D&D Online

Nice article in the NY Times on the new online D&D game, which we can expect will pull in at least some CoXers.
From what I read, aside from built-in voice chat (bleah), I expect that D&D Online will fill a similar niche to CoX — roleplaying (to the extent that people choose) plus video game-style smashing and blasting. Folks looking for the former will be able to do so (just as they do on CoX); people looking for imaginative scenarios will little doubt find themselves in the same endless warehouses / caves / tech labs that CoH players deal with.
Which isn’t a bad thing, but it’s not a real substitute for a F2F game (and, to be sure, in some ways, vice-versa). Expecially if you get beyond the “hard rules” sort of games like D20 into more flexible/softer systems, what the players and GMs can come up with for the action in an F2F game cannot be matched by a computer system — whereas the visceral bam-smash of a video game (plus the convenience of timing, of quick pick-up action, and of virtual communities) cannot be beat by character sheets and dice.
Bottom line #1 — It’s not a competition. It’s a complementary set of entertainments.
Bottom line #2 — I don’t have any particular urge to migrate from CoX to D&D Online (unless, of course, all our friends did, and even then it would be a scosh dicey, so to speak).