DDO Online

I must say I'm impressed so far...and I didn't think I would be. So I was going in thinking I would hate it.

At the encouraging of a friend I've played with online for over a year, I preordered Dungeons and Dragons online for the PC last night. You get a 10 day beta key with it so that you can try it out before the game launches.

So, I start the download at around 7, come home from my work-out and start it up around 10pm last night...so I only had time to try out the tutorial and a couple of other things.

First thing that hits you is the graphics. Very nicely done, even on medium setting. I tried high setting, but since this is a beta, it seemed to hit my monster machine a bit too hard for my liking. The colors are nice, characters are nicely modeled and environment is top notch.

Character creation part of the game is quite involved if you want it to be. Not as diverse as City of Heroes, but definitely more diverse that World of Warcraft. You can pick face type, hair color etc, etc. If you've played The SIMs, its very close to that.

I created an Elf Rogue, briefly looked over all of the stats and stuff (I never get those right away), crossed my fingers and entered the world.

You do a tutorial first. A simple dungeon that just introduces you to stuff like jumping, climbing and interacting with latters and doors. The thing that really hit me was the atmosphere (there’s that word again). As you enter each room, a voice tells starts to talk to you. For example, when I entered this one room, "the voice" told me, "You enter the room, and notice footsteps on the floor from various races, gnome, elf and dwarf…along with many other creatures"...or something to that effect. The tone of the voice and what he said really brought me into the game. Almost every room had something like that...a little narrative that explained your surroundings. What you see, what you feel (like a gust of wind on your face...is it a secret door? A trap maybe?)

Now, I admit, I'm a WoW junkie and I'm desperately seeking rehab in the form of another game Although I've only played the tutorial...if this game keeps this emersion up, I'll have to stick around this world for a bit. I'm also hoping that this game will not be a very large time sink like WoW or EQ2 was. I just want to crawl around a dungeon with my friends for about 2 hours, get some good stuff and be on my way...and have a blast doing it. Kind of tired of spending 5-6 hours farming Molten Core and having a chance at getting a new pair of boots.

More to come on this one. Plan on playing tonight with some of my friends. If this game does not live up to what I hope it is...expect me to start screaming as well as kicking small fury creatures.