What is Free Play Friday. Well it’s a weekly article on free games out there in the world. The game could be casual flash games to Free 2 Play MMOs to free downloads. The only condition is you must be able to play the whole game without spending a cent to do so. So enjoy this weeks Free Game. This week's game is D&D Online Eberron Unlimited. When D&D Online first came out it was your standard MMO fare with the normal monthly fee. In October Turbine put D&D Online into the Free 2 Play market. You can read all about this in my D&D Online First Look Article. Here I'm going to talk about my 30 day experience with playing this game for free.
Throughout my 30 days of play I tried many different classes. I first started out with an elf ranger and I tried to be equal as much as possible in terms of melee and range. For the most part you can do this very well but I think range in this game kind of gets shorted. While you can swing a sword forever range requires plenty of ammo to made it through a normal adventure. Next I wanted to try a magic user of some type and made a drow sorcerer. At first I though I would be really limited as I can only cast so many spells a day but then figured out that wands recharge over time. It starts at 50 charges per day/rest/adventure. Unless you get click happy the wand seems to last a normal adventure and as soon as you exit the adventure its fully recharged ready for the next one. This is a cool addition to the game and give magic users some use when they are out of spell power. Of course being a magic user its very hard to solo so I decided to check out the hireling system. This allows you to get an NPC (Non Playable Character) fighter or healer to join you on adventures. When you first start out they are expensive but they can be summoned to your side for a hour and they will help you out inside dungeons and combat areas. Next I tried out a rogue and while it has its perks, it's weak in combat. I think it would work great with 2 people doing co-op play. It was a blast though sneaking around and stabbing things in the back. As well a being able to disarm traps you find in just about all the dungeons. Finally I had to play your standard run of the mill fighter. You know the ones that swing big ass weapons and hit things very hard.
Out of all of them I enjoyed the fighter the most. Since most of my time was playing solo this worked out very well as I had the armor and hit points to do most of the dungeons without much issues. This was until I founds some of my friends playing on another server playing this game with other is a blast. Of course any game is, but D&D Online was built around the fact you will need to group up for the adventures. I mean it is D&D which was one of the first party based role playing games so this makes sense. First off playing as a group allows you to play the weaker combat roles and be just as useful for the whole team. My suggestion is if you want to play this game find a few good friends and play together.
The more I play this game the more it grows on me. Not sure if Turbine needed to make this a Free to Play game to survive or not but I believe it was a good idea for them. I do hope it pays off got them. Remember the game is free and I can tell you for a fact you do not need to spend any money to advance in the game or to get the phat loot. For those who wish to support Turbine the in-game store sell a good range of items. They sell potions to increase XP earned as well as increase the level of items found in treasure chests. The fun part is being able to buy new adventures. I think this was a good move by Turbine, while the new adventures aren't needed as there is plenty of content to take you to the end game, these new adventures just give you different and new areas to play in. So if MMORPG is your thing and you like D&D head on over to D&D Online sign up and download the client.
TrackBack URI for this entry
Subscribe to this comment's feed
