Turbine‘s Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach has released the third in their series of Beta Journals. Testimonials from players who are involved in the game‘s beta testing phase, and not members of Turbine‘s staff.

Throughout the world of the pen and paper roleplaying experience, a common phrase abounds:

"Well what the heck do we do now?!"

While it usually has more colorful epithets, that phrase is not normally one that crosses my mind when playing an MMO. Certainly there have been occasions where "the pull" went bad, or the expected result didn‘t occur, but on such occasions the immediate reaction always boiled down into that normal state of panic resulting in the ever-present MMO combat mantra:

Deal out as much damage as can possibly be mustered in the shortest amount of time.

That tried and true formula has a few variations, mostly revolving around keeping the healer casting spells and making sure the tanks hold aggro - we all know that drill. I thought for sure this would be the same thing for DDO, but it turned out I was very wrong.

On one of the first nights of beta, I found myself as a member of a full adventuring party:

Warforged fighter
Human fighter
Human wizard
Halfling rogue
Dwarven paladin
and me, the Elven ranger

We weren‘t, by any sense of the term, a "perfect group", but we weren‘t an impossible group either. Access to the Marketplace was our goal, so we all headed down to the Waterworks entrance. When we came to the first trap of the encounter, our rogue announced that she was out of thieves’ tools.

That was the first in many unexpected moments on our quest to get that coveted Writ of Commendation and to finish the series related to it. Eventually, having made it through two of the three instances in that part of the quest line, we found ourselves in a pretty bad position. Multiple traps that had to be endured because our rogue could not disarm without her proper equipment, bull-headed decisions to just hack and slash through some monsters - without regard to defensive stances, shield use to mitigate damage, and even purposefully "dancing" around enemies while fighting to prevent being struck - had left our group pretty beaten.

We were one door away from finishing that third quest, only to realize we could not possibly finish it. We had 4 party members with only 3 hit points (or less) remaining - and all known rest shrines had been used. The two party members with any life left were the Human wizard, whose spell points and life bar were nearly drained, and myself, the Elven ranger who had just under half a health bar.

As we sat there deciding what our options were, we quickly realized that we could neither move forward as a group, nor simply leave the quest and try to come back before it reset. There was no way we could get that far after healing up, restocking, and heading back down - we knew we‘d end up in exactly in the same situation we already found ourselves. So we debated for some time.

That oh-so-familiar phrase crept to mind in that moment... so what do we do now? With no healer in the group to instantly heal us all up to full health, no way to just sit and wait for health points to slowly tick away and bring us back to a full bar, and with no equally regenerating bar of mana for our caster - we knew we had to do some serious strategizing.

The quick solution was to just abandon that part of the quest and try again later with different party members - a "strategy" with which most gamers are intimately familiar. But this wasn‘t just any game, and we knew that when it came to the pen and paper experience there was almost always some way the ingenuity of the player mattered more than fire-power, health bars, or mana pools. If this game was going to seriously be that transition from table-top to MMO, then it should have this same sort of capability.

We were so close to the end that we could almost taste the victory in figuring out how to get it done. We continued the debate. Maybe we could do another bull-headed typical hack and slash charge and hope to make it through without dying - but we knew there were enough monsters left between us and that last step that we‘d never make it. We decided against trying for the whole party to sneak past the monsters because if we were uncovered it was lights out for everyone.

One by one ideas came up and were discarded, until eventually we decided that the only real solution, short of just abandoning the quest, was to see if one of us could make it to the end and earn the completion of the quest for the whole party. All we had to do was discover the location of the Gnashtooth Prison, and if one of us knew the location, then it seemed logical all of us would be considered to know it.

Of the two members left with any amount of viable hit points, I (the Elf) was the only one who was skilled enough at hiding and moving silently to make it feasible. It was up to me. I stripped off all my armor, and disarmed my weapon and my shield. Normally this wouldn‘t even be something a player would consider in a game - but in Dungeons & Dragons, everything matters. If you think it might be an issue, it probably is - and if you think you might be able to do something, you probably can. So off came the armor and weaponry to make sure my skills were not hindered by the bulk.

I entered sneak-mode and carefully crept past all the monsters standing between my comrades and our goal. I actually told my group that I was nervous, and laughed about it. The last time I felt so immersed and, therefore, responsible in such circumstances for a group success was in a pen and paper game.

We had no idea if the quest would advance for the entire party if I did reach the end, but we didn‘t have many options and it was the best plan we could muster. I felt like if I failed, then I failed the hopes of my group and I didn‘t want that on my shoulders. I should have been able to shake that sort of thinking and just realize "it‘s only a game," but for the very first time since the advent of my tenure with MMOs, I honestly was consumed in the moment. It was literally exhilarating!

I did eventually make it to the goal, and in that split second of realization that I‘d made it but didn‘t know if the whole group had the quest advanced - I saw the party chat fill up with shouts of joy. Every "Yay!" and "WOOT!" that hit the screen made my smile grow ever bigger until I was a Cheshire cat of pure happiness.

This experience sticks in my mind as the very first time in any online game I have ever experienced that "What the heck do we do now?" moment - and had it end up playing out in exactly the same sort of player-inspired ingenuity that occurs in a pen and paper roleplaying game.

I know, from that event, that there are many such future experiences to be had in this game. I look forward to exploring all of them and re-educating myself on what can and cannot occur in an online game. Perhaps more importantly, I can finally begin to spend my online gaming time making my experiences rather than having them made for me.