While these games are clearly not about soloing, I miss it more than I thought I would when it's not there, and it's among the most common complaints I hear about the game.
Engaging the Enemy
When you get sent into the sewers to rescue someone, you can bet that the Kobolds aren't going to be happy about it. DDO follows most RPG combat conventions, with a few notable exceptions. The shift key lets you block, and your right mouse button lets you perform a single swing of your weapon, although you have an auto-attack toggle as well. I'm still not convinced the single swing is really useful for anything aside from breaking barrels.
In keeping with the original D&D, your health does not automatically regenerate. You can recover only in taverns or at the single-use rest shrines found in some dungeons, making healing classes highly valued. This also forces players to give some thought to their strategy, as they can find themselves without enough health or spell points to complete a quest.
Quests can be undertaken at 3 different difficulty settings, but you have to start with the easiest and work your way up. Repeating quests is inevitable, so difficulty settings help to keep it challenging.
Image © 2006 D. Spohn licensed to About.com, Inc.
As you would expect, hits, misses, and damage are calculated according to the D&D ruleset. I used to think this was a good idea, but now I'm not so sure. The d20 system used in PnP D&D was designed to keep things simple enough to allow for fluid gameplay with dice and graph paper. It's simplicity seems to work against it in a computer game, where a much more sophisticated real-time combat system can be implemented. For example, in the early levels your chances of missing are very high, and when you do hit something you frequently kill it in one or two blows. Fortunately, it does improve somewhat as you advance through the game.
Traps and Puzzles
DDO has some of the most imaginative traps, puzzles, and side quests I've seen in a game of this kind. It brings to light the biggest problem with traps and puzzles in MMORPGs; word gets around very quickly, making secret doors anything but secret. If you're playing DDO with a random group, odds are at least one person in the group knows exactly where the traps are and how the puzzles are solved. Naturally, the best way to enjoy content like this unspoiled is with a group of friends at a similar level.
Crafting and Economy
Traditional D&D didn't have crafting, so it won't come as a shock that there is no crafting in DDO either. While you can trade with other players, they've made an effort to avoid a player-driven economy. You can exchange items through NPCs at fixed rates, but there is nothing akin to the auction houses some other games offer. The chat system in DDO does not even have a trade channel.
Many people have mixed feelings about player-driven economies because they can be unpredictable. They invite real-money trade and they're not immune to such things as inflation, however, in my view they're far more interesting than static economies controlled by NPCs.
The Content Race
Turbine has already released one new module for DDO, and I would guess that there is enough here to keep casual players busy for months. Gamers that put in several hours or more every day, however, cover all the ground in the game pretty quickly and tend to run out of things to do. To be fair, hardcore gamers are probably impossible to satisfy in this regard.
Image © 2006 D. Spohn licensed to About.com, Inc.
Part of the problem is that PvP, crafting, and a player-based economy can extend the life of a game tremendously. DDO has none of these things, so when you hit level 10 with a couple different character classes you don't have much alternative but to wait for the next module to come along. Turbine has a monumental task ahead of them addressing bugs and adding more dungeon crawls to the game quickly enough to keep their player base paying.
Bottom Line
Oddly enough, DDO suffers from being a little too much like its PnP counterpart. Traditional D&D was always best among a group of close friends with a similar play schedule, and the same holds true for DDO. With the right group on the right quest it's an exceptional experience near the top of its class. The rest of the time, not so much. It also inadvertently takes the massive out of massively multiplayer. A few years ago this game might have blown everyone away, but given the monthly payment plan and aggressive competition from other online RPGs, the appeal of DDO is bound to be rather limited. On the other hand, if you're disenchanted with the current market leaders in this genre, then DDO certainly deserves your consideration.
