Medieval Fantasy in Cyberspace

Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach is true to its tabletop ancestor. (Atari)

In an ancient, rotting dungeon, the group edges forward toward the next room. The leader, speaking into a microphone attached to his PC, tells the other members to be careful. His character then walks to a switch and activates it, opening the door to the next room. Without warning, a group of skeletal warriors filters into the room. The party falls back, organizing itself amid the chaos. The warriors fight; the healers take care of the injured and other magic classes target enemies with spells from a safe distance.

Welcome to Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach, an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) adaptation of the classic Dungeons and Dragons tabletop game series. Developed by Turbine ( http://www.turbine.com) and published by Atari ( http://www.atari.com), the game places the player in the Dungeons and Dragons universe, complete with the characters, quests, levels, enemies, items and treasure found in the tabletop game.

As in the original game, players are free to craft the character of their choice from a variety of races and classes. Their choices help set the tone for the game, as the player may choose among being a barbarian, bard, cleric, fighter, paladin, ranger, rogue, sorcerer or wizard. Once a character has been created, players can customize their appearance by choosing distinctive features such as gender, body type, scars, tattoos and hair and eye color. The player then enters the game to begin training missions, battle simulations and read-through tutorials, and can learn the basics of the game within 30 minutes.

The game is about as good as one could ask for from an online version of Dungeons and Dragons. Players travel through the city of Stormreach tackling missions, fighting enemies, collecting items and gaining experience points to reach advanced levels and gain new abilities. The graphics are rich, detailed and subdued to create a somewhat stark medieval theme. Excellent lighting, textures and shading complement realistic character models.

One of the game's most recognizable traits -- and a break from other video games -- is the fact that the player won't automatically heal if left alone. The designers kept this element realistic; a player must visit a tavern or restoration shrine, have a healing spell cast on him by someone else or drink a potion to regain health.

Dungeons and Dragons Online is designed as a social game, which both helps and hurts the title. While early missions can be completed alone easily, there comes a point at which a player's only hope is to join a party and fight as a group. This works well, especially considering that the game's designers included voice chat support into the game, but it makes grinding (killing enemies to gain points to advance to the next level) harder since a player must complete a quest to gain these points.

The problem with this element of the game is that the game doesn't lend itself as readily to social interaction as other online games do. In games such as World of Warcraft, players seem to chat about anything and everything; this seems more subdued in Dungeons and Dragons Online, and players have to make more of an effort to create a party.

The game is a free 1.7-gigabyte download with a complimentary trial week to play. The software is $29.95 to purchase the game, with a $14.99 monthly fee and first month's fee waived.

-- Chris Barylick

Dungeons and Dragons Online: Stormreach Teen; PC, Windows XP (Price) Atari