Dungeons n Dragons Online

LYON, FRANCE – 2 May 2006 – Atari and Turbine announced today that Keith Baker, the original creator of the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS® Eberron® campaign setting, will pen additional storylines and works of fiction for DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE™: Stormreach™. The game is the first massively multiplayer online (MMO) roleplaying game based upon the iconic world of D&D®. Developed by Turbine, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE: Stormreach is published in Europe by Atari and operated by Codemasters Online Gaming. The property is under license from the Hasbro Properties Group, the intellectual property development arm of Hasbro.

“Keith Baker is the creative genius behind Eberron, the setting for DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE: Stormreach. His fiction is sure to engage and entertain our players in the months to come,” said Jeffrey Anderson, president and CEO of Turbine, Inc. “We are delighted to be working with him.”

A long-time fantasy devotee and game designer, Keith Baker’s breakthrough occurred when he entered a contest in 2002 held by Wizards of the Coast, maker of the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS roleplaying game and a subsidiary of Hasbro. The contest sought an innovative concept for a new world in which fans could play DUNGEONS & DRAGONS. Chosen from more than 11,000 submissions, Baker’s Eberron world won the contest and became Wizards of the Coast's setting for the third edition of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS, as well as the setting for DDO. Baker also published his first novel, City of Towers, which released in February 2005, to critical acclaim.

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE: Stormreach brings the essence of the classic pen-and-paper roleplaying experience - with an emphasis on small party-based dungeon crawling adventures - to the PC. Authentic features in the game include customisable characters; dungeons filled with devious traps; monsters and stories from the Eberron campaign setting; an on-screen d20 (20-sided die) and a dungeon master. The unique online world of DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ONLINE represents a new paradigm for the MMO genre with unique features including party-based quests, integrated voice chat, real-time action combat, and award-winning graphics.