[Review] Dragon's Prophet: Hatched Too Soon

SBFord · July 2013

Dragon's Prophet has been on our radar for some time coming from Sony Online Entertainment and Runewaker. We've been chronicling our adventures in Dragon's Prophet for a few weeks and now have our final and official review to offer. See what we thought and then leave your impressions in the comments.

Let me get two things out of the way, before we go into the scoring process. One is that I like Dragon’s Prophet. There are a lot of great ideas here that need some more time to marinate, and I believe that overall Runewaker has crafted a game that has far more potential to be something interesting than Runes of Magic ever was. But that doesn’t mean I can excuse its faults. And number two is that “Open Beta” is just a marketing ploy aimed at giving the a stream of revenue while they continue to refine the product. There’s nothing wrong with this, really.

Read more of Bill Murphy's Dragon's Prophet: Hatched Too Soon.

rmk70 · July 2013

Agree with assessment. Had (maybe still has) great potential, but they need to simply focus on polish and A LOT of it. If they don't come forward with significant progress in the polish department, this game will be dead(er).

Grakulen · July 2013

I really hope they make a robust tutorial system similar to what is present in FFXIV:ARR. DP has some very interesting systems that I think are under utilized because people don't really understand them.

Denambren · July 2013

Uh.. I think there was an editing error at the end of the opening paragraph. It's missing the next two sentences from the second paragraph. The end of the opening paragraph currently reads like this:

" And number two is that “Open Beta” is just a marketing ploy aimed at giving the a stream of revenue while they continue to refine the product. There’s nothing wrong with this, really. "

I think you actually meant to add the next two sentences from the second paragraph, and tie them to the bottom of the first paragraph, so that the end of the opening paragraph reads like this:

"And number two is that “Open Beta” is just a marketing ploy aimed at giving the game a stream of revenue while they continue to refine the product. There’s nothing wrong with this, really. Development on an MMO is always ongoing. But it does mean that we’re going to treat a game as launched, despite what label they slap on the thing."

If you don't add those two sentences, the main point of your opening paragraph has a totally different tone (which I don't think you wanted to take).

aslan132 · July 2013

Totally agree here. Which Im happy to say is something that I find myself doing more and more on this site. The reviews are coming across alot more honest than they have in past years, and games arent getting an automatic "7.0" as a base score.

That being said, the game tries to be fun. It wants to be fun, it just isnt quite there yet. The Dragon Taming, heck, the whole Dragon system is just a gimmick. Training and cross-trained skills add some functionality to the Stable, and the dragons do your harvesting so the players can focus on questing and dungeons. Unfortunately neither of those things are very much fun.

Maybe the maps and quests open up in later levels, but by then its too late for most players. You will lose 90% of your players if the first 10-20 levels dont grab their interest. Myself, I tried to power past 20, and it was painful, boring and lonely.

Im going to keep an eye on the updates, and still follow the game on paper, but I wont be playing again until some major changes are done.

Scot · July 2013

My concern is that with P2P and B2P dying out, a score 7.0 will start to look like a major success in MMO land. "Hatched to Soon" could go on the school report card of every F2P MMO.

pantheron · July 2013

I wish to god i hadn't payed money for this game, or at least spent my SC on it. I could have saved it for something else, i feel really foolish,but the game had so much promise....

I hardly play it anymore for the aformentioned b ugs, and tiny player base. since they merged the channels (or i think they did) its a little better,but i wish it had launched in August instead of when it did, and got a lot more developer love.

Khebeln · July 2013

This game is so bugy that even recent install client pops up errors, or after any patch you have to redownload whole game few times till it works

Jorl · July 2013

For weeks I've had problems downloading/installing with the EU client. I just gave up in the end and went back playing Rift.

Wizardry · July 2013

Runewalker is actually not a bad f2p developer,i actually enjoyed ROM for about 6 months.

This game is also decently done,although i did see some hitching and odd graphic drawing,example ground textures that i had no clue why they were drawing,they looked like a bomb explosion texture.

I think i can really sum up the problem and the same reason games are a success,marketing and luck.I have no idea why i left the game so fast,however when you see nobody else in the game it sort of makes sense.Thaty is the problem,if this was say for example a game released by blizzard,it would probably have 30 full servers with Que ues and people would be decently happy.

This market is so saturated it is VERY tough to bring along a new IP,and a rather unknown developer and expect to have much interest,very tough is actually an under statement.SOE has not proven to me to be doing a good job marketing,the only game they ever marketed well was their beloved EQ franchise.The ONLY mail i ever get from SOE is telling me they have more cash shop sales,the game doesn't even matter.

I may have left DP early but i like to try and be unbiased in my opinions.I feel the game is actually better than a 5.5,it does the msot of the same things other games do,the UI is pretty good except i cannot stand WASD,matter fact that is usually such a problem for me,i can leave a game just because of that and was probably a determining factor once again.I do share some of the complaints about Dragon's being the main focus but in reality,i think that is the point.if it was just another player progression game with linear questing,it would offer nothing new and be even worse off for it.

Oh btw i am not a fan of any pvp in my rpg games so again that can be a problem.I know why games do it but imo it is always a bad decision.I was actually asked to pvp as soon as i got int othe gaem, i was obviously a noticeable noob and the player asking was on a mount ,so he new there was no challenge there,kind of tells you why pvp is such a dumb idea.

There is some polish needed but what game doesn't need more polish?Like i said if this exact same game was released by Blizzard ,it would be a lot more popular,i would say this game is more around the 6.5 mark.IMO if i wasn't already busy with a few games and i didn't want to spend any money,i might be able to dive into this game for perhaps as long as i spent in ROM [6 months].

Gravarg · July 2013

Agree with everything said. I like it too, but it needs some work.

Caldrin · July 2013

review is just about spot on..

Renoaku · July 2013

Couldn't agree more the reason I quit is because of the cash shop, no innovation at all really the game quest system/UI is good but thats about it no real good story, And the cash shop sucks all around no freedom of customization, or even armor dye, I would rather pay a monthly fee and get access to all the benefits but it doesn't have that option.

With this said Every Game in my opinion due to date released by Sony absolutely sucks due to many reasons including DCUO, the only good game that might have been great was Ever Quest 1, Champions of Norrath on PS2 beyond that their MMO-RPG history its all a failure to me just the same as Aeria Games, Perfect World, Cryptic, Gamers First, Suba Games, Nexon all very bad game companies.

While I don't fully enjoy Guild Wars 2 a lot GW2 is the only actual F2P MMORPG that I know of, all these other game companies are nickel & dime including sony with Dragons Prophet, and RW which btw made Runes OF Magic which sucks because every time trying to play it I get crash to desktop after awhile while in main city and using the teleporter memory leak/crash.

Yep Dragons Prophet Hatched Way Too Soon.

DAOWAce · July 2013

I couldn't even finish the tutorial because of how bad the game felt to even move around.

Glad to see it wasn't just me.

SoulStain · July 2013

I agree with your opinion on Open Beta bullshite. It is also an easy way for them to put out a game...get money..and then ,in their mind, justifiably dismiss all early negative reviews with the infuriating "Its still in beta" excuse. I used to say this with games I liked too..but back when I did ..they actually had open betas without trying to take your cash . I hate the way the gaming industry has turned.

faiyo · July 2013

I don't even want to sign into this game until all of the bugs are sorted out. I wanted to enjoy it but the last time I tired it, it was overflowing with graphical glitches so I only stayed in the game for 3 minutes.

SOE shot themselves in the foot when they went OBT so quickly, it's almost ridiculous.

Dreamo84 · July 2013

I don't think they will be retweeting a link to this review.

spawn12345 · July 2013

great review! spot on!

vveaver_online · July 2013

You did not mention the wonderful and innovative action-combat that is much more interesting than Terra or Neverwinters. The PvP in duels are really dynamic and there is depth to it. You can really outplay someone many levels above you using twitch skill.

Dreamo84 · July 2013

Originally posted by fardreamer

You did not mention the wonderful and innovative action-combat that is much more interesting than Terra or Neverwinters. The PvP in duels are really dynamic and there is depth to it. You can really outplay someone many levels above you using twitch skill.

In my opinion I find the combat no where near as good as Neverwinter or Tera. The overall gameplay is better than Tera though.

VincerKaden · July 2013

One one hand, I agree with a lot of the review. I enjoy the game when I play it. DP won't ever be my main MMO game, but it's a fun diversion. But on the other hand, the game hasn't officially launched. So how can there be a final verdict?

urriel1970 · July 2013

i agree with everything.....the game should have never come out this soon..it lack's some serious polishing..animations and so forth....and with runewaker not listening to the players and making he changes they mentioned is bad business....without the players you have no game just a program.....they should have waited.!

SomeHuman · July 2013

I mostly agree and thank you for an honest verdict and score. They went deep with crafting and talent trees and combos and dragon traits and jobs and training, but it feels like they went shallow with the most important aspect of gaming (to me): fun. The title just doesn't feel fun.

bigcracker · July 2013

Another SOE game with great potential. PS2 and dragons prophet both with big hype and crash hard when players actually get there hands on the game. The same is going to happen to everquest next. They know how to market just not to deliver.

Ramonski7 · July 2013

This game had potential to break out of the tired old themepark mold. I even supported it by buying a founder's pack. But alas they dropped the ball with:

The dull and repetitive mmo hub questing
The unnecessarily convoluted and useless crafting
The ridiculous SC use permeating throughout everything you want to do
The silly decision to make player housing endgame material
The saturated color scheme used in the graphical presentation
The generic animation models that give no gravity to the players, dragons or combat.

I wanted to give this game a chance, but I'll be moving on to FFXIV soon. I'll have to check back in a few months if DP is still around.

Purutzil · July 2013

It was no where near ready when I did the beta testing, and now that it is out, it didn't do very much to even improve on it. A game that is completely not ready for launch, needing much more polish and work done to it to be really worth playing.

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