Ouch...looks like the long anticipated Dungeons and Dragons Online is out of NDA then:

Aggro Me: Not Impressed

Kill Ten Rats: Somewhat Indifferent

Tobold: Content Concerns

Penny Arcade: Tentative

Virgin Worlds: Scathing Roundup

Etcetera, etcetera. All in all, a mixed bag, tending more toward...er...Chaotic Evil than Lawful Good. The chiefest concerns seem to revolve around the current shortage of content, with estimates placing around 1-2 months of medium-to-hardcore powergaming gameplay in the game as it stands. Other problems seem to be an almost total lack of soloability, a complete dependence on instance pick-up grouping to get anything done at all, a somewhat stale and un-inovative setting and the necessity to repeat the same instances many times over to make character progress.

Good points include a very detailed character creation system, great jumping and climbing, and instances that, the first time through at least, are detailed and interesting experiences, with a deeper level of story-telling than we're used to seeing.

Mostly however, comparisions are being made with Diablo II and Guild Wars, rather than WoW or EQ2, which would be all very well if Guild Wars hadn't announced a new expansion just about now too:

Guild Wars: More To Come

(The makers of Diablo II also have an expansion in the works for their 'other' game...)

It sounds to me a lot like an average MMO. It'll sell fairly well initially, on sightseeing alone, and then three months in, be just about retaining enough subscribers to tick along and pay for costs, and then it'll linger for a few years before quietly imploding, most likely just after the release of it's second expansion. Still, I could be wrong, and hope I am.

What it will not do, however, is beat up World of Warcraft and steal it's lunch money, which I rather gather many MMO gamers would quite like to see. I'm about eight months behind everyone else on their WoW obsession, but even I'm quite hoping something new, yet as big and popular, comes along sooner or later, purely so that competition forces Blizzard to work harder.

We'll see I guess, but based on the various previews above, I've already crossed this one off as 'Not For Me', which is something I end up doing a lot these days.

For me the killer is the 'no soloing' bit, and before all you floppy-headed foam-nosed lollerskating group-dependency socialiser muppets pipe up with the tired old "Well why r u play online games then lol !!1eleventy! :P", the key lies in understanding that I may not want to group (or solo)ALL THE TIME, and that unlike you, muppet, I am not an incompetent half-wit who needs propping up by five other players., and have a certain sense of pride. If I can't hack it alone, I am not going to be pulling my weight in a group - it's that simple.

Anyway, ranting aside, what I do wonder though; is it for the poor ex-players of Asheron's Call 2, whose had their world pulled out from under them, so that this one might benefit from the extra resources? Turbine seem to be making a gamble, which is already begining to look a bit shakey...