Let me start off with a funny (and somewhat shameful) confession - I was a little afraid of this game, starting out. I'd heard that MMOs are notoriously addictive, designed with cunning application of modern psychological theory to trap players in a compulsive cycle of chasing rewards that are just good enough to encourage further playing, but never good enough to be satisfying. I was worried that I'd be ensnared in this trap, and Dungeons and Dragons Online would become an unshakeable obsession.
However, if I'm being honest, I was also kind of hoping that would happen. You may (and probably should) view this as a species of misguided romanticism, but there is something about it that strikes me as connecting to the deep root of the human condition - to become addicted to an MMO is to fall into a carefully calculated section of the bell curve. It is common, and therefore, perversely, noble. And whatever negative impact it may or may not have had on my personal life, at least it would have been something primal and real, a reprieve from the bloodless detachment that is my more regular habit.
Of course, now that I see that written out, it is obviously ridiculous. I could easily fire up Recettear if I really wanted to react emotionally to a game or Civilization 5 if I wanted to get lost in one. And the temptation of having a sexy addiction spice up my autobiography (it should surprise no one that I missed out on sex, drugs, and rock and roll) is so transparently juvenile a fantasy as to be instantly dismissed.
It helps that Dungeons and Dragons Online is not an especially good game. I'm playing a Paladin, because it was the class marked as most viable solo, and the occasional smite notwithstanding, it mostly consists of walking up to enemies, holding down the mouse button, and then waiting for them to die. I expect that I could improve my performance slightly by using my various stances and feats, but I'm not sure that the actual experience of doing so would be any more engaging.
Still, it's not terrible, either. I'm not miserable, or even especially bored, while playing. It's more like I'm playing on a kind of mental autopilot. There are buttons I have to press, and decisions I have to make, but so far none of the button presses have tested my reflexes and none of the decisions have been particularly difficult. It's pleasant. I doubt very much that any individual moment of the game will stick with me in years to come, and I don't even want to begin exploring the minutiae of the crafting system, but those aren't great faults.
At least when it comes to soloing a Paladin up to level 3, Dungeons and Dragons Online is like the saltine crackers of video games - virtually flavorless, but so inoffensive in its blandness that it easy to forget exactly how much you've consumed.
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