D&D Online stress test

[Monster]

I'm downloading the client right now. I hate Fileplanet so I went with the other choice.

http://www.bluesnews.com/cgi-bin/viewpost.pl/62822

[Monster]

Dumbasses. Just found out the stress test is from 12 p.m. – 7 p.m. EDT, 7 days a week. Guess they don't want to try and stress out the servers too much, since they close down the test before peak hours.

[DarkViruz]

I've heard awful things about how the entire game is instance up instance....i may download it later on.

[Monster]

So the lesson here is to not trust anything I read in a readme file... I played the stress test for a bit and was able to get in.

So far it is instance upon instance... in fact, when you're not in an instance, there are huge crowds that slow down the framerate a lot. However, I'm still in the second starting area, which you must do a bunch of quests in before leaving. The instances are pretty cool so far, and the combat seems really great... it's action based! You have to block manually, you can dodge and roll... awesome! The game has been really fun so far. There are even crates and urns you can break in instances in addition to opening chests, and there are traps you can disable, locked doors you can pick, hidden doors... also, you can jump and climb stuff! So cool.

[Hado]

Action based but no PVP makes me a sad panda.

[Monster]

I know man, no MMORPG should be without decent PVP. I guess they didn't add PVP because it goes against the nature of D&D, which is teamwork. Also, D&D is just not a balanced system when it comes to PVP. However, duh, someone needs to play the villains and supervillains that heroes deal with on a daily basis! I noticed that when picking alignment the worst you can be is "neutral". Maybe they'll add functionality later where you can choose the various evils and chaotic neutral, which automatically makes you be on "the other side".

[Monster]

Man, this game loads. And loads. Did I mention it loads?

The areas are pretty small and whenever you go into anywhere, or into a different section of the city, there's loading. When going into a tavern that has a lot of people, or going back out onto the street, the load times are unbearable. In this state the game is unplayable as an MMORPG. On the other hand, I guess you could look at it as a compulsory break every few minutes. I know it's a stress test, but I don't think the load times are going to be much less in production.

Seriously, in this day and age, there's absolutely no excuse for "zones" in an MMORPG. I understand having to load instances, but the game world should be seamless. I mean, EQ even had massive zones. We're talking about, what, a 3rd, 4th generation MMORPG? Why are there tiny zones?

[DarkViruz]

I'd just like to point out at this time (not in one of those omg the current beta im playing is better then your beta type of way) that in Dark and Light there are zero load times and zero instances and the land area is 40,000km squared (with different seasons). So yes in this day and age zones are pretty funny. At this point im even lashing out and guildwars (though it wasn't 'really' an mmo).

[Monster]

And Guild Wars' load times aren't too bad anyway.

[Wynn]

Did you spend any more time with this? What's your final impressions?

[Monster]

I gave up until I got my new PC, but unfortunately the stress test apparently only lasted a few days, as it was over by the time I got my PC. So my final impression was what I posted earlier... ridiculous load times, and taverns not only have horrible load times when entering but bad framerates. Of course, with my new PC the framerate might not be bad at all. And in final everyone won't be crowded into one space and will presumably be spread out among multiple servers. Remember, it was a stress test, so it wasn't optimal conditions.

The game itself seemed pretty cool, and pretty different than most MMORPG's. It was kind of like a single player RPG, only with real people running around. I never got a chance to group.

[Wynn]

It launches at the end of February. Are you getting it?

[Monster]

I might... if you get it, I'll get it.

[Wynn]

I wasn't planning to. I was going to wait to hear if anyone else I know is. I'm still playing WoW. They just released a content patch, that includes some server-wide harvesting and questing that is going to take weeks to complete. After it's done some new dungeons will open up.

[Monster]

Then I don't know if I will. I might wait for reviews to come in and base my decision off of that. However, if I'm bored out of my mind and have no other games to play at that time, I probably will pick it up.