by William Bartholomew

Created on: April 13, 2009   Last Updated: April 14, 2009

Online roleplaying games are easily better than the old tabletop roleplaying games. When I was a teenager I played Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (AD&D) which was 23+ years ago. Back then, there was nothing that compared to AD&D. The beauty of the game for me was the images my imagination conjured up and the way the gameplay completely engrossed my mind. It was a very intense game especially when your characters life was on the line. If you played with a tough dungeon-master, a character death could throw away hours upon hours of character creation and adventuring. Back then I was addicted to AD&D and there was nothing better in that genre.

Once upon a time (way back when the Internet was accessed through bulletin boards) there were roleplaying games for your computer. They were very linear, had terrible graphics (like a bunch of "M"s for mountains) and a rather small world for you to adventure in. Back then these games were a novelty at best. They could be fun (I liked The Magic Candle II), but didn't compare to the depth of AD&D.

Flash forward to a day and age where the computer generated worlds allow you to explore vast expanses of all sorts of terrain. The graphics of a game such as Everquest II offer vistas that are strikingly beautiful, characters that move in graceful motions and combat scenes that are often awesome to behold. In addition to amazing graphics, today's games also come packed with mindblowing sound. With a 5.1 or 7.1 speaker system you can hear the enemy chasing you from behind or feel the thud of a sand giant as his massive foot nearly crushes you. Combine the cutting edge eye candy with sounds that can strike fear into even a hardened gamer and you start to realize what gaming has become.

So what about online roleplaying games makes them so much better than tabletop roleplaying games? Well, aside from the sheer lack of truly stunning visual effects and the intensity of an ear gripping sound system to boot, tabletop roleplaying games fall short. Let's explore some key points.

1) It's not always easy to get 3-5 people together in the same place on a repeat basis to play a tabletop roleplaying game. Not to mention the difficulties trying to get an even larger group together. Hopefully everyone can make it because there are no substitute just roaming the neighborhood looking for a tabletop adventure (ok, maybe a few are). An online roleplaying game tends to have plenty of people within your normal group of online friends available

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