Part of the quintessential Dungeons and Dragons experience is trudging through dungeons with your friends. The upcoming MMORPG Neverwinter wants to recreate that experience as best it can, putting you in instanced dungeon runs they call "Dungeon Delves."

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On the surface, Dungeon Delves aren't all that different from what other MMOs have offered previously. You and four other buddies jump into a dungeon, doing story-based quests and taking on mobs and bosses in an effort to get epic loot. Just as you'd expect, each dungeon is repeatable. But where Neverwinter differentiates itself is the length of a dungeon run. While World of Warcraft dungeon runs can often take several hours, the goal for the team at Cryptic Studios is to make the typical dungeon last right around an hour. Those of you that want a longer experience might be disappointed, but the hope is that you'll just re-queue for a dungeon immediately after finishing to get a multi-hour experience.Boss battles and encounters in Neverwinter also branch out from a lot of other MMOs. Combat in Neverwinter is much more fast-paced than other games in the genre, and focuses around smart utilization of a few abilities. In practice combat ends up feeling more action heavy, with rapid dodges, well-timed melee strikes and heavy team coordination. One moment the control wizard I was playing might be holding an enemy up in the air so my teammates could beat on them, the next I was narrowly dodging a super powerful blow from a boss and keeping extra enemies off the main tank. Combat ends up feeling much more skill-based than many of Neverwinter's contemporaries, and feels more compelling then simply mashing number keys in a specific order over and over again. Granted, Neverwinter won't be the first action-centric MMO out there (see Tera, for instance), but this, combined with the D&D license, should help attract an audience.The Neverwinter world is massive, with tons of books and other material fleshing out the universe. You certainly don't have to have any prior knowledge of the franchise to enjoy Neverwinter (hitting guys in the face with a sword or a fireball is fun pretty much anytime), but hardcore fans will get a little extra flavor from the world when they encounter bosses or other NPCs they've read about in books.Ultimately I had fun with the limited I played of a Dungeon Delve, but it didn't feel drastically different from what's come before. Having never played Dungeons & Dragons I can't really say whether or not it gives you a pen and paper-like experience, but I think it'd be hard pressed to do so. The pacing of the MMO is just so much faster than a tabletop title, and the instances are all scripted and designed a very specific way, while with pen and paper the dungeons can vary wildly based on the imagination of your Dungeon Master. Still, what's here is fun, and fans of the franchise -- or people who just want to check out a new fantasy-themed MMO -- will want to try it out when it releases later this year. Besides, it's not like it'll cost you anything to start.For more information on the basics of Cryptic's MMO you can check out some of earlier, more in-depth impressions