Dungeons & Dragons Online Preview

The Armchair Empire is offering up a preview of Turbine's Dungeons & Dragons Online, based upon what is known about the MMORPG up to this point. An excerpt to follow:
Since the game will be based on D&D 3.5, the races and classes players can choose from will largely be reflective of that rule set. As such, players will be able to play as humans, elves, dwarves, halflings, or the warforged, while being able to choose from the classes of barbarian, bard, cleric, fighter, paladin, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, and wizard. In addition to this, players will have plenty of skills and feats to choose from while molding their characters over the course of the game. One of the other class-types that D&D is known for is the multi-class which combines the aspects of a more than one class, giving a sort of jack of all trades, but master of none quality to these characters, which will also be implemented in D&D Online (likely maxing out at three or four classes that can be combined). Interestingly, players will also have a variety of prestige classes available to them as they reach higher levels in the game. Relatively speaking, though, the level cap isn't very high in D&D Online, at least compared to other MMORPGs. As such, players will cap their characters at level 20 in this game. Looking at past, offline D&D games that have come over the years, this is not really surprising since other games to use the license have also capped at level 20, only having higher levels become available for expansion packs and sequels. However, considering that most other MMORPGs on the market usually cap at around levels 40-60, one has to wonder how readily fans of the genre will accept an initial level cap of 20 in D&D Online.