Drakensang Online is a free to play browser based MMORPG from Bigpoint and is set in a fantasy themed world of monsters and magic; quite clearly taking its major inspiration from the Diablo games, Drakensang has become an extremely popular free to play title. Whilst many aspects of the relatively feature packed game are good, and the action combat is well presented and fun, there are still a few kinks and annoyances that could really do with being addressed. So in our newest “Things You Would Change About…” we head over to Drakensang and give it the treatment!

• Low level PVP Bullying - Low level PVP is extremely off putting due to high level bullies. We love that Drakensang has adopted a more free for all open world combat, we hate PVP being forced onto PVP servers or only being available in arenas as it lacks some of the excitement that randomly coming across PVP in the world offers. The problem, and this is one that isn’t exclusive to Drakensang, is the amount of high level players that sit in areas such as Swerdtfield or Slifmoor and camp the areas killing low level players. As a low level player that is extremely off putting and, for many, enough to make a player quit the game. There’s always the argument that it’s a dog eat dog world, that new players should just toughen up, or that they simply shouldn’t get involved in open world PVP if they can’t compete. The problem is that the alternative to low level PVP is the Low Level Arena, which has its own issues as you see low level alt characters twinked out with high level glyphs and making them completely OP against players around their level. For the open world PVP we’d like to some restricted zones where open world PVP is turned off once you go over the level cap, though these should only be for early to mid-level areas, so that higher levels have no reason to go there. For the Arena then a cap on how good your glyphs can be, disabling glyphs that are perhaps a couple of levels above your character level to keep the arena balanced, relying on skill and not down to who has the best gear.


• Crafted Items Stats - Random stats on crafted items sucks. So you farm a truckload of the same type of item to give you a good chance of creating that items, you use up a ton of Crystals of Truth to find half decent stats on your items and then you combine them to get the next tier rarity item… and the stats just suck for what you want. It’s an odd system, it seems to be nothing more than keeping playing doing the same thing over and over for the random chance they might one day get an item with the stats they are after. What we would like to see is a way to transfer the stats on the original items as a baseline for the stats on the new item, removing the random process. Whilst there is the debate about the cost of using CoTs for free players vs the free ID for Premium paying users potentially creating an imbalance, we’d go down the route of only being able to transfer stats if a CoT has been used to ID thereby making it a balanced playingfield. However, to keep the Premium benefit if Premium players ID for free then they can then purchase some form of Crystal of Cleansing to allow them to use that items stats in a craft, this means they don’t have to waste a CoT but still have to pay something to use the item.


• Happy Hour Bonus - It penalizes certain time zones. The Happy Hour Bonus lets players purchase 8500 Andermant currency and get 25% extra, which is a pretty damn good deal for those players that don’t mind paying for stuff. The issue here is twofold; firstly the hour that the discount can be bought is generally around the same time and is beneficial to European players, which means that the majority of players outside of the EU are ALWAYS going to be asleep when this bonus comes around. Second of all is that there’s no announcement, it’s random, which we understand as it is in part a way to reward players for being online to take advantage of it, but as we have said it punishes players outside of the preferred time zone. Quite simply we’d like to see the Happy Hour trigger at different times, sure some people might be able to take advantage of it twice… but realistically if they want to buy it twice then they’ll just do it when it triggers the first time; we don’t think it should trigger on the same day, and still be random when it triggers in other timezones, but it would at least balance things out a little (and only bring in more cash for Bigpoint).


• Guild Actions - Guilds lack the most basic tools. For most MMORPGs a Guild is more than just a list of players under the same banner, many Guilds take their group seriously and actively manage it instead of just freely adding anyone who wishes to join. One of the basic elements that Drakensang lacks is the ability to track when your members were last online and so, for big guilds, can make it difficult to see if a player is still active. The frustrating thing is that there is actually an empty space next to each players’ name in the Guild/Player menu where this would sit just fine (it makes us wonder whether this was intended initially). Add to this the lack of Guild Space, it would be nice to see the inclusion of an option to extend your Guild bank like most other MMORPGs have. Sure there are work arounds, but there shouldn’t have to be for such a staple feature.

These are some of the things that we would change about Drakensang Online, but what do you think? What would you change about this game? Would you add anything else to the list? We await your opinions! Let us know!!!!!

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 20th, 2015 at 4:37 pm and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.