Dungeons And Dragons Online: WoTC News: Eberron Character Classes and Levels

Eberron is still in it's fledgling stages, and a lot of players still aren't very comfortable with the environment. Even if you can't pick a specific item, just about everyone can agree it's different, and WoTC is, once again, stepping up to the bat to help. Sean K. Reynolds article takes a look at what has changed with character classes and levels. Here's an example from the beginning of the article:

In a standard campaign, characters with PC classes are uncommon but frequent enough to not be extraordinary. For example, on page 139 of the Dungeon Master's Guide, a typical 200-person hamlet has 13 characters with PC classes, including 3 clerics and 3 fighters. While that number seems small (it's less than 10% of the hamlet's population), it means that a party of four PCs in a hamlet are outnumbered by the number of PC-class NPCs.

By comparison, most of the people of Eberron never have the potential to take levels in PC classes. Adepts and experts run the temples, while the rare cleric is a true knight of the church. A typical veteran of the Last War is a 2nd-level warrior, while fighters are specialists and officers. Common cutpurses are merely experts, and guildmasters and master thieves are rogues. Spellcasters who create common magic items are magewrights, and only the true wizards wield the mightiest spells and forge the items of legend.

I can certainly see the appeal of being one of the few, one of the proud, one of the Uni... err... Playing in Eberron may just make your character more unique than you thought. Check out the full text here.