Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach

by Atari

Product Features

• DDO game playable only on U.S. servers
• Coordinate tactics and strategies with your party using integrated voice chat.
• Control every swing, block and tumble in pulse-pounding real-time battles.
• Face unforgiving Danger in private dungeons with fiendish traps and foes that punish the foolish.
• Create a unique hero from nine classes, five races and millions of combinations of skills, feats and appearances.

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000E0PIFI
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.5 x 1.8 inches
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: February 28, 2006
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #20,485 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Platform: PC | Edition: Limited

Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach takes you into a classic fantasy world, for incredible MMORPG gaming. Travel to Stormreach for exciting adventures, where you'll face impossible challenges and unbeatable monsters -- all for fortune and glory. Choose from nine classes and five races, including the Eberron Warforged race - then enter ancient dungeons and complete missions to find gold, magic and treasure. Beware: Each dungeon has multiple paths to success. While a fighter is best off slaying the enemies before him, a rogue with Hide and Move Silently skills might be best off avoiding their notice. Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach is the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game to feature voice chat Integrated into the service. Follows the D&D version 3.5 Core Rules. Limited Edition features a special DDO Red Dragon Poster, "Feats Chart", special packaging and a new in-game item: Boots of Running. Gather in taverns to meet fellow adventurers, find new allies and quests, and rest up between battles Integrated voice chat lets you coordinate your team efforts more effectively

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Enjoyable dungeon crawl, but forced grouping and other issues challenge viability, February 28, 2006

By 

D. Parvin "dparv" (Boston, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach Limited Edition (CD-ROM)

Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO) is an above average dungeon crawler that has the potential to be a lot of fun for a while with enjoyable instanced quests and lively gameplay. Unfortunately, there are a lot of little things that will likely make the value of the subscription fee here questionable in a month or two, and even early on many will have issues with forced grouping. Having actually purchased the headstart, I am having a blast - but take a star off of fun for the grouping issue, and two stars off of overall for the rule implementations, lack of PvP, and value proposition, leaving this at 4 fun/3 overall, or 3.5 stars. Finally, because you can get an equivalent 5% running boost item with about 45 minutes of work very early on, the LE special item (boots of striding) is worthless, meaning you should buy the regular edition rather than LE.

With Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) having spawned literally tens of thousands of imitations at the top of the family tree of RPGs, MUDs, and MMORPGS, publisher Turbine has both the blessing of an eager audience and curse of a really tough comparison. The good news is that they've done an enjoyable job of implementing the heart of the D&D experience, which is the dungeon crawl. Unlike many MMORPGs, support classes like rogues are a requirement for almost all dungeons - there's no uber single class build here - and a well designed group and careful gameplay is a more important than any particular player, item, or spell.

However, the group aspect is double-edged. Outside of the first 5 or 6 early dungeons (even less for certain weak combat classes), solo play simply doesn't work - meaning your entire gaming experience will depend on finding a suitable group or guild. The support for this isn't bad, with ingame voice chat and being able to select exactly what you want in terms of a class and level in group search, but even players within a good guild can have significant waiting times while everyone gets ready. Turbine could and should have come up with a way for solo players to do something to advance. All adventure is instanced, which in this implementation makes sense but does mean like Guild Wars the only 'massive multiplayer' aspect of the MMORPG feel is when you're at the taverns.

D&D purists will probably not like the rule implementations either. Monks, druids, and several races are left out as are any number of skills, but the biggest wildcard is adding 4 class and race 'enhancements' which provide benefits far above even the best feats (like +5 to all skills or +3 in a certain statistic). Given how the game is set up, it doesn't really affect balance much - can't solo anyway - but between that and loot drops that rival the taj mahal (down a bit from beta, but not much), it does annoyingly throw traditional character builds out the window. Why bother making an especially stout fighter with high constitution if you're going to get 25 free hit points from the start?

More significant is longer term viability. Advancement is quick enough so the current level cap (10) was actually reached by any number of people in the 10 day beta. This will shortly be raised to 12 and eventually to 20, but the real issue is the lack of any alternative to the dungeon crawl - PvP, crafting, or anything else - that encourages people to stick around to pay the $14.95 monthly fee.

Don't get me wrong. I'm having more fun playing this now than any game in a long time. The issue is that I can also easily see not playing this in 30 or 60 days from now, which is a real shame. Hence, why this is rated 3.5 stars, and why I hope Turbine thinks carefully about how to improve it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It's a good game, if you DON'T WANT TO PAY A SINGLE DIME, September 23, 2010

By 

Jorge "Brujo!" (Panama) - See all my reviews

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach Limited Edition (CD-ROM)

I was hooked to the DDO craze lately because I'm a big Fan of LOTRO, and decided to check out DDO since some of my friends play there.

Decided to buy the boxed game, despite the game being F2P and free to download since I knew the old box would include extra items if I associated with my turbine account and the game was/is dirt cheap if you decide to buy it boxed.

Unfortunately, I'm already used to LOTRO's look on MMO's and I'm the kind of person that finds WOW to look crappy and hate it, it's simply not a game for me. LOTRO's interface, and ability to mod the UI with Lua scripting make it ideal for my fantasy fix. You can do the same on DDO, but there's one thing that simply made me steer away from the game and pack the box away (ity has a nice poster and package is very nice looking tho)... The game to my eyes looks like crap.

I'm honest, it makes my eyes hurt.

But if you the type of person that cares more about gameplay and almost unlimited F2P with the optional ability to buy ingame items/xpacs/classes/races using real life money this game will be a blast. The whoel mechanic is based on the original tabletop DnD using a d20 to check if you hit or not. You gain Xp by completing adventures and grouping up and the world of Eberron is interesting to explore.

If you just want a game to explore and level up without having to pay anything DDO is your game, buy this special edition boxed set for some nifty ingame items and the monk class unlocked already and you set, it also has a nice looking poster :D

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun game at the time, August 10, 2011

By 

Sambardo - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach Limited Edition (CD-ROM)

My brother and I ordered this game to take a break from another MMO we were playing.

It was fun for a couple of months, we mostly worked through the missions with just the two of us (this became much easier when they updated the Resurrection shrines). It felt a lot like I wanted dungeons and dragons to feel, and I really enjoyed most of the missions.

The combat was fun, and felt more action packed than most MMOs.

I recommend it to anyone who is a fan of D&D. For those that are not, character creation might be difficult.

I heard they recently switched to a free to play method, so I'm not sure if this box is useful anymore, but the game is fun, so if this box provides a subscription, than certainly try the free mode before you buy it.

2115|R3U9N44PQQE5ZS;2115|RLYGEICM2E3B6;2115|R2LTFKU5FOW5VB;