Do we need or want yet another high-fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game in this increasingly crowded space? We waited for a few others to fill the meeting room and watched a slideshow of concept art: lush green forests, Tolkienesque high passes of snow and ice, grandiose architecture, humans, elves and dwarves, classic races, classic classes, mage, warrior, cleric, rogue.

Founded in 2006, Trion calls Heroes of Telaraa Massively Social, Fully Dynamic Server-based Game. The graphic style looks highly stylized yet realistic, with highly saturated colors. The game is built on the Trion platform, which distributes server power according to many factors, including population density and AI activity triggered by players.

We reviewers have a favorite question that developers usually develop and answer for: “What makes your game different from others in the sandbox?”

With Heroes of Telara, Trion has developed a responsive world with events triggered by different stimuli — as simple as time of day to specific player action, such as beginning a quest or a player of certain class and level walking into an area. As evening fell in-game, we heard an explosion in the village and saw smoke rise skyward. Being the hero we were, we ran in to find out what was going on. We could stand at the edge of the village safely cheering on other adventurers, or we could participate by entering the village and accepting the quests offered us depending on our level — put out the many fires, round up and evacuate the women and children, find and rescue missing villagers, attack the evil monsters that were overrunning the village, or kill the boss monster if we could.

In the morning, after being feted as a hero, we left the village and found some guards involved in a fight against some undead. We could have left them and gone about our business, or again, we could assist them, resulting in another boss fight with the guards assisting us.

There are four main classes as mentioned — Mage, Warrior, Cleric and Rogue — and a skill tree for specialization is planned. However, a feature of the game is the ability to play any class with the same character rather than raising an army of alts. The advantage of using one character and playing several classes in Heroes of Telarais that although you have to level each class separately, whatever levels you had gained with your main class, you take those stats with you. Even though you are a newbie again, you are not a weakling newbie with 10 HP killing the same hundred rats; you are a newbie with 100 HP killing the same hundred rats — er ... wait. I asked in particular if this was what would happen and was assured that they had plans to relieve that tedium beyond taking your stats with you. You can level in different areas as your highest character’s stats carry over, and the class quests are quite different.

There are also many subclasses that can be played in Heroes of Telara, with the use of Subclass Cards. These are items that may be quest rewards or drops from NPCs and are activated at will for players to combat particular mobs.

Heroes of Telara is early in the development cycle, but the Heroic quest system that provides different goals for different character levels and the world events certainly piqued my interest and is definitely is something to keep an eye on.