Dungeons and Dragons Online

This is nothing like a review. Only a list of impressions from a few hours in game.

1. A surprising and stylish fantasy setting. A mixture of the fantasy races you'd expect and oddballs you never would have guessed. A standout is their take on halflings, more like short "punk" (go Sid!) elves than anything you are likely familiar with. Golems as a player race is also quite odd.

2. Runs really well even on my stone age backup PC. I get better frame rates than many free to play MMOs, despite graphics that are tons more detailed. Whatever engine Turbine is using is a winner.

3. Combat is twitchy. On a melee focused toon, you may as well be playing Diablo. It really is that fast paced. Reminds me quite a bit of Champions Online.

4. There is no reason to have more than one quest at a time. Each quest sends you to an instance that you have to clear. There are no quest objectives inside the instance. The objective is to finish your mission any way you can.

5. The game is a bit too easy on someone that is very good at melee combat, such as a Ranger or Fighter. Conversely, it's very challenging on a pure caster. For example, as a Wizard the instances you clear for missions start to feel like puzzles. You can only cast X spells, and those spells have to get you through the entire instance. It can certainly be done, but you may not get it right your first try.

6. The character creation system is crazy deep. Even as someone familiar with the PnP rules the game is based on and an experienced MMO player, I've been using their character templates so far (these make a ton of decisions for you). As a new player to the game, it's hard to guess where to place 20 skill points or what feat out of the twenty that are available I'll want on the character creation screen.