Allen ‘Delsyn‘ Rausch from gamespy gets a chance to spend some time in Eberron and likes what he sees -- even if it‘s not quite what he was expecting.And below is the preview from him:

We‘ve been following Dungeons & Dragons Online for many months now, salivating with other MMO junkies for the opportunity to get our hands dirty in what‘s promising to be the first true translation of the world‘s most popular pen-and-paper role-playing game. The problem with every previous video-game version of Dungeons & Dragons, even the very best of them, is that it‘s always been impossible to translate the essence of what makes D&D great to a video screen. I‘m speaking, of course, about the social aspects of the game. Indeed, it could be argued that the "true" purpose of D&D isn‘t to let your friends pretend they‘re a magic-wielding elf -- it‘s to generate great stories and fond memories of the time your Halfling thief managed to trip an evil king during a state visit which started a diplomatic incident that started a war that changed the face of the whole campaign.

Given that, hopes are high for Dungeons & Dragons Online. After all, what better genre than the massively multiplayer online role-playing game to bring the "role" back into what usually becomes merely an endless treadmill of players searching for the bigger, better magical doodad? Having been lost in D&D Online recently, I‘m seriously impressed at how well Turbine is translating not just the mechanics, but the very "feel" of classic D&D gameplay to the MMO format.

Dungeons & Dragons Online takes place in the brand-new campaign world of Eberron. Players begin the game at a seaport where they‘ll learn the basics of moving, fighting, getting quests, and interacting with the world. I started off by creating a level 1 sorcerer named Ilyana Maria. After going through the basics, I was transported to Stormreach proper. It‘s this city, located on the continent of Xen‘drik in the new D&D world of Eberron, that represents the major "public" area of the game. It‘s here that players can get quests, buy and sell equipment, learn skills, and hook up with other players to form parties to head out to an instance. It seems to work pretty well, although I definitely miss some of the more social aspects of fighting in public dungeons. It‘s also here where players find that the city gates are locked and they‘ll have to go through a number of low-level quests to win over an influential Stormreach citizen just to get in the front door.

The first mission I got was to head down into the cellar of a local tavern to retrieve a cask of ale. When I did so, that‘s when I entered my first instanced dungeon -- and it‘s where I really got an experience of how powerful instancing can be when the whole game system is built around it. When I picked up the cask, one of the walls slid open, letting me into a system to secret underground caves. As I went exploring, I came across a sleeping kobold. Sneaking up on him, I managed to take him out with a quick Magic Missile before he even woke up and looted his camp site. I ended up with some gold and a weird artifact that radiated evil.

When I brought the artifact back upstairs, the bartender told me that the caves were an old smuggling route, but that they were supposed to be empty. My next assignment was to find out where the kobold and his mysterious artifact came from. What followed was a seriously fun experience as I returned to the tunnel system and worked my way toward a subterranean cave filled with a whole bunch of angry kobolds. The cave held a strange altar sanctified to an evil god, and when I destroyed it and the kobolds, the entire place started to collapse. I ended up having to run for the exit, eventually meeting the crazed cleric who built the place, leading to a showdown in a room that was in the process of caving in.

Here‘s the thing, though. Throughout the entire experience, I had to constantly fight game-playing instincts honed on World of Warcraft and similar games. I kept expecting the wrong things and it was hampering my enjoyment of the game. Take the game‘s pace. Dungeons & Dragons will feel pretty slow to anyone used to MMOs where every mob drops some sort of prize and players can hit the level cap in a month. Dungeons & Dragons Online‘s quests only give out a few prizes each, mostly in chests, and mostly in the form of money. It takes 10,000 experience points to reach level 2 in a game where the level cap is 10. That might rankle those who pride themselves on being the first on the server to reach the level cap. Then there‘s combat. I kept rushing into combat with everything I came across, convinced that I somehow had to "clear" the dungeons. I didn‘t. Monsters don‘t give XP in D&D Online (although there is a small XP multiplier given for killing lots of stuff). Instead, experience is awarded for completing quests.

Once I stopped trying to "force" the game into doing what I thought it was supposed to do, though, the real genius of Turbine‘s design came out. Basically, the dungeon-delving experience feels more "real" in D&D Online than any other MMO I‘ve played. Dungeons are places to be entered into with respect and traversed slowly because secrets and traps are everywhere and death can leap out from any corridor. Players who blaze through Dungeons & Dragons Online, or players who don‘t think before they act and effectively utilize their party‘s skills are going to die -- a lot.

Here‘s just one example. One particular dungeon I was in was guarded by two mechanical constructs. Locked into my "damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead" mindset, I kept engaging them in combat and getting my face torn off. These things were just too damned tough for a single sorcerer with very few hit points to take on. I racked my brains, thinking about potions and temporary buffs I could use to make myself tough enough to take them on. Then I realized that combat in D&D Online is action-oriented, not locked into a combat cycle. I could run away! I could climb a ladder! I could fire a magic missile down at my stupid opponent and not get scratched, which is exactly what I proceeded to do. Dungeons & Dragons Online constantly throws situations at the player that demand, if not lateral thinking, at least the idea of non-combat or clever solutions to problems.

There‘s also the way the game treats healing and mana replenishment in a dungeon -- put simply, you do not. Oh, there are healing potions, but on the whole they‘re rare and expensive enough to require careful management. As for mana potions, forget it. They‘re fantastically rare and expensive; players would be better off selling them and just upgrading their armor. There may be a few "rest shrines" within a dungeon that players can use once, but other than that, the hit points and mana the players enter with are the ones they‘ve got for the duration of the adventure. That puts a whole new spin on combat. It‘s very possible to win a fight in such a way that they party becomes seriously handicapped for a much tougher fight later on. During my adventures, I took special care to look for traps or environmental hazards that I could lead monsters through and activate myself -- anything to preserve my precious spell points for when I really needed them.

In the end, I‘ve come away more hopeful than ever about the prospects for Dungeons & Dragons Online. The game is gorgeous, the combat‘s fun (although my party and I haven‘t yet gotten into a major furball with a big baddie), and I‘ve had a blast in the beta of a game that‘s far from complete. My only problem, so far, has been retraining my gaming reflexes from the habits learned in other MMOs. How ironic that gameplay that‘s more than 30 years old feels like a breath of fresh air for the MMO genre. Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach is scheduled to launch in February, 2006.

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By Allen ‘Delsyn‘ Rausch -  Gamespy