I have played Dreamlords since half way through era 1.  First of all I think Lockpick had a great CONCEPT.  It was fresh, not done before, and provided something different than the WoW clown copies out there.  Unfortunately the execution of this concept was piss poor.

First and foremost, the manual.  There is not actually a manual at all.  Not everyone reads the manual to start (I do, but may just be me).  It is pretty odd to not have a manual at all though.  Lockpick tried to get by with having users create a quasi manual using a wiki format.  Even after three months the wiki is spotty at best and completely devoid of information in many areas.  This was just unprofessional.

Second, the game was released way before it was ready.  The first era was FILLED with bugs.  They have three separate forums for reporting, tracking and confirming bugs, and it is ALWAYS in use.  Tweaking a game after launch is one thing, but these were just blatant bugs that any QA tester would have been able to see.  I really don't think they even put it through a formal QA process.  The game really was not ready, they should have taken at least another three to six months to polish the game rather than rush a release.  Look at two big name contenders recently, Vangard was released too early and despite it's hype the lack of polish caused it to flop.  On the other side Lord of the Rings Online was released and Turbine made sure they had a product that was actually finished when it hit the shelfs.  It was polished, professional, and ready to face consumers.  Dreamlords failed in this respect.

Third, this game is supposed to be an MMO and is not really.  You could split the game into two along the single vs. multiplayer lines and you would be left with a single player game.  The multiplayer aspect is almost an afterthought to this game.  Most of your game play takes place in your private domain.  You have two multiplayer aspects, contributing quest items you earn alone to a group pool to complete quests that you don't actually play an active part in beyond giving the items.  Second is the PvP.  The PvP yields efficiency bonuses for your Patria (your land).  A recent change took the strategy out of the PvP and left you with a gank fest type system.  The entire point of PvP now is to run behind your enemy and undo what he tried to accomplish.  The point is, you can play this entire game with out any interaction with people and not really have missed much.

Fourth, the browser is beyond slow and your only option.  I think the fact that they made so much of the game playable through a normal web browser was AMAZING.  No on else had done this despite how much it was asked for.  The problem is that the browser is slow because every page is dynamic and has to load each time.  It can be forgiven when I am at work and sneaking some game time.  The issue comes when you are at home and want to get some serious gaming in and half your time is spent waiting for loads.  The browser content should have been integrated into the client.  It would have been faster and allowed for a better gaming experience.  Despite many requests for this from the players and even a promise that it was coming from Lockpick this never materialized.  Flipping back and forth between the client and browser is a waste of time and annoying.

Fifth, the hemorrhage of players.  One problem, which there probably is not a fix for is the hemorrhage of players towards the end of each era.  For those that dont know once the final quest is completed the entire game starts over.  You lose everything except for a few select things that carry over.  A side effect of this is that towards the end of the era most of the players stop logging in.  Why would you keep playing when you know that in a week or two another Convergence (guild) will finish the final quest and you start over with nothing?  Along with that, many many players never log back in.  I saw the two most dedicated players in my Convergence stop logging in towards the end and they never came back once the new era started.  Think about it, over the coarse of three weeks if a serious gamer will start playing another game and get into it.  Odds are they don't come back.  So towards the end of an era you can pretty much count on most multiplayer activity shutting down and many people will leave.  It is a cyclical problem that will always plague this game because of the way it was set up.

Finally, the redundancy.  This goes back to the not being ready for release issue, but it is so bad it needs it's own section.  The missions in this game are basically the same thing over and over and over.  They do not even have different maps most of the time.  The only difference is that the monsters will have slightly higher HP, Armor, and Damage, thats it.  To make cement the point, there are probably ten different models for bad guys.  The sizes change, but they do not even change the colors.  You will see the same ten enemies through the entire game.  What a variety!

Final assesment.  The concept is great, the concept is solid.  It is new, refreshing, innovative, and groundbreaking.  It should be mentioned that Lockpick staff regularly participates on the boards and has a better presence than in any other game I have seen, it should be applauded how involved they are.  Despite the good things about the game they are far far FAR overshadowed by all of its shortcomings.  I stuck with it as long as I could, but really, don't waste your money.

This should replace the current official review.

I'm curious about this game, but that era system...

Other players resets my progress, and I have to start over? Over and over again?

No thanks!

Good review....I did a "first thoughts" review for a podcast some time back and my feelings were the same - although I only played the game for 1 month.

I felt the game couldn't be called an MMO as you come to expect MMO means lots of players playing at the same time together...and its not really like that at all.
Also the strongest element of the game was the Web Broswer as the Client was a very poor RTS game with really poor missions.

Also I got to a point where I was told by the developers that it would be best to start all over again (create a new patria) as I couldn't continue with the game as I couldn't kill any mobs that attacked me as they had too many HPs due to the way I had played the game.

I must admit and agree there is a lot of help in the forums from the developers and I would be interested to see what else they make as they are very customer friendly.

Netspook,

The game revolves around a series of missions.  The last mission starts almost every aspect of the game over.

 

Originally posted by nitack
Netspook,

The game revolves around a series of missions.  The last mission starts almost every aspect of the game over.

I've finally tried this game, and I'm not surprised it's almost dead. Outdated graphics (I'm usually not extremely picky about this), boring combat, sometimes loading is extremely slow, etc. Imo, there's too much bad about this game to list everything here...

 If it was a free game, I still wouldn't touch it ever again. Charging $12 a month for this, well, that's just a sad joke.

 

Originally posted by Martie

Its actually dead atm because they are overhauling 90% of the game.  Its not that nobody is playing the game, its that they have closed it atm and are going to improve the game greatly.  The game is good but they understood the game in its present state could not continue, so they decided to close it for a while while they work on Dreamlords: the awakening.  I actually cant wait to see how the game turns out now.

 

 

News for you.

They are turning this game into a Korean-style kiosk-game. Here's a quote from their website:

Yes you will not need to pay to play Dreamlords. However there will be options for premium accounts which will give you some goodies and you will be able to purchase Tribute for which you can buy things at the Altar of Cynos.

In other words, free to play but you need to pay to be able to advance in the game.

For each new chapter they write in the Dreamlords history, the worse it gets. My advice is simple: avoid it like the plague.

Originally posted by giodee21

This post is not constructive or applied to the current Dreamlords game. Check out the New and improved dreamlords game.

I did check it out, just out of curiousity. My opinion about this game is unchanged: Avoid it like the plague!

Btw, the OP and the rest of us had to write about how the game was at the time we were posting. Calling old posts for "not constructive" based on how the game is now, that's one of the most retarded arguments I've ever read on these forums.