickly.  The Mission structure also allows you to repeat quests over and over.  Get a party together, and go tackle the Misery Caves.  You can also adjust the difficulty when you jump into a mission.  This way you can always give yourself a challenge, or if you prefer, ease it up so you can see where the story leads you.  It is very user friendly and never feels as if the game is punishing you for playing.

The Long Haul:

Parties are easy to find.

After your done with the tutorial Island (which you can leave anytime) you are off to join the rest of the world. Grouping into other parties is easy and painless.  Or you can go at the whole game solo.  When you make your character, it even tells you your chances of a successful solo adventure.  You do play MMO’s for the online component though.  From what I saw, the community was helpful to newcomers and mainly wanted to have fun.  There were a few punks in the crowd, but the law of averages weeded them out quickly.  Finding a full party and going on raids brought back memories of my Dreamcast days playing Phantasy Star Online.  Since you can repeat quests you have that same sense that at least someone will know what they are doing.

The cities are large and varied with plenty to explore.  There are a ton of quests to do in each city and they are also really convenient.  That means, if you get a quest from a dwarf telling you to go and find his tool kit, 9 times out of 10 the place he lost his tool kit happens to be the door right behind him.  This give a constant feeling of adventuring without all the needless backtracking, therefore encouraging the concept of pick-up-and-play.  While it is easy enough to log in and lose 4 hours without knowing where the time went, the mission structure allows for the player to log in, do a mission and log out, all while giving the feeling that you accomplished something.  It is almost like a portable game without the portable, If that makes sense.

The DDO Store is Simple to use.

One last thing to note, there are some missions that are called extreme missions.  There is no snowboarding or Mt. Dew, but these are missions that not only encourage team play, but downright demand it.  The 1st one you will come across is something along the lines of “Kill 200 monsters.”  Sounds easy enough, until they all gang up on you and you are dead within seconds.  If you absolutely must be a loner and play solo, you can buy hirelings to summon and fight along side you as NPC companions.  While you have some control over them, you can quickly lose focus when things get hectic.

Final Thoughts:

I decided to play a different type of character than I normally would, and it payed off by being consistently fun.  The graphics are decent, the sound is nice, and the content is vast.  You can’t really complain when something is free.  I toyed with all the other classes on the noob island, and while I cant speak for their longevity, they were all fun and there is plenty of variety for gamers of any sort.  Even though I completed my review, I will still be going back to Eberron time and time again, because it reminds me of sitting around a table with my friends, and telling stories while rolling all different manner of dice.  It is hard to look a free gift horse in the mouth.  While I wouldn’t pay for the full Monthly subscription service, I would partake in some of the micro-transactions the game has to offer, such as buying 50 healing potions (which I did, a lot) or a nice piece of armor.  At best it is free, at worse, you spend a couple bucks a month on it.  With the amount of content available for the game, you would be foolish not to give it a spin.

D20

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