I'm sold. This PW looks and feels incredibly cool. And it's all in the details.
1. Visually, it's superb. Vast areas: grand city, coastal village, hot desert, frozen waste, dark forest, it has eveything the toolset provides, and then some. None of the areas that I've seen seemed cluttered or illogical. I visited a farmhouse that could house an entire adventuring party, with room(s) to spare.
2. The NPC scripting is incredible.
- I went in a gigantic store for adventurers and started a dialogue with the storekeeper. Within a few rounds, specialized merchants (all neatly tagged) had arrived one after the other from the nearby rooms, to salute me and offer me their services. When I left, they started talking to each other.
- In town, a passerby stopped to consult a sundial which promptly displayed the date and time of day.
- Opponents sometimes flee, possibly to regroup.
- You can hire a henchman; I took on a wizardress who always stayed just behind me, protected by the strong body of my barbarian , popping out to deliver electrical attacks that were real scorchers. She had 5 times my hit points, I seem to recall (65 to my 13 or so). A low-level char can still die a lot, though, even with that kind of protection. (You can also hire a cleric, a rogue, a fighter, possibly more). Of course, I was jumping from area to area at random, which is not the way one usually adventures, either solo or in a group, so I faced real toughies.
- I saw drow. I was eaten by a polar bear (like another char, who visited with me) and smashed to a frozen pulp by a frost giant. I saw zombies spawn out of corpses in the the desert sand, harpies attack on the wing, and catapults that you can orient quite precisely (20 options or so) fire fiery bolts. I was petrified, and *then* shattered to pieces.
3. The databasing is stunning. You can store money and possessions, and retrieve them from about any area. You can consult Realm stones, in temples, that tell you how many opponents you have slain or how your soldiers have performed (yes, you can become an Army commander). This is a little Birthright-ish, in my opinion, and in a good way.
4. Again, it's all in the details: clothes, music, portraits, architecture, variety of terrains and climates... The number of custom items that I saw is positively incredible. I'm already planning to buy some. No level restriction, apparently.
5. The crafting system looks neato as heck (and is probably the one from HotU, somewhat modified): bars of mithral and adamantine; actual glass flasks and blank scrolls -- you don't have to craft them, wow! -- to fill with your potions/write your spells under ; wands, amulets, golem pieces, dyes... Just amazing.
6. There are wandering merchants who sell the potions most useful to the average adventurer, from cures to speed to barskin to... you name it. The prices everywhere that I went are really reasonable; items seem to be bought for 50-60% of their price of sale.
7. Even the Fugue plane is splendid. Trust me, you'll want to die on occasion just to see it and interact with the forces present there (opposite forces, of course). You can choose a patron god (of the Forgotten Realms, including my favourite D&D deity ever, Shaundakul) and get a valuable gift. You can choose to go back to a specific area (see below), or to the exact place you died, or to the current location of your party leader.
8. There's a *free* portal system. You can choose the area you want to go to (within limits, I imagine, as it seems that the list changes according to the location of the portal -- think having to change planes for a long-distance flight). You can bind yourself to a specific portal to always come back there no matter from where.
9. If you're playing in a party and get hopelessly separated, each player has a rune stone in order to teleport (once a day; but there's no rest limitation) to the party leader.
10. The new DM avatar will look familiar to fans of the D&D anime of old.
10b. And best of all, when you do rest, you spread a bedroll and erect a campfire.
I could go on and on and on. For my money, I'd start playing there today. And I'd hit the ground running. (I'm sure it's a tough world, though, henchmen and good prices or not.) I actually stopped exploring before Morrus rebooted Ascension, because I wanted to be the more awed I could be if/when we decide to use this PW.
Pierre-Paul, aka Elendiel
