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Dragon Oath Review: Reviewing Dragon Oath - Edit
7.8
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The free-to-play market is saturated with martial-arts themed MMOs. Sometimes termed 'import' MMOs, these games often have a common theme of classes based on Eastern philosophies and known martial-arts schools (Taoist and Shaolin, for example). Often cited as examples of poor localization in both game content and business philosophy, it's hard for an MMO some of these games to have a positive impact with consumers. But is it possible for one to not only do so, but to stand out from the crowd? Dragon Oath may just be the one.
Of Wuxia and MMOs
Dragon Oath is a free-to-play MMORPG from ChangYou.com, deeply saturated in the aforementioned martial-arts theme known as "Wuxia." A genre of Chinese fiction, Wuxia often encompasses the idea of the noble martial artist, who comes from low birth and does heroic deeds, becoming a legend. It's a perfect story style for an MMORPG, whose storylines typically take a new player from "zero to hero" throughout the course of their adventures. As can be expected, it also works very well in its native country; the game had nearly a million concurrent users before it even launched in the United States and currently has over 75 million registered players worldwide.
At its core, Dragon Oath shares the same skeletal structure as many free-to-play and even pay-to-play MMOs. Characters begin as novices, choose their clan at level 10, and advance through quests and light grinding. Crafting is available but optional, and a complex pet system is offered as part of essential gameplay. Movement is controlled by top-down click-to-move, and players will auto-attack enemies while using skills they've trained and placed on their skill bar. Unlike many of its comparable counterparts, however, Dragon Oath is 2.5D, which offers a little dimensional twist on the typical formula.
Choose Your Kung Fu Wisely
Based on Buddhist cosmology, Dragon Oath allows players to choose one of nine classes based on martial arts styles and philosophies: Assassin, Beggar's Alliance, Lotus Order, Pyromancer, Royalty, Minstrel, Taoist, Voodoo, and Shaolin. Although there is a 'tank' class (Shaolin) and a 'healer' class (Lotus Order), each of the nine classes has a unique make-up of skills, strengths, and weaknesses that give them individuality. The variety within the classes doesn't hurt, however, as each class is completely solo-friendly, as well as welcome in any group. Each class is also given its own class-only mount, class-only quests, and a special class area where players venture to train their skills.
Each class has several schools of learning, known as "books." Each book focuses on a different aspect of the class's offensive and defensive strengths, and each can be leveled up individually by spending money and experience points. Some skill books are focused on PvE and general skills, while other books are focused specially on PvP-useful skills like stuns, silences, and cures. The deeper one goes into a skill book, the more skills open up (about 3-4 each book) and the more powerful they become. With this system, it's completely capable, along with putting points into desired attributes like strength or agility, to build a highly customized character over time.
Disappointingly, character customization is extremely limited to a few basic faces and hair styles at character creation, with more faces and hair styles available from stylists for a handsome fee (surprisingly costing in-game currency, and not cash-shop money). For the most part, characters of each class will look the same as well, as each class gets its own costume set and costumes are obtained more rarely at higher levels. With the amount of players running around in a city at any time, the loss of individuality in appearance is certainly tangible.
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A Pet for Every Occasion
Customizing your player experience doesn't stop with your choice of class and skills. Dragon Oath has designed an expansive pet system that offers immediate and strong benefits to players of any class. Several level ranges (1-45, 45-55, 55-65, 65-75, and 75+) of pets have almost a half dozen basic pet choices in them, from the quirky rabbit with an earring and the ever popular blue tigers, to the impressive rhino and unicorn. Each basic pet type is focused on a certain attribute, its own potential skills it can learn, and several variations (skins), ranging from common to extremely rare. Various limited edition pets also appear in the cash shop. Pets can also learn a variety of purchasable skills that suit the player's needs.
Pets don't derive their usefulness from their looks, however. Unlike many MMOs that boast a pet system, pets are more than just vulnerable stat-sticks and status icons. Pets are quite powerful on their own, doing a significant amount of damage and often taking the blows for their masters. An advanced player will do more than simply buy a pet off a player shop in the streets or tame the first pretty thing they see; they will take time to hunt down a rare pet with high stats, breed them with other players' pets, or increase their power through the 'savvy' system, in which a pet absorbs the powers of a wild or young pet of the same type. This very breeding system, along with the fact that pets are tradeable, also makes sure that rare cash shop pets - which cost approximately $10 - can enter the hands of all players eventually.
Good score. But a no go for me personally. I will never even try an asian (F2P) MMORPG anymore.
This is one of the better games that are out there..Not bad for a Asian Game...I like the quick style of fighting compare to other games where u have to wait a sec or two before they hit..There plenty to do...
true this game as gamer all day long long.witch remove lot of unpleasantness and bittereness.sure did for me!
Chang u is just everywhere nowadays... Dragon oath was quite fresh to me but now. no more no less.
Jeez just more reskinned Asian MMO F2P2Win crap... with 75 millionz billionz play0rz...
7.8?!?!?!
I don't know whats becoming of this site but 4/8 of the front page articles are all F2P crap... Credibility goes way out the window when you see these patterns...
PWE, IGG, gPotato, Chang yoo: I'ma leave this big bag of money over here...
MMORPG.com: ( $ . $ ) yes we will give good rating, and pepper our site with all your crappy erhm.. I mean AWESOME games...
The petsystem sounds interesting and looks to have more depth then pet systems in western MMO's.
Im just not so interested in how martial arts is butchered in games like these. Shaolin and Taoism has nothing to do with how its represented in this game. Its just stereotypical asian fantasy that makes use of well known martial arts terms.
What the HELL does Voodoo have to do with the Orient???!!!! I mean uhmmm... GAHH!! Im confused. Isnt Voodoo from the Caribbean???!!! Holy heck thats as far from China as you can get?????
i was wondering the same thing .... ( oh and Voodoo was brought to the Caribbean by African Slaves) ... but still .... Voodoo?! ... ... how is that a types of martial arts? ...
Right, because reporting on and advertising MMORPGs = lack of credibility for a site called MMORPG.com, that makes such sense. Theyre not stopping anything theyve done with P2P in the past, its simply that there is a lot more going on with F2P right now, way more games, and those games are slowly getting better, and in a lot of cases already are better than P2P. Rather than giving this site shit for being fair to all MMOs wether theyre F2P or P2P, perhaps you should go bother your beloved P2P game makers to actually come out with something of quality so w ehave something better to pay attention to. The site cant just create news and reviews out of thin air, when there are no new games to review, or any newsworthy things happening in the P2P area.
Just because its not YOUR personal choice of an MMO you want to play, does not mean they should report or advertise. If you want only the MMOs / genres of your choice, well then hell go make a site of your own, and you can go read your own reviews of your own games.
This game...
In general, not necessary a bad one, just that it was supposedly to be based on a Chinese novel of the same in (in Chinese that is... ), but it turns out it's so loosely based on it that I lost interest in it.
And about the Voodo thing: I think it's because it sounds closely to the Chinese word (five poison, which was a clan/group from the novel). The actual words would pronounce (using Romanization): Wu Du, which sounds close to Voodoo, hence the use of it.
Typical f2p fanboy response... Hey skippy tell Aihoshi I said hi...
It's not that I don't like the f2p game model... it's these damn fresh of the conveyor belt reskinned "eastern" games that have the play value of a game of scrabble by yourself... they churn these games out basically diluting making all the f2p games seem like crap making it even harder to find the diamond in the rough amongst them... MMORPG seems very slanted toward these f2p games due to the revenue stream it generates which yes makes their credibility questionable when it comes to a game review...
European IP's banned? Way to rule out a huge chunk of market...
Another day, another F2P review…am I getting déjà vu?
Why does being F2P go in the ‘Pro’ column, most of us do not support F2P so why should we see this as a ‘Pro’? If you want to take account of the minority of us who do support F2P, it should not go in the Pro or Con box.
So when trying to uninstall, this game does not show up in the programs list through the control panel, nor is there an unistall option in the program file. Pretty sleezy imo. Can anyone give me instructions on how to thoroughly remove this invasive, parasitic mess from my system? No help from their forums either btw, my request for help has gone completely ignored.
Red flags all over the place on this one.
typically you have to just delete manually. Is usually in c:/program files and r click on the folder to delete if you don't already know
To the guy asking about uninstalling it:
I had that problem too. Solution: use he windows explorer to get to the folder you installed Dragon Oath in, there is an "uninstall" file, double click and it does it's job.
About european IPs banned:
I was confused too. Went to the website, downloaded, registered, installed, patched, to then find out that I can't play it from Europe. But there is a european beta client. So I uninstalled the whole game, did the whole process a second time for the european version, and now it works.
Played the game now for an hour or something, and my feelings are mixed, or lets say, that so far I found more things I dislike than those I enjoy. Which are:
The game was ok for about 2 weeks then I had to stop playing. Items purchased from item mall had a timer before they poofed, WTF. Worst part was there is so much going on you get confused as to what to do with limited documentation and quest information. The system seems to not be new user friendly, plus you have to modify your settings in cfg file to get better gameplay camera angles which should be in the game settings, you have to google it.
I won't even sign-up for this game.....why do they require to know whether you are a male or female? Why does it even matter? Stupid asian companies
Dragon Oath is not a bad game. So many contents and so many things to do to keep you busy. I think the reviewer gave the right score to this game.
Stupid you! Why you scared telling people you are gender? Good to know you don't sigh up this game. MMO community does not need moron like you. Stupid you and your country.
The only typical thing here is your idiocy. You haven't even played the game. Hell, it seems you haven't even read the damn review and are already foaming at the mouth with anti-F2P rabies. Go play it and then come up with something meaningful to say. Or don't, and keep your prejudice and your obviously useless comments to yourself.
Wow, that was an ignorant remark.
-Hey guys, China still cool! CHINA STILL COOOOL!
LOL!
The amount of BS your country takes everytime I turn my head never ceases to amaze me.
But holy fuck, someone makes one comment about an entire Region and the Torontonian (I'm from there too) has a complete conniption.
"Stupid you and your country" LMFAO!
Wow :)
You seem surprised that East-Asian developers can only copy/paste each others models and crappy UIs and keep releasing F2P crap. They invented the F2P model because anyone of sound mind would not dare to pay for the crap they release. What an ignorant dooshbag you are
Ok, after officialy playing this game for EXTENSIVE two days (usually bad quality f2p don't last 3-4 hours of my gametime, this one I've made an exception) - and well ... it's medicore (not so bad but not so good either). What's important there are plenty of f2p games that are better than this one. Current bar for f2p level is set quite high so I can't be forgiving. In short, don't bother with this game (unless you've basicly played most of mmos and this is just one another step to 'get them all').
Why it got 7.8? Hmmm .... I have a feeling if Jamie reviewed more f2p titles we would have a lot of 10's!
Thanks for the rewiev. It was brief but it's including the most important things in connection with the game. One day I will try it.
How about you people actually try the game before bashing it and calling it another reskinned asian grinder.This game is easily one of the best f2p mmos and better then a lot of the crap p2p games as well.The camera view is a little annoying to some but isnt a big deal to me.Diablo has the same view and people dont complain about that.You cant use WASD but click to move is better in this game anyways.This game has a ton of content and features and the UI is good.The auto run GPS feature is great and this game does a great job of making you not feel lost.Very user friendly and easy to get into for both casual and more hardcore gamers.I love the setting and graphic style and is a nice change from the million high fantasy wow/eq clones.
A little bit late in reply, but I didn't know the tension between F2P and P2P were so high.
The problem right now is that previous P2P games that P2P players swore by (LoTRO and DDO) are now free. And the WoW and EVE players are now blasting LoTRO and DDO, even though Turbine did not lose that many members after the transition.
Why does it matter so much? Can't we just play what we play and get along? You guys have no right to comment on a game that you didn't play, or make fun of each other's countries, or just smack talk a game because it's Asian. There is absolutely no logic in that, unless the P2P player is bitter at having spent so much money and wants to downplay F2P MMORPGs. In which case it still doesn't affect the gameplay of F2P games at all.
Also note that since 2009 there have been a ton of F2P players on MMORPG.com, so don't use that as an excuse to try and stop F2P reviews.
As for the gender thing: ijji and Nexon, two of the most popular North American gaming hosts, ask for gender when registering for an account. So good luck signing up for anything that doesn't ask for gender. Hell, MMORPG.com even asks for your gender.
You know that's never going to happen. People are calling *any* game an asian grinder these days, regardless of whether it's asian or even has level-based progression or not.
It's just a way to be as smug as possible, and the internet is a breeding ground of smug.
Same^