Dungeons and Dragons Online is one of the newest MMOs on the block, and is definitely not your typical MMORPG -- for starters, it may be the first one to ever truly capture the essence of the rogue class, but more on that later. The game is set in the D&D campaign setting of Eberron, and starts you off in the city of Stormreach, a city full of intrigue and potential for your newly created adventurer.

Character creation is, of course, going to be the first thing that anybody sees before they dive into the dungeons or slay any dragons, and it is recommended that you spend some time on that, as what you do there will stick with your character for the whole game. In typical MMO style, you create a look for your character based firstly on your choice of one of the five races available to you, those being the obviously superior Halflings, the sturdy Dwarves, the versatile Humans, the nimble elves, and the golem-like Warforged. There are also nine classes to choose from, the aforementioned Rogue, Cleric, Paladin, Bard, Fighter, Ranger, Wizard, Sorceror, and Barbarian.

Once you are finished deciding what you’re going to look like, be known as, and of course, what you’ll be good at, it’s time to decide how good you’re going to be at what it is that you do. D&D Online uses a point-buy system to raise your stats, so you don’t allocate them exactly as you would in most other MMOs, such that one point does not equal +1 to a single stat. This part can be agonizing for some classes, and a no-brainer for others, just using the rogue for an example: Your Strength score will allow you to carry more loot as well as increase combat effectiveness unless you invest in Weapon Finesse as a feat at level 3. Constitution is pretty simple, it raises your health. Dexterity will be important for many rogue skills as well as augmenting your combat if you take Weapon Finesse, higher dexterity scores also give you bigger bonuses to your AC, which will make you harder to hit. Intelligence will give you more skill points to distribute at each level to increase your ability to do pretty much everything, it is also important as it gives bonuses to your disable devices skill for disarming the nasty traps you will find in the dungeons. Then we come to Wisdom, the primary use of which will be to raise your search and spot checks so you can actually find secret doors and notice traps before they skewer, explode, burn, singe, melt, freeze, deafen, blind, flatten, slice, flay, disembowel, or otherwise make you a rogue in great deals of pain. There’s nothing more embarrassing than walking straight into a room and being met with a massive blast of fire before telling the group, “There’s a trap here.” Lastly, we have charisma, which will net you more money when selling stuff, and gives bonuses to abilities that make enemies want to hit you less, or turn their backs to you. For rogues especially, it seems to be more beneficial to have a well rounded character as opposed to being extremely focused on one particular stat, (Or at least, not having 18 dex and averaging 10s for your other stats).

We then move on to skill selection, which gives you a list of skills near identical to the skills you will find on a character sheet for the P&P D&D game, minus a few that just wouldn’t translate well to the game world. Rogues will have the most skill points available to them, but also the most skills which will be needed on an everyday basis, so it’s important to take a bit of time here as well; otherwise those first two levels can be more difficult than necessary. Of note for rogues will be the Spot, Search, Open Lock, and Disable Device skills, the first of which are absolutely critical for finding dangerous traps or secret doors. One thing of note about the Disable Device skill is that the trap system in D&D does allow for critical failures that will make it impossible to disarm a trap, which can be very embarrassing if it is a particularly nasty one with a difficult pattern to discern.

Feat selection is next on the list of creating your character, the feats you can choose from can give you extra attacks, proficiencies with weapons you would otherwise be unable to use properly, extra bonuses to skills, and otherwise augment your character. Many of the feats from D&D 3.5e are here, as well as a few new ones, though they don’t all work exactly like they did in the P&P, they keep with the spirit nonetheless. After you pick your feats, spellcasting classes can pick their spells. But we’ll not get into that.

Once you are finally happy with your character, it is time to venture out into the world, and the makers of D&D Online did an excellent job at creating a newbie island that introduces a player to the concepts of the game and rewards them for doing so, giving you a chance to explore a dungeon, as well as take part in short tutorial quests designed with the main features of each class in mind. Of course, if you would rather dive right into Stormreach because you already know how to do everything (Or just think that you do), then the island is easily skipped over, much to the relief of those who detest compulsory tutorial quests. Once off the island, you have a few quests that simply must be done to gain access to the city proper and begin the bigger adventures.

The city is split up into several parts, each containing their own quests oriented for certain level groups, including the docks, the marketplace, and the Houses. Many of the quests you will find yourself presented with can be approached with several strategies other than “Run through and kill stuff,” though admittedly, that is likely what will happen in the majority of cases. However, the quest reward bonuses at the end of a given quest can give you either a stealth bonus for not killing any monsters, or the same bonus for killing all of the monsters in a given mission, so you will not be penalized for being stealthy or a pacifist. One thing of note in this game is that you do not get experience for killing enemies (Aside from the bonuses) but rather, the bulk of your experience will be from completing quests, and that will be increased through bonuses such as killing all or none of the enemies in a dungeon, finding all of the secret areas, killing hidden bosses, completing optional objectives in secret areas, and disabling all the traps in a dungeon. This is, in my opinion, quite a welcome departure from the situation presented in most MMOs where quest experience is merely a bonus when compared to the experience gained by slaughtering enemies mindlessly for a few hours.

Delving into deeper details on the quests, or rather the dungeons involved, you will be presented with a reasonably varied set of areas to explore. None of the dungeons are randomly generated, so they all have their own unique quirks and layouts that can take several runs through to learn all of their secrets, once again rewarding the players who take their time and explore rather than simply moving through and completing the main quest. Most of these dungeons will have traps which either must be disabled to avoid taking damage from, or be circumvented with well timed movements, and rogues rejoice: Once disarmed, these traps stay disarmed. Not to ruin any surprises, but examples of traps you will run into during your adventures include: Spikes rising up from the ground, darts shooting from the walls, scythes swinging from the ceiling, blades slicing from the ground, electrified hallways, and a whole slew of other nasty mechanical and magical contraptions to put you and your party in a world of hurt if they aren’t careful.

Also spread throughout these dungeons is of course monsters to get in your way, or at least in the way of your blades if you choose to take the quest on in a more combative fashion. The system of combat in D&D Online puts the player in a more active role, left- or right-clicking to swing your weapons as well as giving you the option to block, jump back and forward, or tumble around your opponent to give yourself an edge in combat. Of course, you can opt to use a more traditional auto-attack function and just throw in the occasional salvo of special attacks and hate reducing abilities, at least staying at the ready to block an enemy’s special attack can save yourself some health and your healer some spell points. Speaking of casters, it should be noted that their spell points do not regenerate naturally, and neither will your health unless either of you are in a tavern, or at a rest shrine. Rest shrines are spread throughout dungeons, and depending on the size of the dungeon, there may be several either on the main path or hidden in secret areas, and each shrine can only be used once by each party member, thus limiting the effective spell points that casters have and also how often the non-casting members can heal themselves without potions or spells. This limitation makes strategy and good trap awareness/avoidance critical to the survival of a party in the more difficult dungeons.

Beyond all the main parts of gameplay, one of the most important aspects of any MMO is of course, the community and tools to bring the community together. Turbine has done an excellent job at creating an LFG system which is not only user friendly, but also a quite useful tool for forming a group or simply finding more for one that has already started. A party leader can list necessary classes in the LFG window and make it public so that other players can see what they need and join the party with a few mouseclicks on both ends – That is, the leader and the one joining. Another method of finding party members is simply hanging around in taverns in between quests. Given that taverns are the only place to recover health and spell points aside from rest shrines, they are a natural gathering place for adventurers in between quests and an excellent place to join or form a party, swap stories, or breakdance with the other Halflings in the city. After you have your party together, you have two options for communication: The traditional chat interface, or the integrated voice chat system. I cannot comment much on voice chat, as when I was in beta it was not fully functional, but it showed great promise and could be an excellent new trend for other developers to follow.

Finally, my own opinions of the game are to follow. What I liked most about D&D Online (A.k.a.: Pros):

Halflings – The one true race.

Playing a rogue not only takes a fair bit of skill, but also are a near essential member of any party.

All classes are useful in nearly any party.

Multi-classing (Up to at least 3 classes) is an option.

Experience rewards for more than just killing monsters.

LFG tool is extremely user friendly and genuinely useful.

Dungeon delving requires resource (Read: Spellpoint and hitpoint) management.

Skill and reflexes play a part in combat

Of course, there were a few things which I did not like, though these may have changed since my time in beta:

Critical failure for disarming traps can be far too frequent. Even when you have a +15 modifier to disarm it.

Somewhat clunky user interface.

Not enough Halfling NPCs.

Incomplete voice chat system (As of nearly a month ago)

Not all classes are as desirable as the rogue in a party.

Turbine and Atari will be launching Dungeons and Dragons Online in the United States on February 28, 2006 and will be opening the servers for pre-order customers on February 24^th.