In the not-too-distant past, millions of role-playing lovers spent countless hours leveling their paladins, warriors, and rogues in an imaginary world swarming with dragons and other odd creatures. No, we’re not talking about World of Warcraft – we’re referring to those old school Dungeons and Dragon players who used to meet up with friends each week to trek through mysterious castles and fantastic forests of their own creation. Yes, before there were massively multiplayer fantasy games in the online world, gamers reveled in environments and unique characters spawned from their creative genius, using nothing but a pen, paper and a few 20-sided dice.

It is this group of original Dungeons and Dragons players that Turbine Games is hoping to reach when they release Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach, the industry’s newest MMOPRG, early next spring. Developers claim that they have designed the game to stay as true as possible to the classic paper-based version. The game is built around teams of players that band together to adventure in the online fantasy world, following the same format that made the original game so popular among early fantasy gamers. While this team-based adventuring model adds an element of nostalgia to the online game, it does require that gamers immediately band together with other players upon beginning the game and severely limits players’ ability to successfully quest on their own.

Current estimates indicate that nearly 4.6 million people still regularly play the original paper-based version of Dungeons and Dragons, a large potential fan base for the upcoming online version of the game. However, there is no guarantee that classical D&D players will make the move to an online alternative. A big part of the allure of the original game was, and still is, the gaming environment in which the D&D is played: groups of close friends gathered around in a crowded room for hours each weekend to eat pizza, drink copious amounts of soda, and tell bad jokes at each other’s expense. D&D gaming sessions were often as much about bonding with friends as they were playing the game. Additionally, a large part of what make the original game unique and so attractive to role-players was the creative aspect of the game. Dungeon masters and players alike were challenged to use their own creativity to invent new adventures, environments, and characters. These aspects of the game will be very hard to incorporate into an online version of the game that is limited by the anonymity of online groups and the restrictions of a pre-programmed playing environment.

So will Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach ultimately attract old school D&D players and be able to successfully compete with other MMOPRG goliaths like World of Warcraft and EverQuest? Only time will tell for sure, but this author thinks that the allure of the classic pen, paper, and dice game may just be a little more competition than Turbine has anticipated.

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