Dungeons and Dragons will put do what all fantasy based lands have done.  From the upcoming Lord of the Rings MMO to the ever popular daddy killer, Worlds of Warcraft, everyone wants to play together, but I like to see the players hands when they roll the dice.  I do not understand why D&D's parent company, presently Wizards of the Coast, do not adversite tradition pen and paper games.  I did see one page ad in May's Issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly.  The ad asked: if you wanted to pretend to be an elf in your basement, why don't invite some friends.  Despite satanic rituals, D&D had some good things going for it by refusing to visualize everything for the party.  Though I do enjoy killing a rat that was realistically part of the environment, as in that the rat was clipped up in a tree, I do think that massively multi-player rpgs have not successfully pulled off the pen and paper's certainty.  For instance,  players online can  perform useless actions like dancing.  You're certain that a player is dancing, but the performance is not personal and even worst than emoticons :(.  When I see a player on the other side of the table with his pencil riddled with teeth marks, I can really understand his convictions to do a little jig before rolling the di to see how well his female elf archer will strike.  Had this been online, the character model of the female elf would not have stepped outside the starting village's gate and whored the character's dancing ability to get weapons.  I do not want to think of the dice rolling in online games - it keeps me from slaying the real demons of the fantasy games. 

Peace in.