Neverwinter MMORPG

[Sir Edward]

Check this out... they're having "beta weekend #2" this weekend:

http://nw.perfectworld.com/

It looks like they'll have an open beta before it goes live, and it'll also be a free-to-play game. I'm tempted to get the $60 starter pack though.

Cryptic Studios is the company that also did Star Trek Online, which I enjoyed. They also built the Foundry system for that game and for Champions Online, which they'll use here too. The Foundry is a system for letting players create story content (basically a mission builder, with dialog flowcharts, map editing, etc).

So, I'm intrigued.

[Ian]

I do love me some Forgotten Realms lore.  The last D&D based MMO was a horrible failure, I hope this one proves otherwise.  They should have no shortage of content with the whole rich established history of Faerun to draw on.  I always wished the Dragonlance world got as big as Forgotten Realms, that would have been a cool MMO setting

[Sir Edward]

Oh heck yeah, Dragonlance would have been great. I played a PC game set in that world, (DragonStrike, 1990). Very simple graphics, but it was a dragon flight-simulator, in which you would chase down the other dragons and lance them... which was quite cool.

[Sir Wolf]

hmmmm

[Sir William]

Forgotten Realms...my intro to D&D console gaming. 

[RackThor]

I wish that dragonlance would have gotten the fan base as well.

I do love me some Forgotten Realms lore.  The last D&D based MMO was a horrible failure, I hope this one proves otherwise.  They should have no shortage of content with the whole rich established history of Faerun to draw on.  I always wished the Dragonlance world got as big as Forgotten Realms, that would have been a cool MMO setting

[Sir Edward]

Well, I got a chance to play around with the new Neverwinter a little tonight. It's not too bad. I'm not sure I'm hooked yet though. At the beginning at least, it feels a bit linear.

So far it looks like they just have 4 main classes (fighter, thief, wizard, and cleric), and may eventually have multiple sub-classes, or tracks within them. But for the beta this weekend, there's only one version of each.

The control system seems smooth enough. They're limiting abilities to what you can easily reach from your WASD keys. That is, your main "at will" attacks are on the left/right mouse buttons, and your "per encounter" abilities (really just cooldowns) are on Q,E,R, and then the "dailies" (really just abilities that need to charge a resource up in this case) are on keys 1 & 2.  Number keys 3-5 look like they can slot things like potions.

[Thorsteinn]

Any updates?

[Ian]

It's in open beta now, download it and try it out! I dabbled with a cleric this weekend. Pretty fun so far!

[Sir Edward]

Yeah, I haven't had a chance to play it much this past week, but in the closed-beta weekends I was playing around with a couple of different classes. I kinda like the "great weapon fighter". I haven't tried the cleric, but it looks like they did a good job of balancing the classes so far, so I think they'll all be fun.

[Ian]

Having spent some more time with this game, I think it's 'meh' at best.  The thing that would have really set it apart is if they captured the feel of DnD and the world of Faerun.  It could really be any other generic MMO setting in any other generic F2P MMO.  The F2P model for this game is really kind of strange to.  Unlike Guild Wars 2, you can pay to win in Neverwinter.

Having grown up on pen and paper DnD, and the great CRPG's like Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, Neverwinter Nights, Icewind Dale, Planescape Torment etc, they just missed the DnD feel with this MMO and the license went to waste.  I hope they make huge improvements prior to release, otherwise it will be a small community game filed away with all the other free-to-play MMOs bombarding the market.

The next best hope in the MMO world is going to be Elder Scrolls Online.  I'm still sad that SWTOR didn't pan out, it was a really fun Star Wars single player game though

[Sir Edward]

Yeah, I completely agree. I just haven't found myself making the time to get in and play the beta, which I think says something.

You can "pay to win"? I didn't know that. That's a huge turn-off right there. I'll certainly pay money if it's a game I'm enjoying, but I don't want to be in a position where you really need to keep paying in order to keep up with everyone else.

GW2's payment model worked for me. I spent money on things like transmutes and field-repairs. But all the gear came from in-game.

[Ian]

You can directly buy the publisher's currency called 'zen' I think, and then convert zen to in-game currency and buy regular items on the auction house. 

[Sir Edward]

You can directly buy the publisher's currency called 'zen' I think, and then convert zen to in-game currency and buy regular items on the auction house.

Technically you could do that to some degree in GW2 too, though I don't think it was as much of a problem there with the way the economy scaled. It was very expensive to get in-game currency.