The persistent world are fun (and quite frankly, better than any other MMO out there). But I'd suggest playing through the game once. The story is pretty straight forward and plain, but there are some nifty side quests to partake in. My go round through the game, I played a cleric and used one sidekick in particular (the Uuthgard), and it worked out quite well. I also used the cleric for the two expansions as well. The one thing I really found dissappointing were the other modules the game came with. They were all very short, and not all that good. Now I haven't bought any of the others online, so maybe they're better.