Well, even after all my years of MMO familiarity, and even perhaps complacency, it turns out that I'm still not so 'veteran' that reading the instructions isn't on occasion helpful. After a somewhat difficult Dungeons and Dragons Online jaunt as a Rogue, which mostly made me confused, irritable and surlier than is seemly, I hit the character creation screen once more.
Stung a little out of my umbrage by an insight that perhaps had not occurred to me, by Commenter Jimmy previous, I thought I'd give a melee class a go, precisely to see what life is like on the other end of the party spectrum in Stormreach. Taking a bit more time over it all this go, I actually made a point of reading the class descriptions accompanying each of the choices this time, rather than just relying on the little movie clips, and my own somewhat hazy recollections of what the standard D&D classes ought to be. Quite a revelation really. Just under the first paragraph, which is the standard in-context overview description ("The Fighter is at home at the front lines of battle and can use all weapons well...", etc), is a bullet list detailing the classes features in more detail, and there it is, plain as day, bullet point number one; solo viability.
Each of the classes has this - how good or bad they are at individual survivability, or if they really need a big and mixed group in which to do well. Fighter, Paladin, Barbarian and Cleric all list as good for solo work: i.e. All the Melee classes. Mage, Sorcerer, Bard, and (ah-ha!) Rogue (the ranged and utility classes) all list as being best off in a group. Ranger was a bit more ambiguous, and implied decent ability in either situation. Huh. Reading between the lines a bit, to me, this seemed to equate to a sort of 'difficulty level', and that stunned me a little.
We're so used to the idea of 'Class Balance' being the inviolable tenet guiding all MMO game design that it simply hadn't occurred to me that you were even allowed to respond to the thousandfold message-board whine of "My class is not as powerful as the others!" with a shrug of the shoulders and robust "We know. So?" But the more I considered it, the more I wondered why all classes should necessarily offer an identical ease of gaming experience. Perhaps (heretical thought) it's okay for there to be different levels of difficulty to be available right from the outset?
The only other game I remember seeing, that had the guts and frankness to do this before, was Anarchy Online. When they revamped their Newbie Experience to include the Morning Star Orbital Station as a sort of character creation lab, all the professions gained a brutally honest appraisal of their typical gameplay style, in a little textbox, along with a refreshingly open 'Difficulty: High' label. As I recall, Martial Artists were in the 'Low' bracket and Traders were considered 'High'. I don't remember any of the others, but the point is that they just came right out and said it, at once informing the player into making an appropriate choice, and also preemptively stopping a million miserable messageboard crusades before they even began. Don't like being a Trader? Be a Martial Artist instead then..it's much easier.
Well, I'm sure people still whined anyway, but it makes life much simpler to be able to point at a declared difficulty and say, 'This class is broken as intended.' Actually, 'broken' is a bit unfair, and this kind of declaration shouldn't stop devs and game designers from still keeping and eye on and fixing actually broken aspects of a class, but the never-ending labour of Sisyphus involved in keeping everyone happy on the buff-nerf front goes away.
I'm not sure I particularly mind that one class is harder than another on purpose, but if that is the intention, then so long as I'm warned up front about it all, and can make an informed choice, I've only myself to blame if things turn out to be harder or easier than I'd personally like. Very refreshing! Of course PvP is a slightly different matter, but perhaps even there, it might be okay to declare 'difficult' as a class feature? Certainly some types of equipment were easier to score kills with than others in Planetside, as I recall.
Anyway, armed with some facts this time, I picked Barbarian, figuring that here was a class who is supposed to charge about with reckless abandon, smashing up everything that comes into their path, and bellowing a lot. If the Mage is doing this, they're a bad player...if the Barbarian does it, they're roleplaying!
Almost instantly, it became apparent that the melee classes in DDO seem to have a much easier time of it. Remember all that bitching I was doing about how hectic and fast-paced the FPS sword-swinging in DDO was? Well, for the dedicated melee classes, it suddenly all fits together very well indeed. The Wavecrest Basement was a totally different experience this time, despite being the same actual dungeon - monsters, scripted bits, story, etc. Sleeping Kobold Sentry? Noooo problem. My charging at it, heavy boots and bellowing woke it up, certainly, but being nearly cut in half with a double-handed battleaxe on the first swing, put it right back to sleep again.
Once outside and after a bit of very minor equipment shopping, ("Crom demand....Bigger Axe!"), I was immediately set upon with a random group invite. Excellent, I thought, lets see how this works out, and joined to find myself in a group of three, and all of us were Barbarians. One quick burst of hysterical giggling later, I followed the other two into some manhole cover in the street. I don't even remember which it was, what difficulty mode, or level, but think it was a Level 2 Normal. I was still only level one, along with one of the others, and the third was level 2. Everything I'd ever been taught about MMO group composition was screaming 'Noooooo!' at me, and I figured we'd get one or two fights in, run out of health and/or potions and wipe out spectacularly.
Not so. We charged in, axes swinging, in a manner that would make any long time MMO veteran cringe and set at the first gang of Kobolds. These went down almost instantly, and we suffered only superficial injury. We moved on, and the scene repeated itself, over and over. Everything fell beneath the heel of the Smallest Barbarian Horde in History, and we beat the supposedly 'medium' length dungeon in about eight minutes. No-one died, no-one even needed to use a rest shrine and I only used two potions of light heal the whole way through. I think four lines of party chat were exchanged in total.
Incredible, and once the initial terror of even attempting anything group-based in an MMO without a Healer, Crowd Control, DPS, Caddy, Butler, Haberdasher, Footman and Tennis Coach in the team had passed, it turned out to be tremendous fun. Later I soloed a few of the shorter dungeons, and that worked well too. The Barbarian, and probably the Fighter too, equipped with a suitably large two-hander, tends to one-hit most even-leveled mobs, and much of the incoming damage just bounces off. This all makes combat much more enjoyable than as a Rogue, who seems to fare quite badly, toe-to-toe. There were still challenges in the form of the bigger 'boss' types, but the whole FPS footwork and aiming of axeblows seems far more intuitive as a proper melee class. The previous problems with pacing went away; as a Barbarian, it's all fast and furious, and the game takes on an entirely different and more action-based feel, much more akin to a Fantasy Multiplayer Co-op FPS. I was vaguely aware that I also had special attacks in there somewhere, but found I didn't really need them that much. Simply being fast on the WASD keys and swinging the axe like a, well, crazed barbarian, did the job.
Of course, in trying to find a solution for my earlier Rogues Woes, I've now basically become a part of the problem, and for the full and rich DDO experience, even Barbarians still need to be considerate group members, waiting for the others, keeping them safe, watching the health and mana bars of the others and all that. Perhaps as things get tougher at the higher levels, this mindless violence ceases to be enough, but there's definitely something quite liberating about being a member of a Barbarian-only party and still doing, not only well, but spectacularly.
Once again, DDO squirms under the Poking of Curiosity and becomes something else, yet again. I wonder what life is like as a Mage, Bard or Ranger, and how different kinds of group approach the same challenges. I wonder what 'Hard' and 'Elite' dungeon settings are like, or the larger and more involved epic instances doted about the Harbor are like, Irestone Inlet, or Kobold Assault, or what the other city districts are like. However, time is up, and my ten days are now over.
Look out for the roundup tomorrow...