ZAM goes delving through dungeons in SOE's upcoming hardcore MMO

The dungeon itself was a mixture of trash mobs, boss fights and platforming. Traps were a frequent danger – I found myself on fire quite regularly, at first – and not taking care when climbing a ladder could lead to an unfortunate demise. In fact, sheathing your weapon to better negotiate your way around the dungeon, then quickly whipping it out to fight the onrushing hordes, was an important procedure to learn quickly.

Apparently, our team was rather proficient in adapting to the cut and thrust of combat and we dispatched most of the enemies with panache. In fact, our main risk of dying came in the form of treasure chests.

The chests, littered in opportune places around the dungeon, are a question of risk vs. reward in Wizardry Online, each one could have a lethal trap, meaning one false move and you could find yourself poisoned, impaled or ablaze to the point that it is all over for your character. Back to the drawing board – or character creation at least.

Though it is not certain you will be permanently wiped out when your health hits 0. The chance of permadeath is mitigated by a number of factors. At lower levels it is harder to be completely wiped out, this gets increasingly more likely the higher you level, making risky gameplay much more thrilling and imbuing combat a level of importance far beyond most MMOs.

To avoid being destroyed for good, you can also sacrifice items that you carry in order to increase your chance of resurrection, making inventory management very important as a smart player will keep some of the better items handy just in case the next booby trap ends you.

Having a thief in your party to find and disarm traps seems to be vital, which makes me wonder if it will be the class that most people want to roll.

Permadeath isn’t necessarily always bad news in fact, with diligent care you can save the abilities of your current soul and pass them on to the next character. By doing this you are able to create multiclass characters. For example, your lovely Cleric takes the final dirtnap so you transfer her abilities over to your new Fighter, allowing you to mix and match.

After our romp through Chikor Castle, I had a good look around town. Along with the various NPCs — the vendors and the dungeon access guards employed to add flavor, there is the temple where you must go to level your soul.

Your Soul Level is incredibly important, initially for the reason that could endanger it: at level two, your shield against PvP disappears and you can be attacked. For me, this is the point where Wizardry Online becomes most interesting.

If you wish to go around killing players with gleeful abandon, you can certainly do so. Those killer players will then gain a criminality rating which will eventually make them kill on sight for the town guards. This can impinge upon your ability to progress as a character as the only place to level your soul is in the main part of town which is guarded by NPCs. Meaning you will most likely have to devise a way of sneaking in to level up – which I actually like the idea of.

Being a criminal doesn’t mean you have no safe harbor of any kind. Down one of the town’s back alleys there’s a zone-in to the shady sector, a run down, low-rent reflection of the main area. There are vendors and so on here to get by, but the most tantalizing element comes from the bounty board, where you can see a list of bounties that have been placed by players on the heads of criminals. The bounties can be claimed by killing the murderous miscreants either in dungeons or even in the rough end of town.

The criminal players are easy to spot, with their models pulsing with a red glow after they’ve been slaying other adventurers. The idea of getting together a guild to invade the bad part of town and wipe out the criminals – with the strong possibility of them experiencing permadeath – and claim bounties in the process seems rather exciting to me. Though of course that might be an easier prospect in theory than actuality, with the dangerous denizens able to unite and defend themselves from the sanctimonious invaders.

Those seeing a loophole in the chance to kill criminals indiscriminately without fear of NPC reprisal in order to take player’s loot will be disappointed; you can only take loot from a criminal’s corpse if they took it from you originally. Still, losing a valued item to another player can lead to its own adventure as you seek her out to exact revenge and reclaim your prized possession.

Being labeled a criminal doesn’t have to be a permanent stain on your reputation, Todd Carson confirmed that the criminality rating depreciates over time. So if you stay out of trouble you can soon rejoin the nobler side of society – if you really want to.

At the end of the Wizardry Online play session I found myself conflicted regarding my experience. I’ve been spoiled by graphical sumptuousness for quite some time with recent MMO releases and Wizardry Online falls well short in that area. The dungeons are quite fun, though nothing innovative, but I can very much understand how a core group of friends would get enjoyment out of running them, particularly with the added spice of possible PvP engagements along the way.

That very particular, almost peculiar PvP system brings corpse looting, criminality, bounties and all the joyous mayhem that could emanate from them.

Recognising the interesting and fun possibilities that the ideas bring also highlights the unfortunate execution of gameplay that houses them.

WO’s veneer is underwhelming, but I do think there is a section of players who could get very passionate about the game. All of the standard MMO elements have an added focus and luster provided by the possibility of permadeath, giving added weight and immediacy to the experience that a lot of MMOs lack at the moment.

Yet those positives are hidden beneath the repeated reminder of just how clunky the gameplay experience is.

If you are interested in the system design of WO, I would certainly recommend that you get beta access – sign up on the home page -- and give the game a whirl for yourself. Wizardry Online is an acquired taste, but there’s a sense that for some gamers, it could be quite addictive. Yet for many, it's lack of modernity will remain unappealing.

Scott "Jarimor" Hawkes, Editor in Chief