Neverwinter MMO
A friend on Facebook mentioned this game (which I didn't know existed until that point), so I decided to check it out. Take what I say with a grain of salt, I am only a level 13 Guardian Fighter (Sullivan on the Dragon server).
The game is designed as a Free-to-Play, with mostly cosmetic items for sale with real-money, but it kind of screws up the whole, not-pay-to-win part by making a middle man currency as well that works off both in-game grinding AND real-money. The pure in-game currency is Gold, pretty standard, you kill things, sell things, quest and you get gold. Every half-hour or so there is an in-game event that boosts certain activities like PvP, instanced dungeons, adventuring, or even player created quests. If you take part in the called out event during this time you get a currency called "Rough Astral Diamonds" which are essentially useless by themselves, but you can get a whole lot of it. Every hour (with a daily cap) once you hit level 10, you can transmute the rough diamonds, into full blown astral diamonds, which are then usable for High-Tier items and goodies. The downside to this is, the cost of these items fluctuate depending on the ZenMarket, or the real-money market. And allowing people to spend real-money on pure Astral Diamonds, by-passing the daily limit of transmuting Roughs into Pures. I don't know how exactly those numbers work, but I don't particularly care for a system where unless I pay money I can't be as good as someone else. I have no problems with having limits to my cheap character, but as long as those limits don't act as a permanent prevention of potential (wee alliteration). Bag size, number of bags, number of character, limit on amounts I can trade to other players, I am OK with that. But like I said, I don't know how all the stuff is figured out, or how it all works, so I might just be getting annoyed for no reason.
As for the gameplay, it does a "pretty good" job of making the game a bit more interesting than just go and faceroll your keyboard, they attempt to make it a bit of an Action RPG, with dynamic blocking and some directional abilities. Which is good, since just as far as I can remember of WoW or any other MMOs I have played, blocking is passive and direction doesn't really matter until you are behind something or something is behind you. Blocking attacks lowers your guard meter, when that is broken you can't block until it recharges, but depending on how you play it might give a boost to Strength, or overall defense, or something else. Other classes might have other things, I don't know, I have only played a tank.
The ability list is pretty limited, which is good since your hotbar only holds a few abilities, and a lot of them are locked into a specific type of ability. If anyone is familiar with DnD 4e, they are broken down into At-Will, Encounter, and Daily, with a small smattering into special "Action Point" skills that require combat recharging and some other abilities that are essentially At-Will abilities, but don't deal damage, or modify your existing ones.
This is also bad since there isn't really a lot of customization in the game currently. Later on you do get to Prestige out into other more specialized versions of your existing classes, but most of those appear to be passives and more modifiers of existing abilities. So from the look of it all the tanks will be essentially the same, all the rogues will be essentially the same and so on. One of the biggest perks of DnD for me is the fact you can customize your character to be as good, or as bad, or silly as you want, and this limits that to a pretty severe point.
The lag on some of the stuff is also kind of bad, so you tend to always be a bit behind with all your stuff if you try to change targets really quickly, or change up abilities. A lot of the time if I try to change to another target in the middle of combat I will swings 2-3 more times at the guy I was looking at before, or if I try to block sometimes I don't bring my shield up in time because I am too busy swinging. After I finish combat it isn't uncommon for me to swing blindly at the air for another few seconds waiting for my character to catch up. The attack animations, while pretty, are a little annoying and increase the delay in your skill uses, I have an ability that makes be bigger and deal more damage, however the animation takes 2 full seconds for me to raise my sword and slam it down, the whole time I am defenseless, immobile, and unable to attack so I tend to get punted around a lot during this time.
That aside, there is apparently some crafting and gathering as well, but I haven't got very far into it. All I know is that each class has a certain skill they can use to gather items around the world for free, and if they want to gather from other types of nodes they can buy kits which have a 75% success rate instead of a free 100%, which is nice that I don't have to feel helpless around the wrong nodes, but doesn't give me the ability to gather everything like a thieving goblin. But again on customization, most of the items you get out of these nodes are usually the same thing.
All and all I actually like the game so far, since I haven't had enough time to play to get bored with the lack of customization or the fact I have to spend money to get gear ballparks better than I can get with just playing. I will let you know how it goes as I keep playing.
The game is designed as a Free-to-Play, with mostly cosmetic items for sale with real-money, but it kind of screws up the whole, not-pay-to-win part by making a middle man currency as well that works off both in-game grinding AND real-money. The pure in-game currency is Gold, pretty standard, you kill things, sell things, quest and you get gold. Every half-hour or so there is an in-game event that boosts certain activities like PvP, instanced dungeons, adventuring, or even player created quests. If you take part in the called out event during this time you get a currency called "Rough Astral Diamonds" which are essentially useless by themselves, but you can get a whole lot of it. Every hour (with a daily cap) once you hit level 10, you can transmute the rough diamonds, into full blown astral diamonds, which are then usable for High-Tier items and goodies. The downside to this is, the cost of these items fluctuate depending on the ZenMarket, or the real-money market. And allowing people to spend real-money on pure Astral Diamonds, by-passing the daily limit of transmuting Roughs into Pures. I don't know how exactly those numbers work, but I don't particularly care for a system where unless I pay money I can't be as good as someone else. I have no problems with having limits to my cheap character, but as long as those limits don't act as a permanent prevention of potential (wee alliteration). Bag size, number of bags, number of character, limit on amounts I can trade to other players, I am OK with that. But like I said, I don't know how all the stuff is figured out, or how it all works, so I might just be getting annoyed for no reason.
As for the gameplay, it does a "pretty good" job of making the game a bit more interesting than just go and faceroll your keyboard, they attempt to make it a bit of an Action RPG, with dynamic blocking and some directional abilities. Which is good, since just as far as I can remember of WoW or any other MMOs I have played, blocking is passive and direction doesn't really matter until you are behind something or something is behind you. Blocking attacks lowers your guard meter, when that is broken you can't block until it recharges, but depending on how you play it might give a boost to Strength, or overall defense, or something else. Other classes might have other things, I don't know, I have only played a tank.
The ability list is pretty limited, which is good since your hotbar only holds a few abilities, and a lot of them are locked into a specific type of ability. If anyone is familiar with DnD 4e, they are broken down into At-Will, Encounter, and Daily, with a small smattering into special "Action Point" skills that require combat recharging and some other abilities that are essentially At-Will abilities, but don't deal damage, or modify your existing ones.
This is also bad since there isn't really a lot of customization in the game currently. Later on you do get to Prestige out into other more specialized versions of your existing classes, but most of those appear to be passives and more modifiers of existing abilities. So from the look of it all the tanks will be essentially the same, all the rogues will be essentially the same and so on. One of the biggest perks of DnD for me is the fact you can customize your character to be as good, or as bad, or silly as you want, and this limits that to a pretty severe point.
The lag on some of the stuff is also kind of bad, so you tend to always be a bit behind with all your stuff if you try to change targets really quickly, or change up abilities. A lot of the time if I try to change to another target in the middle of combat I will swings 2-3 more times at the guy I was looking at before, or if I try to block sometimes I don't bring my shield up in time because I am too busy swinging. After I finish combat it isn't uncommon for me to swing blindly at the air for another few seconds waiting for my character to catch up. The attack animations, while pretty, are a little annoying and increase the delay in your skill uses, I have an ability that makes be bigger and deal more damage, however the animation takes 2 full seconds for me to raise my sword and slam it down, the whole time I am defenseless, immobile, and unable to attack so I tend to get punted around a lot during this time.
That aside, there is apparently some crafting and gathering as well, but I haven't got very far into it. All I know is that each class has a certain skill they can use to gather items around the world for free, and if they want to gather from other types of nodes they can buy kits which have a 75% success rate instead of a free 100%, which is nice that I don't have to feel helpless around the wrong nodes, but doesn't give me the ability to gather everything like a thieving goblin. But again on customization, most of the items you get out of these nodes are usually the same thing.
All and all I actually like the game so far, since I haven't had enough time to play to get bored with the lack of customization or the fact I have to spend money to get gear ballparks better than I can get with just playing. I will let you know how it goes as I keep playing.
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Comments
I like that the leveling is 100% quest-driven (virtually no experience from NPC kills). I like the very dynamic combat system (though a bit kludgy with respect to ability timings). I love that players can create their own missions that give loot and experience to players. With that said, however..
I feel that the "Neverwinter" association is a very loose excuse to have another generic fantasy MMO that works just like the rest of them.
Perfect World Entertainment were tasked with developing this. They have a pretty decent track-record for F2P MMO, FPS, and Dungeon Crawler.
I'm hoping that, as the under-the-covers development starts to settle, they'll work on making it more NW:N-like.
Anyways I started playing it with @Bladephoenix on the open beta launch date. Haven't actually played it too long but I'm enjoying it (Which is a lot considering the mechanics are based on 4e, though it is a 'pen and paper mmo' style so I guess it works better than 3.5 would)
That said I'm only level 5 so I haven't played enough (Nor do I know how 4e works I've avoided it since the first time my group tried to run it) to know what is or isn't D&D
The player generated questing is actually fun and allows the game to get away from the traditionally boring quests that mmos use. Some of the Foundry (the user generated quest system) missions I've played so far have been more interesting than games I've payed for recently.
Combat is interesting, mostly fluid, and keeps me engaged instead of having me zone out. I haven't exactly nailed down what/why, but so far this system is feeling more like what I think I wanted GW2 to be. Perhaps the later levels will be different. Hopefully things keep getting better as they work through the open beta.
The only problem I'm having so far is not having people to play with. I've got a few characters on Beholder right now. Add "Kira Parense@tiberiuslazarus" and jump on mumble if you want to group up.
CharacterName@UserName
I am now up to level 19 as well.
https://gateway.playneverwinter.com/