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Domain of Heroes
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Graphics & Sound:
When someone mentions MMORPG, I first think of those addicts that can't step away from the computer for even a minute to go to the restroom because they might miss something. MMO's are definitely not something that you can easily play at work. Well Domain of Heroes is seeking to change all of that for you. It is a very addictive MMO, but one that you can manage to play at work (or school) without any install required.
Graphically, Domain of Heroes is simple and clean. The only moving graphics are the little blinking icons next to the attacks. Everything else is static. You have a picture of your hero, but it is the same picture for every one of that race and sex. It would have been nice to be able to have a different selection, but it's also nice to be able to see what race others are at a glance.
There aren't any sounds. But considering it is meant to be played during work and school, the lack of sounds is perfect. Otherwise you'd have to keep headphones on or you might miss something. |
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Gameplay:
The first thing that you're going to do in any MMO is create a character. You've got your choice of 30 different races and then 27 different classes to choose from. Of course, you can choose male or female too, but in some races they just don't look that different. That's a pretty wide variety of characters that you can create. As of now, the most popular races are Human, Dragon, Angel, Demon, and Werewolf. The most popular classes are Gladiator, Dark Knight, Assassin, Warrior, and Wizard. Personally, I like making a less popular character just to be more unique, but that's just me.
After you've got your character, you're probably wondering what to do next. I would recommend starting with the quick start guide. They've done a great job of telling you how to start the game in those instructions. When you get done with that first quest, then you go looking for more. Talk to all the NPCs (non-playable characters) you meet, because you never know who is going to need you to do something for them. You can also talk to the other game players in four different chats. The one thing you can't do that I would have liked is have a conversation with someone one on one, at least I couldn't figure out how. You can also get quests from the sages in Fauztopia. They only give you a few though. Keep checking back with them every few levels to see if they'll give you another one. You can continually get quests from the guys in the Labor Authority too. You just don't get as much experience for those. Each quest you complete will give you a certain amount of experience, gold, and an item. During the quest, if you click on it and it requires multiple things, it will show you how far you are to the goal right under it. When you have done the required tasks, the quest turns yellow on your quest screen, then you know it is time to go back and see the person who gave it to you for the reward. It appears white before you have met your goal and beige after it is completed and you've gotten your reward. If you can't figure out where they want you to go, click on the faction control button on the left. You can search for the location on there. It is the easiest way to not get lost.
You can also get experience, gold, and items from killing monsters in the dungeons too. You know how difficult a dungeon will be due to the level that it is. If you're in a dungeon and fighting monsters too far below or too far above your level, then you won't get any experience from them. If your faction controls the land, then you will get more experience, gold, and items from the monsters in that area. There are three factions: The Knight, The Brotherhood, and The Legion. To get control of a land, simply challenge the current owners. If there's no one there, then you will win it after 6 rounds. If someone does show up, then you'll have a PVP battle. You get VXP experience if you win those. |
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Difficulty:
Your difficulty depends on the character that you make and how you learn to use it. Each time your character levels up, you get a certain number of skill points and attribute points. How you use these determines your character's strength physically and magically and your defense. Certain characters like the werewolf are pure powerhouses. You can leave them grinding in a dungeon and just check on them every few minutes. Werewolves have the wonderful ability to regenerate HP. The opposite end of the spectrum are the magic users. You might not be able to leave them grinding as long without healing their MP, but they can be really powerful spell casters before long.
The one thing that I've seen most people complain about is that there's not much description of the skills. There are over 150 skills, but there's not much description on exactly what they do. They have said that more descriptions are coming eventually. My advice is to just play around with them and see what you like. You can always spend a wish and redo your point distribution if you want. I've personally found that it's best to max one and work on another, but that might just be particular to the characters that I've created. |
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Game Mechanics:
After you've read the quickstart guide, you'll probably know how to play Domain of Heroes. Everything is right on the screen for you to click on, so nothing is a big mystery. There are some things that you might want to know, though. You'll notice a list of tabs at the top of the screen. Everything that you need to know about your character is contained on these tabs. Most of them are pretty self-explanatory. Under inventory, you will notice there is your inventory list, your mule inventory if you have spent a wish on a mule, then materials and reagents at the bottom. If you want to use an item, like a potion or treasure key, simply click the icon that is right before the name. Anything that can be equipped will have a check mark in front of it. You can equip it by clicking that check mark or equipping it from the equip screen.
Some of those items have a hammer in front of them. These are special items that have bonus effects and can be upgraded. You can tell how special they are by the color. The white ones are the least rare; the purplish ones are the rarest. To upgrade their quality, simply put a check mark in the box in front of it and then click upgrade quality. You can also edit the things those items do. Just click on the hammer in front of the name to bring up the box. This is a really good thing because it's quite useless to have an item that adds 2% to fire damage when you only have an item that does ice damage. You can take off the increasing fire damage and add increasing ice damage if you have enough materials and reagents. Both upgrading and editing items takes materials and reagents. You'll see your list of those at the bottom of the inventory. You get them from recycling old weapons and armor at shops or with hobos. You'll get more from the shop than you will a hobo, though. By default, you can only hold a certain amount. You'll have to spend a wish to upgrade that amount. Be careful because there are three different capacities (four if you count guild vault storage capacity) that you can upgrade, so make sure you choose the right one. Increasing inventory capacity will only increase the amount of items your character can hold. To hold more materials and reagents, you need to choose increase material and reagent storage capacity.
There are several others things you can spend wishes for. They are all found on the wishes tab. You get 2 free wishes when you start playing. You can also win wishes on the daily login lottery. The easiest way is to just buy wishes. If you're wondering how many you really need, that just depends on how many characters you want to have. With only one character, you can do probably everything you need on 15 wishes. Considering it's only $19.99 for 45 though, you might as well just get a big set and never worry about not having enough.
If you're thinking about creating a second character, there are some things that carry over and some that don't. Your chat color doesn't carry over, so you can have a different color for each character, if you spend another wish on it. Inventory on mule carries over, so you don't have to buy a second mule, and you can use it to send items from one character to another. Money does not carry over. Dev team support, guild worthy, and trade worthy all carry over to the new character. You can choose your faction on your second character. You can't play on both characters at once from different browsers, though. It looks like you can when you log in, but it reverts the first browser to the new character.
There are some games that I review that I just forget about when I finish the review. Domain of Heroes definitely is not one of those games. It is highly addictive, but easy to play anywhere. It costs nothing to play since you really don't have to have wishes to play the game. You should go check it out now. If you see Cyn or Luci logged on, that's me, so tell me hi! I promise it's the most enjoyable way to spend work hours! |
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-Cyn, GameVortex Communications AKA Sara Earl |
Minimum System Requirements:
Internet Connection |
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Test System:
Intel Core 2 Duo T8300, 2.4 GHz, 128MB nVIDIA Quadro NVS 140M, Windows XP Pro, 3 GB RAM, 802.11n wireless connection |
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