by Ken Smauthi

Created on: March 15, 2007   Last Updated: May 02, 2007

My first impression after figuring out the gameplay of Dungeons & Dragons Online was that it was a refreshing change from the mindless automatic fighting and killing games that dominate the market. The game shares many features with such great classics as Neverwinter Nights and Baldur's Gate II, other games that have gone beyond the call of their genre to provide an engaging and novel roleplaying experience.

The character generation process follows the same old tried and true format that just about all roleplaying games use. It's arguably one of the most entertaining parts of playing these games. Customizing your character to your exact specifications is almost an art form. In Dungeons & Dragons online there are a couple of surprises here, such as an unexpected mechanical race of beings called the "Warforged".

After creating your character and completing your training, you're free to venture out and partake in missions. If you're alone, expect to be beaten to a bright bloody pulp fairly early on. This game is not meant for single players. All the design has gone into creating a world that requires you to join up with other stalwart adventurers in order to survive. If you want to play this game, you'll need to make friends.

The main idea is to encourage banding together, which may give you the warm fuzzies but creates a few problems as well. You're often meeting up with people in packed taverns and such and that can make the game lag quite noticeable. This isn't a new problem, MMORPG games have always had this problem. But I've found that with Dungeons & Dragons Online's focus on banding together, it is particularly noticeable.

The focus of the game is almost completely on missions, rather than on running around to random areas, killing things, and waiting for them to respawn. Most of the time in this game you'll be running through dungeons on little quests with a group of your buddies. The missions are generally very well done, with great plots and secret passages and such to discover. The whole design really encourages you to play a role in the game rather than just run around killing things.

Your skills and profession make a big difference in how you will play the game. And you have a choice between auto-attacking or taking more control. Jumping, blocking, and the like can play a big role, and you can usually achieve greater success by taking full control. It requires some skill and practice, but if you want to be good at this game you can take the time and effort.

The game is very strategy oriented. The choices you make have a definite real effect on the outcome. Killing indiscriminately doesn't pay off, so you're forced to prioritize and figure out exactly what needs to be done. The levels take a little time to progress through, but this really forces you to plan out what areas you want to concentrate on. This may be irritating at first, but if you keep at it you will notice that it does have it's benefits over other systems.

Overall it's a pretty well constructed community based MMORPG. I'm a little bit put off by the lack of ability to perform solo quests. If you don't have anybody to play with you kind of feel like the kid who wasn't able to find a partner in science class. But there are other games I can play when I'm in the mood for that. Other flaws in the game are fairly minor.

So go make some friends, kill some bad guys, and just have fun!

Learn more about this author, Ken Smauthi.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.