Dungeons & Dragons Online: Stormreach Limited Edition

List Price: $18.99 Discount Price: $14.95

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.

Accessories:
PC Gamer (1-year)	Games for Windows: The Official Magazine

Customer Reviews:

I realy really wanted to like this one [Posted on 2006-11-23]
I sounded like the perfect blend of the Challange of an RPG and the Online Community of a Massive Roleplayer. Unfortunatly from a Roleplayers point of view it's just another massive multiplayer repeating the same quests over and over, grinding, farming, ect. ect. The only thing is it does have a nice D&D "Feel" about it with all the newly trademarked monsters, it's also got solid graphics and such but in reality it's not close to an RPG and the tech support for paying a monthly subscription service is terrible.

No Love for Clerics [Posted on 2006-11-24]
Great game, if you want to feel like it was to be a minority in the Jim Crow South

D&D Online [Posted on 2006-12-03]
Let me first start by saying this is not World of Warcraft. If you like extensive solo play, this is not the game for you.

The Good: If you like playing with others, such as a guild or with friends, then this can be a VERY enjoyable game. The integrated voice chat is better than most and the graphics are a notch above what else is available in terms of MMORPGs. And thanks to the in-game DM narrating the scenes for you, and the robust character generation process, it certainly has the D&D flavor.

The Bad: There are some things that I don't like, namely being limited to only the one city, ranks, and the confining nature of the game. While this may lend itself well to dungeon crawling, its not what most are accustomed to, which probably has more to do with my playing WoW for a year or so before ever touching DDO. Being used to open environments, sprawling cityscapes, and a multitude of vendors, the world of DDO seems tiny.

Something else that took some getting used to, while not "bad", is the combat controls. There is a small learning curve to DDO, but its easily worked out by the first rank or two.

Summary:
Pros:
Graphics
Character generation
It actually feels like D&D
Grouping is easy once you get the hang of the interface
Integrated voice chat
Great game for friends to play if they like to group a lot

Cons:
Limited to a single city
Solo play is limited
Ranks instead of full levels
No large-scale outdoor exploration
Small learning curve for controls

Score: I docked it 1 star due to the limited availability of solo quests and their use of ranks in between levels. The rest of the game is a really good D&D experience.

The bottom line: If you're looking for a good translation of the pen & paper version of D&D to the PC, and you really like dungeon crawls, then you'll fully enjoy DDO.

DDO is the best! [Posted on 2007-08-02]
DDO is a great MMO. It's very unique and although it doesn't hit the actual Dungeons and Dragons on the nail, those who enjoy playing D&D will find this game very interesting. I was skeptical at first when I heard of an online version of D&D and thought, "that's stupid. You'll NEVER get the freedom of actual D&D". But despite those feelings, I absolutely LOVED the game. It's still updating every month or so and still gets better and better.

If you are a WOW fanboi, Nothing to see here, move along. [Posted on 2007-09-02]
Yep, if you think WOW, EQ2 and now LOTRO are the best thing since sliced bread you will hate this game. It is not zerg friendly, solo friendly or mindless. In short it is mature and lends itself to tactics and cooperation.
The graphics are cutting edge, if your rig can handle them you can dial in a superbly rendered world. Not the last generation cartoons of the older MMORPGS. You can let the computer fight for you if you are WOW lazy or you can twitch fight like the best first person shooter out there. Some of it is soloable for anyone, most of it is soloable by somebody who takes the time to figure out what is what. Because of the superb use of instances most of the quests are lag free if you have a 1/2 way decent machine to play with.

Problems? Sure, all games have them. The game company, Turbine, is treating it like a niche game so its new content expansion is not getting first priority like its whitebread cousin LOTROL. They figured out the WOW fanbois just want more of the same and went towards the money. It is not PnP D&D but is a reasonable facsimile. It can be laggy in the central game zones and when transferring between zones. If you don't understand how easy they have made voice chat you would think the game is unfriendly as few talk in the general channels. The world is limited, there is only limited exploration or random encounters (a hallmark of PnP).

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