Hey all.

I just wanted to drop everyone a line that I tried out D&D Online: Stormreach's free 10 day trial, and it's a MUCH better game than some early reviews lead me to believe. In fact, a friend wanted to try it out, and I was hesitant, explaining how it's one of the least popular games in a genre I usually despise. However, it seems like they cleaned up a lot of the problems cited. The game's actually a lot of fun, like a more action-oriented RPG with far more character customization than any MMORPG I've tried. That's due, of course, to the fact that it's a D&D game.

Pros: It's fun! By that I mean I actually enjoy combat. You can't automate it to any degree, and your position relative to each enemy really matters. Being a fighter with feats like cleave is a blast rather than a role or an obligation. You can also do the rogue thing and flank/surprise attack them. You can be a lot of different race/class combinations. There are abilities that aren't wholly combat oriented, though life as a rogue or a bard is significantly more challenging than that of a melee type. Quests are more like D&D modules than body part collection or fed-ex quests. There are a lot of very obnoxious MMORPG staples that do not exist in this game: I only found one grinding zone, that's almost completely unrewarding - so the game is almost entirely quest oriented, and many of the quests are awesome and require teamwork. People can't shout on any channel across a zone either, and there are alternate avenues for selling stuff and finding groups. Quests aren't only series of battles - there are puzzles, traps, secret doors, etc, with plenty of action in between.

Cons: It's hard. Seriously. It's the first MMORPG I've found that's actually consistently difficult. Interface is a little clunky, particularly the chatting, though it supports voice chat very nicely and within the structure of the game. It's also not particularly 'massive' in terms of the people, but you'll see the same faces more than most games, which is what they intended. That's not really a con. You all know why. There are a few races and classes they left out: Gnome, Half Orc, Monk, and Druid (as well as a few Eberron specific races - though the Warforged is essentially a Half Orc). Finally, they don't tell you where to go really. It takes a little exploration or a guide to figure out which quests are suitable, who gives them, and where to find the entrance. It's also confined mostly inside a city, with urban quests - I was always more into wilderness adventuring, but this is okay.

I've been playing through with my brother, and will probably throw some money their way to keep playing. Give it a try. You've got nothing to lose but time. I'm playing a halfling rogue on Khyber, almost out of level 2 after a few nights of playing.

Yeah, I liked it too. The only problem is as you progress you have to have a full balanced group to do quests, and it can be hard to find those people. I eventually quit because there just wasn't enough people. It suck when pretty much everyone on the server know each others by name.

Played it and couldn't stand it personally. I had many problems with it but the main ones were that it didn't "feel" like classic D&D and had a severe lack of polish. That said, I am oldschool D&D and am new to Eberron so the feel may be right for those who like it. I tried it like 3 seperate times too and each time I stopped playing. Every time I tried it I noticed less people playing and it was harder to find groups (at least at release there were alot of people flying around).

I didn't like the forced teaming either but this in itself is D&D so I can't really cite that as an issue even though for me personally, it was. Henchmen would have been a good route to go. I saw they recently bowed to the masses and introduced PvP into the first D&D MMO...what were they thinking? Despite the lack of content and me missing this aspect as I came from WoW, it just doesn't fit.

They are slowly improving it but it's been like a year already. With this game they did the usual Atari number of releasing product, charging people, then adding fixes and improvements that should have been there at launch, then touting them as "content".