A Game I haven't played in 20 Years
 

RPG D&D esk style of game. First person or third can't fully remember, It is a 3d game and i remember that your character select screen had a large tree and river in its area, it would also become the starting area that you spawn into. afterwards you would go through a goblin dudgeon to get near your first village. start zone was a small glade with a tree and a river at the back of the area. heading in to the mountain area would take you to the mine/ goblin dungeon.
races that could be picked were human, dwarf, lizard, Bugbear? (not too sure on that one)
you also could get classes, i remember that there is a town early on that you can join a faction and become a paladin and that there was also a dragon knight class that you can get by slaying a nearby dragon.
graphics are old style probably 16 bit or higher. the dragon was red and the area you played the start zone of was a forested area.
weapons, bows, and magic are in the game. i remember slaying the dragon with bow and arrows to unlock the class.
thanks for any help in finding this game
Happy hunting

forgot to ad that it is a pc game and that it was a cd-rom game. ill keep posting anything that i remember.

Sorry, Adventure Quest is only game I can found that vaguely reminds your game. But it's MMO and also reqs to paid to get the full game potential, so you hardly could mean it.

I remember that game, i played since its start way back then. The game i am trying to remember was probably a 1990s game. dont know if it was a dos game (doubt it) it was more akin to a dungeon explorer with rpg elements like stats and levels. I remember that the classes functioned like factions that you could join if you complete the quest and have the right stats allocated. I dont realy remember what kind of graphics it had i was only 11 at the time i played it. but i think it was on windows 95

I'm gonna throw this out there. Mordor: the depths of Dejenol
It sounds very familiar to this game. best of luck