Gaming: Dungeons & Dragons Online Stress Test Preview
A friend told me that there was a stress test of DDO this week so I tried it out.
First thing, my comments are directly related to the build that I was testing, there are bugs, glitches and other odd behaviors. I don't know much about the end product so I will mostly stay with the stress test version.
Graphics
As you can see from the image on top, they are real pretty! The world is very vibrant, the dungeons are dark and convey a sense of dead and unknown. This is not World Of Warcraft where the graphics are all nice and vibrant, dungeons included. There was even rain last night. I don't really know if it always rain where I was. I was really impressed with the graphics, I was not expecting something this polished for a stress test. Yes there are bugs, the shadow looks weird and can detach from you when climbing a ladder. But still, it's what I would expect from a D&D world.
Environment
So it's kind of hard to know how big the world is since I just started yesterday night. The way it works is that everything is in an instance, meaning, you are in a little bubble and nobody can penetrate it. The exception is in town. There are still instances but you can change from one to the other to look for your friends or people to adventure with. I do not know the limit of people in an instance before another is created but there are still a lot of people in one instance. One thing to note is that every building, dungeon, open space are in an instance. Meaning loading screens, lots of it. It is the #1 thing that I hate of this game. You enter a dungeon, loading screen, when finish, another loading screen to get out, 1 min later you enter a tavern to regenerate, another loading screen. They are also quite long, but I'm sure it will be faster once the game is finished and shipped. One thing I really like, description when entering a certain part of a dungeon, it's a really nice addition.
Gameplay
It's action oriented, you must move while battling baddies since it's that only way to dodge an attack. If you don't, you get hit. It's a nice change from WoW. The game is very oriented by quests. They are the only source of experience to advance. Killing mobs does not give you any xp, only finishing quests objectives. The way I understand it, most quest cannot be done alone, you must adventure with a group. I for one, sometimes like to be able to finish quests on my own, so it's another thing that bothers me about this game. When entering a dungeon with friends, you will be the only ones in it, no other player can enter the same instance as yours. This is nice and not; it's nice to be bothered by other players or be ninja looted. On the other end of the coin, in WoW, it's always fun to be helped or help somebody on his quest. Many times, I've formed a group with people I'd encounter during a quest.
Conclusion
The game looks amazing, it's still has bugs (normal since still in beta), some really nice touches (descriptions) but the loading screen drove me nuts last night. It will be interesting to see how this game develops. I can't judge it at this stage of it's development. It's nice but hard to compare to WoW since they have so much difference.
[ Links ]
Dungeons & Dragons Online
Stress Test (Fileplanet)
First thing, my comments are directly related to the build that I was testing, there are bugs, glitches and other odd behaviors. I don't know much about the end product so I will mostly stay with the stress test version.
Graphics
As you can see from the image on top, they are real pretty! The world is very vibrant, the dungeons are dark and convey a sense of dead and unknown. This is not World Of Warcraft where the graphics are all nice and vibrant, dungeons included. There was even rain last night. I don't really know if it always rain where I was. I was really impressed with the graphics, I was not expecting something this polished for a stress test. Yes there are bugs, the shadow looks weird and can detach from you when climbing a ladder. But still, it's what I would expect from a D&D world.
Environment
So it's kind of hard to know how big the world is since I just started yesterday night. The way it works is that everything is in an instance, meaning, you are in a little bubble and nobody can penetrate it. The exception is in town. There are still instances but you can change from one to the other to look for your friends or people to adventure with. I do not know the limit of people in an instance before another is created but there are still a lot of people in one instance. One thing to note is that every building, dungeon, open space are in an instance. Meaning loading screens, lots of it. It is the #1 thing that I hate of this game. You enter a dungeon, loading screen, when finish, another loading screen to get out, 1 min later you enter a tavern to regenerate, another loading screen. They are also quite long, but I'm sure it will be faster once the game is finished and shipped. One thing I really like, description when entering a certain part of a dungeon, it's a really nice addition.
Gameplay
It's action oriented, you must move while battling baddies since it's that only way to dodge an attack. If you don't, you get hit. It's a nice change from WoW. The game is very oriented by quests. They are the only source of experience to advance. Killing mobs does not give you any xp, only finishing quests objectives. The way I understand it, most quest cannot be done alone, you must adventure with a group. I for one, sometimes like to be able to finish quests on my own, so it's another thing that bothers me about this game. When entering a dungeon with friends, you will be the only ones in it, no other player can enter the same instance as yours. This is nice and not; it's nice to be bothered by other players or be ninja looted. On the other end of the coin, in WoW, it's always fun to be helped or help somebody on his quest. Many times, I've formed a group with people I'd encounter during a quest.
Conclusion
The game looks amazing, it's still has bugs (normal since still in beta), some really nice touches (descriptions) but the loading screen drove me nuts last night. It will be interesting to see how this game develops. I can't judge it at this stage of it's development. It's nice but hard to compare to WoW since they have so much difference.
[ Links ]
Dungeons & Dragons Online
Stress Test (Fileplanet)
posted by Jason at 12/15/2005 01:19:00 PM
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