Shipwrecked into another MMO - Part 1

You wake up on a beach in ragged clothes and no belongings. The beach is littered with whats left of the ship and it's cargo, and some spry individual calls you by name. You are either in the never ending re-run of Gilligan’s Island or started a new MMO.

The spry individual is Jeets Shimis and the game is Dungeons and Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited. When DDO was launched I spent the first few weeks looking around but nothing held my attention enough to yield adequate game play. I remember that there were some interesting factors in DDO and since it's now a free to play model I thought I would “adventure” back in.

We all know Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I try to be fair when it comes to graphics as much as possible. It's the graphics, the “eye candy”, the detail that is somewhat important to me and why not. The gaming industry, art and development, has advanced to far not to delivery highly detailed worlds and characters. 

Looking around after entering I was not disappointed. The area was crisp and detailed from the water to the trees right down to the falling snow. Snow? On a tropical island? I bet that Dragon that is flying over has something to do with it, after all it was the reason I am shipwrecked.

The opening dialogue that moves the new player into the game, scenario or story line was rather intrusive. Jeets Shimis a rogue who stands a few feet away, relentlessly calls to you. Due to the fact that I wanted to look around first before jumping right in, poor Jeets just got on my nerves. It's almost like the developers were afraid that Jeets wouldn’t get anyone’s attention, every 3 seconds Jeets was speaking to me. I am sure it wasn’t every 3 seconds but it was annoying. 

After talking to Jeets we begin riding the MMO rail. This is where you get led around to certain points and people in the game so you can perform your daring deeds of do. This is needed of course to establish the new player with the game mechanics. Tutorial/introduction on how to talk, walk, run and if you are brand new to a game like this, its your best friend.

After breaking a few boxes for coin and getting my new weapon from Motormouth Jeets he sends you to find Cellimas Villuhne, this of course is you first real adventure type quest that further teaches you the game mechanics. There really wasn’t anything new in DDO's starting area compared to others. The only improvement, as a whole, has been making these starting areas more informative.

My little Tutorial quest introduced me to swimming, pulling levers to open doors and “Search” for searching traps. I will have to admit that this added animation when searching for a trap in a room is cool. It gives everyone that “pause” as if you were actually looking for something out of place, instead of a random behind the scenes number check that amounts to a click on an icon.

Another noticeable thing for me was the armor reward. We had bested our foes in battle, thwarted the evil Sahuagin High Priestess, and Jeets walked us to our reward. “Oh Look...a Chest.” the universal iconic graphic for reward, the proverbial pirates chest. Okay the chest wasn’t the cool thing here it was the armor. I always give a nod of acceptance to any game that can give me a variance in apparel and not only that, it isn’t painted on so 2 nods.

Got my game on, looking good like a Cleric should and our next stop is Korthos Village. Hope thay have a Tavern, getting a little thirsty.