New Game Review, Sort Of....

I've been playing Dungeons & Dragons with a guy from work. It's fun, complicated as a beginner but has a certain elegance one can expect from a game that's been balanced, rebalanced and debugged over the past 30 years that one cannot expect from most modern major releases.

On the way home on Tuesday night, my traditional "Everyone's busy but me" night, I stopped at GameStop and picked up a copy of "Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach" the new DnD MMORPG. I'm warming up to it but haven't decided if I'll keep the subscription yet but since its only day 2 of playing and I got 30 in the box I have a good month left to figure it out.

First Day: This game is hard. Aside from adjusting to the "made for console" type controls. Created an Elf Wizard with the default template of skills and feats just for starters. Died 10+ times trying to finish the first real newbie quest. A veteran of other MMOs will be a little weirded out at first dealing with the DnD rules.

Second Day: Decided maybe the well reknowned squishiness of the Wizard was my problem, rolled up a Barbarian Warforged, customized my feats to include Adamantine Body and I'm good to go. Finished the first newbie quest in one try without taking any damage whatsoever. Got better loot than the Wizard did, (including Wizard items that my Wizard did not get) and all around had an easier time of it. If you're going to solo it looks like the Warforged natural armor and such puts you way ahead of the curve.


Caveats:

• This game appears to have been designed with voice chat and gamepad in mind. The mouse controls are atypical (Attack = Mouse 2, Mouselook = Mouse 1, Interact = Doubleclick Mouse 1). For chatting obviously the keyboard is a must but for playing I'm tempted to plug in my old wonky gamepad and let fly. The controls are slick, just not designed for my desktop configuration.
• This game uses a DnD 3.5 ruleset. This means A) The game is fairly well balanced between classes (the aforementioned Wizard disaster notwithstanding) B) the world not only allows but demands more interaction than EQ or anything you've played online before. You will be smashing crates and jumping around like in Zelda but you'll also be conserving your "ammo" (spell points, arrows, etc.) like Resident Evil as well as listening for clues, searching for traps, switching damage types per enemy (Smash skeletons, slice and dice on zombies...)
• Also part of the rules but worth its own mention: You will *not* regen over time. You *must* have potions, spells or skills in order to heal outside of taverns or designated "rest shrines". This is trickier than it sounds, potions are relatively more expensive, spells more limited and skills more difficult to use than in other games. It hasn't happened to me yet but it is possible to get a "critical failure" on a healing skill and actually incap or kill yourself. (Incap = 0 HP + slow bleed towards -> Death = -10 HP)
  

So far this is fun but difficult. I haven't grouped with anyone yet, I tend to like to learn the game and then inflict myself on others and this changes the gameplay immensely in DnD. It will be quite a different experience I'm sure when I have a Cleric bumping up my To-Hit rolls and a Bard fascinating the mobs while our nuker conjures up some godawful blast that the Ranger will barely dive away from the AoE before launching a volley of arrows and dropping the first pair from the next group.

If anyone feels so inclined I'm on the Mabar "spine" as either Benlo or Matsubaa and both have *barely* entered "The Harbor". This could be the Next Big Thing or just another thing...