So the big news in MMOs is that Dungeon and Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited is going from a subscription model to a free to play one. The big changeover was supposed to go live on August 6th, but has been pushed back to September 9th. I was lucky enough to be invited into the beta to check out the new gameplay, as well as the new payment model, which is really more of a hybrid than a free to play one.
When I learned that it was a hybrid, I was a little concerned. Normally the free part of hybrid games is nothing more than an excuse to entice or force people to pay for the real content. In fact, recently GiN MMO reviewer Ryan Allen recently took a look at a game called Disciple that was a perfect example of why hybrid games don’t work. The free players in Disciple are only allowed to use cheap weapons and armor whereas the ones who pay get access to the good stuff. The result? The free players are nothing more than cannon fodder for the paid players, which is really bad in a game that centers on PvP. So I went into Eberron expecting to find something similar.
D&D Online was dying a slow and painful death, at least according to players I talked with who had been playing the game for years. You all know the drill. Players stop subscribing to a game. Revenue for the company drops. This means there is less investment in new content. This leads to even more people dropping away. Eventually you end up with a Tabula Rasa or a Matrix Online. So Turbine figured that since they were adding Eberron into the game, that they would try and change that pattern by inviting everyone into the pool for free. In fact, Turbine denies that the game was dying at all. I was not a longtime player, so I don’t know if it was or not, but in any case, the price model changed radically.
And surprisingly, for the most part, I think Turbine did a pretty good job. I do question some of the lines they have drawn between free and VIP play, but I think that Eberron is more balanced than most MMOs that have tried to go this way. I’m not sure it will be enough to save the MMO in the long run without a few more tweaks, but it’s a good step in the right direction.
For the beta, which took place over two months in the summer, I was given an account as a free player. Turbine also gave me 3,000 points to spend in the DDO store, which is how they will make money on the game other than the straight subscription revenue. If you want something, you can spend real money to buy points. However, because I wanted to evaluate the game from a free player perspective, I didn’t touch those 3k worth of free points given out to me as a reviewer. Instead, I only spent the points that I earned in the game by going on special faction quests. In this way I wanted to find out if the free-to-play thing was a gimmick, or if you could actually have a good time with the free model.
The first thing that I noticed was that the character generation engine was pretty fantastic. Here too the hybrid gameplay model creeps in, though I don’t have a problem with that. There are two races, the Drow and the Warforged, that you have to pay to play. And there are two character classes that are for paying customers only too – the Favored Soul and the Monk. Everything else is up for grabs. And every character uses the real D&D 3.0 core rules. So yes, if you have experience with pen and paper, you can tailor a really powerful character to suit your needs using a combination of stats and feats. As you level, you can continue to build your character as you want.
My first character was a Rogue/Acrobat who multiclassed to a fighter. Now she can backstab with a two handed weapon, or use a shield and a martial one handed weapon, like a longsword. The next time she levels, I want to take the martial feat to give her use of the Dwarven War ax, which does 1d10 damage instead of 1d8 for the longsword. Of course if I had it all to do again, I might start with a dwarf to get that feat for free. Then I’ll be all set at an even lower level. Sure it’s munching the rules, but who in pen and paper doesn’t do that?
Once I got into the game I was put on a tutorial island, just like most of the other MMOs out there. The island is littered with quests and gives you a chance to really test out your character and see what they can and can’t do. Here is another cool thing about the game: setting the difficulty level of dungeons. When you get to most dungeons, you are asked about the level that you want to play it at. Some dungeons are special and have set levels, but for the most part your choices are Solo, Normal, Hard and Epic. Now because my character was so well designed, I was able to play every dungeon on the tutorial island on Normal level and skip Solo all together. If there was too difficult an encounter, I just snuck by it, or at least positioned for a backstab to start things out. In fact, as I leveled, I was able to go through about half of the dungeons on Epic level by myself, which unlocks after you complete them on Hard. So you can keep going back and doing the same dungeons with different difficulty levels if you want. Besides more XP, you also get better rewards at higher levels. In fact, it was on an Epic run that I got my first +1 weapon, which was a rapier sword.
But grouping isn’t too bad either. You are not competing for loot because when you open up a chest in a dungeon because different items are assigned to different people. So there is no fighting over who gets what. It all seems pretty fair.
And if you can’t find a group, you can hire NPCs to adventure along with you. These hearty souls follow you around and will take actions they see as appropriate, or can be commanded to do specific actions. I liked to hire a cleric who mostly kept back from me, but then came forward to heal me when needed. This helped me to beat a lot of those Epic level dungeons by myself. Followers are timed, so they stick with you for a certain number of minutes, normally an hour, and then you have to re-buy their contract. Thankfully, if their contract expires in the middle of a dungeon, they will stick with you till you exit. So if you are down to one or two minutes on their contract, jump into a dungeon and they will be with you till you exit.
The next thing after character generation that you will likely notice is the combat interface. Here is where the game really, really shines. With most MMOs, you lock onto a bad guy and the computer pretty much handles the entire combat for you, with you just mashing buttons to perform special moves. It’s all very scripted. But with Eberron, you have total combat freedom. You move and swing and block in real time, like you would with an action RPG in an offline game. You can even smash barrels and crates along the way, hoping to find some loot inside them.
And you can use the terrain to your advantage too. If a zombie hoard is coming at you, stand in a doorway. That way only one undead will be able to get at you at a time. If you are being shot at by archers, step behind a wall or a block of stone. I did this in a bar fight and about ten arrows plucked into the bar I just leapt behind instead of into me. Another time I was almost dead and had to run from a fight. A bunch of monsters were chasing me down and things looked grim. But I’m a thief with a huge jump score and a great climb ability. So I leapt onto a high ledge and caught it with my fingertips. I pulled myself up and got into a niche high above the room. When the monsters came inside, they couldn’t get up to me, though one tried to throw things at me. I was saved and could heal up. After an archery duel, I got the upper hand once again. That would never happen in a normal MMO. But here you have total freedom of movement, even underwater if you want and happen to have a nice water breathing spell handy.
I love this free form combat so much that when I go back and play games with standard MMO combat (including Turbine’s Lord of the Rings Online) I am just, well, a little bit bored. The difference between scripted combat and a free for all is quite a lot. And Eberron has the edge here.
On the down side, the graphics for Eberron leave a little to be desired, though perhaps this is just me being spoiled by how good Lord of the Rings looks. But there are some areas in DDO that are just weak looking. Case in point, player graphics. When you put on a cloak, it does not appear in your character icon. The same thing is true with boots. Given the huge character customization options, actually seeing some of those changes represented graphically would be nice. It’s not a deal breaker, but something that you would think that Turbine could easily remedy. I mean the cloaks in LORTO are some of the best looking ones in the entire MMO field.
My main concern with DDO was the difference between free and paid play. If the balance was off, then the game would fail. I mean obviously not enough people are going to want to purchase $15 per month subscriptions to get the full content the game offers. If they did, then the game would never have to enter a free to play model to begin with. So with that aside, how is Eberron going to make money and stay in business?
I think the ideal system would be to make all of the content free to play and then have players pay to buy things like +1 weapons, healing potions, fancy hair styles or even elite character classes. But that’s not how it turns out, though the balance is pretty good, at least at lower levels.
All of the content is open to everyone on the tutorial island. Then when you are able to make it to Stormreach proper, you are in an area called The Harbor. There it seems like everything is open to all as well. But there were complaints on the chat channel that once you leave the harbor, almost everything is closed to free players. To investigate, I headed into the city even though I was a little low in level to experience it.
The first thing I ran into was a woman NPC who said that I should talk to her about Dragonmarks. These marks are huge in the Eberron pen and paper game and grant the holder special properties akin to magical effects. I went into a building and had to research the Dragonmarks. Then I took a little quiz and because I passed, she looked into my spirit and found that I would manifest a mark. Being a Halfling the mark was one of healing, which was great. But I could not get it until I leveled, unless I went and found a mind-flayer who would do it for me. I went and found this mind-flayer, named Fred of all things, and he swapped feats for me. I got rid of Cleave which was a little worthless and replaced it with my healing Dragonmark. So far so good for a free player.
Also, you can’t just level up as a free player. You need to find coins that increase your maximum level by four. So if you have not found a coin by level four, you get capped. The good thing is that those coins are rather easy to find as a quest reward. They are so easy to find that I wonder why they would even use them. I can’t see anyone not finding their first coin before they hit level four or their second one before level eight and having to go to the DDO store and buy it.
But then I started to hit the wall. You see there are all these people standing around asking me to do quests for them, but you don’t know which ones are free to play quests and which are ones you have to buy. If you are a VIP you get everything, but if you are a free player, there are many quests that you have to purchase al-la-cart. So I ended up taking a quest to investigate disappearances around a cemetery which sounded really interesting. I got the quest and it went into my log so I thought I was good. I was all ready to start the investigation. But then, when I went to the cemetery I got a note saying that because I was a free player, I couldn’t enter. Then they gave me an option to head to the DDO store to buy it for real money. Needless to say, I was a little pissed off. I don’t mind having VIP-only content, but it should be clearly marked, perhaps by the icon over a quest giver’s head. If I don’t own the rights to a quest, it should not be able to drop into my quest log. Otherwise it’s like buying a ticket for a bus ride and then not being allowed to get on the bus when it shows up. That event almost made me mad enough to quit the game right then and there. I’ve dropped MMOs forever for far less. It’s not like there is a dearth of them on the market.
Unfortunately, this happened more and more as I explored the higher levels of the game. Groups would invite me to quest with them because they needed a rogue and I would join, pick up the quest and run over to where they were starting a dungeon. Only the game wouldn’t let me inside because I was a free player. This frustrated me, but also the VIPs because now they were inside a dungeon without a rogue, who was stopped at the gates. Way to make players at every level angry. If Turbine can’t work that out and is unwilling to make most of the content free, DDO is doomed.
To add insult to injury, some quests that I didn’t choose to buy wouldn’t LEAVE my quest log. It said I could not cancel them because they were not repeatable, but I couldn’t play them either because I didn’t give Turbine any real money. They just sat there in my log, forever uncompleted, unless I put up the cash of course.
To buy a module you need an average of about 300 points. Some are more and there are also weekly specials that put them up for sale for less. I’ve heard some of the high level modules for level 15 though 20 players are 700 or more points. You can earn points in the game by doing quests to earn favor. By the time I was third level, I had earned 300 points, mostly I think by doing those epic level dungeons I talked about earlier. So I could have gone on the adventure in the cemetery because it cost 295 points. But then I would be broke. But at least I had a choice. If you don’t want to spend real money, you could grind your way through quests with favor rewards to get points that way. You earn points slowly though, in dips and drabs of 25 and 50, so it might take a while. In terms of real world money, Turbine does not have a system that makes any sense at the moment. A 150 point module is going to cost you about $2 and a 450 point one will cost $5.40. The points will hopefully be standardized at launch. A penny a point would be a good start.
The other problem I have with modules is that I don’t know how good they are. There were a lot of people who complained that they spent real money buying a module only to find that it was dull and short. I don’t know how to remedy this other than making most of the modules free. As soon as someone feels they got burned on a module purchase, they won’t be coming back for more. That’s why I think only the top, most awesome modules should cost money. The others should be free. But it seems like too much content it pay only at the moment.
Instead of buying modules, I spent my money on buying weapons and armor for my character. I purchased a +1 shield for 25 points which was a great deal. And I got a +2 longsword in a weekly sale for 95 points. You can find magic weapons in dungeons, but it’s random and requires that you do Hard or Epic play for the best stuff. I didn’t find any in-game shops that sold magical weapons for in-game money, but they might exist. There is also an auction hall where you can buy weapons from other players for in-game money. The auctions seemed to be pretty packed while I was looking at them.
So what’s the final verdict? I think that Turbine has done the best that it could with a dying game. But I think that its critical that they should provide more free content given that they won’t ever get enough subs to make ends meet on a last generation MMO game, otherwise they already would have achieved this. And when there is a pay-only quest, it should be clearly marked FROM THE QUEST GIVER, and not able to go into your quest log only to have you denied access to the dungeon after the fact. Ideally, I would like to see all, or at least most, of the main content be free with only special adventures costing real money. Then they could make their money on people buying weapons and armor as well as convenience things like cool outfits, XP boost potions and even something like mounts. That is how the Korean MMOs that do this very well make their money. Eliminate the ability to earn real money credit inside the game to balance this if they want, but give us the content for free.
Very few dungeons other than some real specialty ones should be pay to play. Every time a free player hits a wall like that, there is a good chance they will react like I almost did and leave the game forever. That means Turbine won’t ever get a dime from them. The key I think is to get a huge groundswell community that is so large that enough money will be made on those special items. And they won’t get that with too much content behind closed doors. I know it seems like a hard thing for a company to do, but you’ve got to give a lot to get a lot. The more the game tilts in the direction of "you can look for free but to touch you’ve got to play" the more the community size will decrease. Players want a game, not an advertisement for a game. And sadly, Turbine only has one shot at this while the world is watching. If they screw up at launch, they won’t ever get the momentum back. I would make everything free to play from the get go, cause you can’t go back later and tell people that you are free to play "and you really mean it this time."
That said, the balance I found in the beta was at least better than I was expecting, though perhaps it just made me dream of what could be if more content was open and free. The sad part is that I really enjoyed playing this game, more than any other MMO I can remember. Look at how long my review is. I think it’s the longest one I’ve ever written for GiN. If I didn’t care about the game, I wouldn’t bother. There is a lot of potential here for a lot of good D&D-based thrills. But I worry that by being overly protective about content, especially for average cookie-cutter modules, they will end up turning more people away than bringing them in after the initial success they are sure to experience at launch wears off.
I hope that is not the case. The game is fun to play. I just wish I could have seen a little more of it that was hiding behind closed doors.