Dungeons & Dragons Online First Impressions
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The basics of the gameplay are easy to get into. You control your character from a third-person perspective and can swing your weapon or defend at the touch of a button. While the combat doesn't necessarily have an ultrasolid feel to it, it's fast-paced and action oriented, so it's not the slow and plodding stuff that's notorious to online RPGs. Some other action-style elements are in here, such as the ability to jump up and mantle over obstacles, and characters run around (and even swim) at a nice, quick pace. While there are a lot of different icons and menus onscreen at first, pop-up help displays and a few basic quests effectively help you get your bearings. Eventually you wind up in a tavern filled with other players (and D&D Online seems to have a healthy player population in it already), and of course, these players can be a good source of information. Possibly because this is a cooperative game by nature, thus far we've found the game's populace to be quite friendly and helpful on the whole.
