Hero's Journey exists in the world of Elanthia, a world previously used in the online MUD, Dragonrealms. 200 years ago the world was destroyed and now exists as a chain of floating islands being held together. The citizens mostly live in peace, but as in any civilization, this is not always the case.

Character creation in Hero's Journey is an act of design down to the minutest detail. There will be the standard fantasy races to choose from as well as a feline race. I can't begin to quantify the number of options available in character creation except to say that it will be literally impossible to create the same character twice. There were sliders for masculinity of a female face, asymmetry, ethnicity, age…noses had two sub-options with 23 options within!

Then you get to the clothing! The friend who brought me was simply giddy over the prospect that you could design your clothing to be a pirate! And because of the design of the game, you could and it wouldn't affect your character anymore than Xena wearing a leather mini-skirt. For, in Hero's Journey, clothes are just another facet of the design of your character. You imbue your clothing with abilities and characteristics. Should you find an outfit you like better, you simply move those characteristics to the new set of clothing. No longer will you see people of the same general level wearing whatever is "best" at that level. Everyone will be completely unique.

Towns and general environments will be open hunting areas but quests will be instanced as is becoming the norm in today's MMOs. We were taken on a quest to stop some really ugly monster (I didn't get its name but it's UGLY) from invading the town. Along the way we saw the basics of fighting and here things start to get unique. An example is casting a fire spell. You don't just throw the spell at the target. You actually draw a line where you want the fire to occur. They also showed us an area of affect spell that worked like a meteor shower: you click on center then determined the radius of the rain of rocks; the tighter the circle the more compact the shower.

Once these creatures were dispatched we continued along our way following markers placed in the ground. Apparently, the developers had originally placed these to keep themselves from getting lost in the lush forest. They liked them so much they plan to put them in game. This way, should you enter a large instanced area you can place markers for your party to follow should you become separated.

The next group of monsters was rather large. Our options were to rush in (and probably get slaughtered) or have our archer perch and take them down one by one. Again, something completely unexpected happened. The archer shot a bolt of energy at the rocks on the hillside above the monsters causing them to tumble down and crush them. Using the environment to solve problems rather than pure brawn is a welcome and refreshing change!

Finally, we neared the end of our demonstration and quest. Again, there were more of the Big-Uglies waiting for us. This is where they demonstrated cooperative combat. Coming from a MUD background I don't think they ever considered that cooperative combat wouldn't be possible. As I sat in stunned silence I watched character A hit BigUgly and a white ring appeared in front of it. Character B then stepped into said white ring and hit the blinking icon on the HUD. Then Character B bent over while Character A leaped onto his back jumped up into the air and hit BigUgly in the head. Stunned. I was simply stunned.

I've not even mentioned the lush backgrounds, amazing graphics, unique flying whale that had something to do with the storyline or the cutscene of us completing the mission (and we were in the cutscene). I want to play this game, now. I don't want to wait until the Summer of 2006. It simply looks fun.