In case you didn’t know, Dungeons and Dragons Online has recently opened up its servers for subscription-free gameplay. Now since I successfully kicked my MMO addiction a couple years ago, I’ve been (intentionally) out of the loop on the topic. But with several of my online acquaintances trying out DDO, I figured I’d give it a shot. Surely I wouldn’t get hooked all over again.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, I’m about to say that I got hooked all over again. And you’re wrong. What I am about to say is that my experience with what is good about DDO (the combat) and what isn’t so good about DDO (everything else) got me to thinking about what I’ve liked and disliked about the various other MMOs I’ve played. And how someone out there can code the MMO that would get me hooked all over again.
Rather than a bulleted list of the pros and cons of each game, I’m going to take the aspects of gameplay that are important to me , and talk for a bit about which games have really done well in this regard, and why. For me anyway.
Well, start with Characters. When I think about this all-important first step in playing a game, two really stand out. Everquest II provided the most options. Many races, many available classes (and subclasses), and many many ways to customize the appearance of your toon. If you’re going to go the standard “I want to create an elven druid” route with characters, you’d do well to give your players as many viable and meaningful options as you can. Of course, you don’t have to go this route at all. EVE-Online is by far the winner in my opinion with its classless character creation. Choices you make at the beginning impact your starting skill-set but after that, any character can train to do anything, given time (more about that in a bit when we talk about advancement).
In the coming days I’ll also be talking about character advancement, crafting, economics, questing, combat, and some other parts of the MMO experience. For now, though, what have I missed? What other games do a great (or terrible) job during the character creation phase?
