by David Couttie

Created on: December 16, 2010

In the 1980’s there were no good MMORPGS with visually stunning graphics, dungeons and dragons had what the online world was missing. This included a lack of social networking by chatting. Every game was robotic with a pre-typed storyline. People actually had to desperately scramble around on search engines to final the ideal text based game, which simply couldn’t put anything creative into within a tiny textbox that gave everyone a  migraine. The textbox would say invalid command when you entered entire phrases or sentences in. So you were forced to enter directions by typing the first letter usually.

So how does Dungeons and dragons influence MMORPG’S? Simple, most of the stat colorful stat building based on random dice rolls could be changed with each higher level. Well not the base stats in the early editions but you could go to a stat trainer and the DM would get to be the NPC personality or non player character who you got to train with.

When we see a tiering system in level based games today we also have to attribute this to the wonderful works of D&D. The game introduced the concept of letting your imagination to run wild. You could even multi class your character if you didn’t like it’s initial abilities by using a paragon system that could change you into a demi-god even. Eventually, that would lead to epic level quests, which allow you to modify your daily abilities with even stronger ones.

Also, there was the problem of no reset in the old text games, you were stuck with the stats associated with leveling which were set in stone. But in D&D ,you could even get utility skills that could change every 4 levels or so and swapped with other classes if you joined a faction or quested for a certain hero even.

The turning point when this game first came out, was when the monsters were scaled to the level of the players in the campaign, so that you didn’t accidentally run into a level 40 boss at level 5 like you could in some of the text games. Nor were you required to memorize your location when you quested, there were miniature statues of lead at first then pewter and plastic placed on a grid paper board. The board was even illustrated to show where the doors were and secret passage ways.

Each enemy piece moved with strategy and purpose, controlled by the DM, which the text based adventures were nowhere near capable of doing. It would just be a slew of words in a stream of paragraphs that you would hurriedly skip through.

Finally when, other games soon afterward in the late 1990’s when graphics were starting to come to the forefront,  they soon followed D&D in its grinding approach or in other words playing the same levels over and over again to allow the players to level up faster at first and gain rare items. If anything else is to be said, it’s that D&D was the most creative and vivid world out there. Without it games like World of Warcraft, Grand Fantasia, Pangya and others wouldn’t have had the ability to come into existence.

  

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