Dungeons and Dragons Online vs World of Warcraft

Should you play Dungeons and Dragons online or World of Warcraft? Read on and find out, young MMORPG'er

Origins

Dungeons and Dragons online seeks to recreate the pen and paper experience by having a 'Dungeon Master' narrate the adventures. Although the narration is generally a little cheesy, so is real life Dungeon Mastering, so no real surprises there. WoW has nothing like this and if you discount the opening scene when playing WoW, you'll soon forget that you're actually playing an MMORPG, instead you end up feeling a lot like you're playing some kind of FPMK (First Person Mob Killer.) In World of Warcraft, you'll kill 10 rats because an NPC told you to, in Dungeons and Dragons online, you'll kill 10 rats because they happen to be in the dungeon you're exploring.

NPC Intelligence

Dungeons and Dragons offers you a range of ways to interact with NPC's. Instead of just clicking on them and getting your quest, you have options in how you speak to them. You can be rude, or friendly or simpering, it's up to you. That variation alone blows WoW out of the water, because in WoW, you may as well be interacting with a pretty stick.

The Price of Play

Dungeons and Dragons online is free to play. You have the option to take up VIP membership, which costs about the same as a WoW subscription and gives you an allowance of points to spend at the Dungeons and Dragons online store and unlocks all the classes. The free version is pretty complete, but you have to purchase additional classes and you may sometimes want to buy additional items and content from the store. Some WoW'ers might sneer at this system, but I actually quite like it. If you want to pay a monthly fee and unlock everything, you can, but if you want to play the free base game, then that is also an option. This is infinitely preferable than having to pay every month for a game you may only want to play for a couple of hours a week.

Time Sinks

Dungeons and Dragons online represents much less of a time sink than World of Warcraft. You log on and you start playing, your adventures begin immediately. In World of Warcraft, your grind begins immediately, and whilst that's okay until, say, level 10, it gets real old after that and you've got at least 10 more levels to grind until you can do anything remotely interesting, like join a battleground or even get a mount that will speed up your dreary trips up and down the leveling zone.

But wait, there is more, gird your loins and read on...