Carrot on a Stick:

What Keeps us Playing DDO?

by Shayalyn

I'm always comparing today's MMOGs to EverQuest. I get some flack for it from gaming friends, too. They tell me EQ is old school, and that you can't relive your first MMOG experience because first times only happen once. And I suppose they're right; I do have a certain sense of longing for those virginal days, before I'd experienced half a dozen or so various MMOGs, none of which, in the long run, ended up flipping my switch.

So, what makes Dungeons & Dragons Online (DDO) any different than the MMOGs I've shelved because they just didn't turn out to be as engaging, in the long run, as EQ first was? What does this game have to offer to hold my interest for any length of time?

Initially, it didn't offer a lot. In fact, I'll step out on a limb and say that when I first played DDO in the late beta stages I wasn't sure the game would have any sort of staying power, at least for me. I found the combat too twitch-based. I didn't like the fact that I couldn't solo beyond the first few instances in the newbie area. And, speaking of instances, I also didn't like the idea that there were no open adventuring areas to explore--to step outside the city limits meant stepping into an instanced area, either alone or with a group. Despite DDO's hard line stance on forced grouping, the game felt lonely to me.

But now, just over a month into the game, I'm beginning to get a broader sense of its appeal. Combat is still twitch-based, but my skills are improving. (Well, perhaps you'd better not ask the friends that I've grouped with. Maybe just...take my word for it?) Soloing is still next to impossible, but I've grown pretty attached to the new friends I've made in game, which makes it feel far less lonely.

Traditionally, MMOGs have offered all sorts of incentives to keep subscribers happily addicted, from the promise of advancement to the highest levels, to quests for fantastic items. Level advancement will always be an incentive in any online game, but decent items and cash are actually easy to come by in DDO, making that grind-for-glory a little less crucial than it seems to be in other games. So where is that necessary incentive to keep playing?

More and more I'm finding that my enjoyment of DDO stems from the good times I have getting together with friends. And I think that's the subtle brilliance of this game. Turbine may have accomplished what they set out to--to come close, within the framework of a MMOG, to invoking the experience of gathering around a table with a few of your closest friends to roll the dice and roleplay while the cagey DM leads you down a precarious path to victory...or doom. Rather than being a lonely game, it turns out that DDO is uniquely social, from the intimacy of private instances, right down to the integrated voice chat system that eliminates the necessity for being a decent typist in order to communicate well.

Will DDO go the distance and hold players' interest for the long term? Good question. After all, online friends are portable--mine tend to game jump from MMOG to MMOG with me. Is there anything that will hold them in DDO for any length of time? My crystal ball and tarot cards provide no solid answers, so I'll offer up my best guess. I think that Turbine is going to have to keep the content coming in order to hold player interest. Fortunately, they've already begun to implement their plan to keep the game fresh--the game's first free module, The Dragon's Vault, is due to launch this month.

And maybe at some point Turbine will also wise up and add some solo content for time-limited and casual players who just want to make a little progress in their 30 minutes of free time.

But that's another topic all together. Don't get me started....