Dungeons & Dragons Online Previews

A trio of new hands-on previews of Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach have reached the web, all of which are based on a recent press event hosted by Turbine. The first is at GameSpot:

The latest version of the game has also apparently had its interface retooled to be much cleaner, and everything seemed laid out in an intuitive manner, as there was a chat window at the bottom left, an in-game map that indicated our party members in the upper left, interface options in the upper right, and a targeting window in the lower right. The bottom-left corner of the screen also displayed our character’s current health (or “hit points”–it’s a Dungeons & Dragons term, after all) and “mana,” a reserve of spell points used as a concession to keep magic-using characters continually useful in an adventure without forcing them to re-memorize spells (as they would have to do in the pen-and-paper game). Instead, magic-using characters must memorize their spells from their spell book in advance of an adventure; their spells are kept in a hotkey bank at the bottom of the screen, as are the various combat and miscellaneous skills of other characters, such as a cleric’s healing spells or a rogue’s trap-disarming abilities.

The second is at IGN PC:

Once on a quest and in a dungeon, the pace of the gameplay ramps up pretty quickly. Combat works much like you would imagine. Click to attack and watch the hit points go down. Each character has a set of skills and spells as well depending on level and class. The big difference to combat is in how these skills actually work. Unlike most MMOs, D&D Online will make players really consider their options before using their spells and skills as each one of them has a number of charges associated with it, just like they do in the pen and paper game. Only resting at a rest shrine (which can be found in each quest area) will give you back those charges. The point of restricting how many times a skill can be used is to promote strategy and teamwork. Should player use their skills like crazy at the beginning of a dungeon, they may find themselves in deep trouble towards the end.

And the third is at TenTonHammer:

I sat at a computer featuring an elven Sorceror- the much forum-maligned brethren of the flexible, jack-of-all-spells Wizard- and moused through my spell hotbar. Most of the spells were typical of what you might find in a nasty nuker’s cookbook: Magic Arrow, Fire Ball, Cone of Frost. All except for one: “Glitterdust.” I did what any red-blooded American would do upon finding a mysterious button, I pushed it. Immediately the group was bathed in blazing white and yellow light, inducing cries of alarm… and it didn’t go away. Glitterdust is apparently an area-of-effect blind spell that 1) won’t follow you if you simply move away, and 2) seems to work better on players rather than mobs and could easily be the favorite tool of the neighborhood griefer. What fun, though, to have spells that can backfire, doing more harm than good? Cone of Frost was another example; it does area-of-effect damage but if you’re own players are caught in the radius of effect, they have to take a knockdown save throw too.