Forgotten Realms

The Forgotten Realms is a fantasy campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons role playing game originally developed by Ed Greenwood as a location for his childhood stories in the late 1960's. After publication of several stories in gaming magazines in the mid 80's the setting was purchased by TSR in 1987 and the rest is a fantastical history of might and magic. Widely considered the most popular Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting with many attributing this to the Late Middle Ages look and feel extensivily used in the primary materials. The fictional continent of Faerûn has many correlations connected with Europe in the 14th and 15th Centuries breeding familiarity amongst the player base.

Integration into Dungeons & Dragons Online
Menace of the Underdark was announced on January 19, 2012 by Fernado Paiz, Executive Producer of Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited as the first premium expansion to Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited.

With the inclusion of Forgotten Realms setting the official name of the game was changed to Dungeons & Dragons Online. Senior Producer Eric Boyer in an interview with GameBanshee commented "Yeah, starting early this year we’re going to be Dungeons & Dragons Online. That’s also something that we had taken some time and had a lot of discussions with WotC about how we represented that. So we’re officially going with Dungeons & Dragons Online as our primary title and then we’ll add the subtitles when it’s appropriate, for example, "Menace of the Underdark" for the expansion."

Development
In an interview with GameBanshee Fernando Paiz states "So we probably started talking about this with them about six months [March 2010] after we went free-to-play where we really started seeing the success as something that was provable, that was going to keep growing the franchise, and then frankly had legs." Development on the new expansion began in late 2011 with approval of both Warner Brothers and Wizards of the Coast to "invest millions of dollars into the game".

The Story Line
From the character's perspective the story line for the Menace of the Underdark actually begins with the Update 13 The Web of Chaos a three quest story arc in which the characters investigate the activities of the Lords of Dust underneath Stormreach Harbor. The “Menace of the Underdark” expansion introduces players to another campaign setting, the Forgotten Realms. The expansion takes place in the Kingdom of Cormyr, located on the continent of Faerûn, the Underdark, the Drow city of Sschindylryn and in the Demon Web.