D&D Neverwinter

[ariesel]

www.playneverwinter.com/videos

I'm confused. Is this an MMO or a single player?

[Morreion]

Hey Arie!

Neverwinter Attempts To Recreate D&D (Escapist)

"It's not an MMO, it's an online multiplayer game," said Cryptic Chief Operating Officer, Jack Emmert. "It's probably closer to a cooperative RPG. So imagine if you could play Dragon Age or Oblivion with your buddies. You will run into people in certain areas - other people with their friends - so, in that respect, it's a persistent universe similar to an MMO."


Looks like they're shying away from calling it an MMO, which is good- everything is called an MMO these days whether it is or not. This sounds interesting to all of us 20-sided-dice owners out there!

[Loendal]

I thought Cryptic was closed and this project cancelled?

[Morreion]

Cryptic was bought out by Perfect World but what this may mean to Neverwinter D&D isn't clear yet, but there are rumors.

[Morreion]

Big Changes to Cryptic's Neverwinter (IGN)
The D&D co-op multiplayer game becoming a full-fledged free-to-play MMO.

The developer says Neverwinter will be closer to a game like Nexon's Vindictus, where combat is controlled by mouse clicks, and where pattern recognition and reflexes are the keys to successfully murdering hordes of monsters.


Cryptic may have been sold, but nothing has changed (Keen & Graev)

...I can’t imagine how anyone would ever think those are good ideas. Free to play? Like Vindictus? Once again cutting and pasting the engine? Someone is actually being paid to make those decisions. Absolutely no surprise to me, though.

Cryptic's Neverwinter to be a 'full-fledged MMO' (Massively)

Not all content will be free, though. The developer will be charging money for consumables, [...] vanity pets and cosmetic items. [...] Cryptic plans to avoid making any content premium-only in Neverwinter.

Neverwinter was 'almost ready to ship' before F2P MMO retooling (Massively)

The change from CORPG to a full action RPG F2P MMO is a change that just made sense for us. Perfect World wanted to go big. Expand everything. Do more. Do better. Take your time. Really blow it out. Pushing into 2012 allows us to make these changes. Transitioning into a full-featured action RPG, free-to-play MMO allows us to reach a whole new audience of people. Never underestimate barriers to entry. With a free client, anyone can play. Try it. Where's the harm? It's better for the game, better for us, better for D&D and infinitely better for fans and gamers. With Neverwinter, we're going to prove that F2P does not describe a type of gameplay -- it only describes the fundamentals of a business model.

PAX East 2012: Neverwinter discussion and impressions (Massively)

More to the point, there's no pile of abilities to use at any given time. Players have access to a primary and secondary attack, two "special" attacks with short cooldowns, and an ability that has to be charged via Action Points before being unleashed. You also get one last Utility ability such as a quick dodge, a shield block, and so forth... and that's it.

The fine tradition of killing things and taking their stuff remains intact.It sounds anemic, and it is, but it also balances nicely with the game's design. This game plays fast, to the point that you really don't want to have more than a quintet of abilities to pick from. As you level, you gain new abilities to toss into the various slots, but you never wind up with more overall active abilities. In other words, you get options, but not more raw power.

Neverwinter releasing Q4 2012, opens French and German websites (Massively)

Neverwinter was the unexpected surprise of PAX East for us, which is why we're psyched that it should be in all our hot little hands by the end of the year. Perfect World announced that its upcoming Dungeons and Dragons MMO will launch globally in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Neverwinter Interviews: Post-PAX Interview (MMORLG.com)
Cryptic's Neverwinter was the belle of the ball at the recently held PAX East convention last month. We caught up with Andy Velasquez, Lead Producer on Neverwinter to chat with him about the game. Check it out!

Andy Velasquez: Personally I feel like our Dungeon Delves are huge improvement over the overall raiding experience that I have personally experienced playing MMOs. When I think about what I loved during my time raiding in other MMO’s it was always the joy of getting mah phat lewtz and the challenge of taking down interesting content with my buddies. What I hated was the slog that almost always came with it.

Our Dungeon Delves are still the places where you will be going to get your phat lewt. They are still where you will find the some of the most interesting bosses, monsters and locations Neverwinter has to offer and you are your friends will be challenged to take down all of the content in them. Yet they are meant to be shorter less grindy affairs than traditional MMO raids.

PAX East 2012: Cryptic shows new Neverwinter trailer (Massively)

Everything you wanted to know about Neverwinter's Foundry but haven't asked (Massively)

Players will be able to incorporate missions into the overall game world seamlessly or place them in instanced areas depending on the creator's intent. The system will also give players several means of getting into these missions, both from a UI feature showing off popular player-made missions and NPCs highlighting player-made content in any given area. Creators, meanwhile, will receive all the necessary tools to create new maps and new missions even with a minimum of experience. Time will tell how successful the system is in implementation, but it's certainly aiming in the right direction.

[Morreion]

Neverwinter official site

Neverwinter Days: Beta blitz (Massively)

If you're new to the Neverwinter scene, let me give you the quick overview. Neverwinter is Cryptic Studio's newest game, one that's in the middle of beta testing and should be here by late spring. It was previously a lobby-based cooperative RPG, but when Perfect World Entertainment bought out Cryptic, the new heads demanded that it be reworked into more of a proper MMO.

Still, the core of the game is dungeon-diving, either solo or with friends, using either the game's premade dungeons or those created by players using the Foundry toolset. Neverwinter also leans more toward the "action" side of MMO combat, preferring quick fights, a smaller hotbar, and reactive play.

Neverwinter details pour in from China (Massively)

The screenshots show the title screen, the map of the world (with helpful English subtitles), and several of the character selection screens. We're able to see four Neverwinter's five classes (Devoted Cleric, Guardian Fighter, Trickster Rogue, and Control Wizard) as well as the game's seven races (Human, Half-Elf, Tiefling, Dwarf, Drow, Elf, and Halfling). So far, Cryptic's only publicly announced the Control Wizard and Guardian Fighter classes.

Massively Exclusive: Neverwinter's Great Weapon Fighter class revealed (Massively)

The Great Weapon Fighter
Role: Damage dealer and secondary defender

Some fighters rely on spells, others prefer tricks and illusions. You believe that all encounters can be resolved quickly with the swift swing of a two-handed weapon. The thrill of taking on multiple enemies at once drives you into battle far ahead of your party. And if necessary, you will not hesitate to sacrifice yourself to ensure your party's survival.

Neverwinter unveils the Devoted Cleric (Massively)

Devoted Clerics have two at-will abilities under normal circumstances: a standard attack and a lighter attack that also heals allies for a small amount. As the Devoted Cleric attacks, he builds up Divinity, which allows him to shift into different at-will abilities -- a channeled beam of damage or a channeled heal that restores both the target and the cleric.

Neverwinter's Cloak Tower: A photo essay (Massively)

Just when I was about to ask, "How long is this dungeon, anyway?" we arrived at the gates leading up to the final boss. By now I was a seasoned (well, less-embarrassing) pro at manipulating the UI and sussing out fights. I had a cool ability that did a large amount of damage inside a circle on the floor, but only after about four seconds. If I timed it right, I could hit multiple mobs at once.

Hands-on with Neverwinter's character creator (Massively)

...Past that we got into the good stuff: making you look good. Or terrible. Or weird. Or old. Or however you want to look. Cryptic's been boasting that Neverwinter's avatar customization is right up there with its other titles, so I set out to put that to the test. You can simply pick a preset look and move on from there, or start with a preset and customize the heck out of it. Everyone needs to go with what's behind door number two.

First impressions of Neverwinter's beta (Massively)

Overall, I really enjoyed Neverwinter, but I see it as a tool at this point. It's a fantasy MMO multi-wrench with all of the right elements in place to be helpful with your own D&D campaign, and the real test will be when players get in there and start recreating the battle of Helm's Deep or the entirety of Icewind Dale with the Foundry. I can see a strong community building around this game in much the same way that Neverwinter Nights pretty much made modding a household word. There's vast potential for podcast discussions, fansites rating the top Foundry campaigns, and much more.

I would say that if you like DDO, you're going to love Neverwinter because it seems as if it could just be called DDO 2 at this point. And that's a good thing.

Pros

Strong focus on player-driven content
Gorgeous art style
Events are well-organized and easy to join
Extensive currency system
Exploring is rewarded
Puzzles and hidden rooms!

Cons

Clunky combat
Dated character models
Linear default storyline

[Morreion]

Neverwinter Days: Money and knowledge (Massively)

A good roundup of info sites about the game.

Jewel of the North: Impressions of Neverwinter to the level 30 cap (Massively)

As far as quest structure goes, Neverwinter is decidedly a themepark. You will be guided through quest after quest to hub after hub, seeing the sights, meeting the locals, and killing them. I actually rather enjoyed the story, though, which focuses on the city of Neverwinter after the catastrophic event known as the Spellplague, which caused massive damage to the lands of the Forgotten Realms. It may just be because of my aforementioned fondness for the setting, but I found myself engrossed in the story enough that the typical hub-to-hub slog didn't bother me.

The Foundry: User-Generated Content in Neverwinter (Ten Ton Hammer)

During the past two beta weekends, players were able to experience Foundry-built user-generated content by picking up quests at the bulletin boards throughout the city. So far, everything that's been available has been of the "adventure module" variety - short, self-contained adventures with lots of combat or exploration.

These one-shot adventures can be strung together to form campaigns. Campaigns are daisy-chained adventures following a common story arc, and each adventure serves as an "act" in the overall story. There were a few campaigns available during the first beta weekend, and a couple of them were very well done. The second weekend's focus was on other things, though, and the only stuff available on the Foundry was one-shot adventures.

Neverwinter Days: The allure of bite-sized gaming (Massively)

The core of Neverwinter is getting into the action quickly and painlessly. This could be solo, as in logging in to pray to your deity, running a solo mission, or doing a few quests. But it definitely is angled toward quick group content, especially with PvP, events, Foundry missions, and dungeon runs. The interface is set up to allow you to queue up for these and run them with either a PUG or your guild. It's the meat of the game, not the side attraction, and a vast majority of these experiences (again, from what I can tell) are not insanely demanding of one's time.

Hands-on with Neverwinter's Control Wizard (Massively)

It wouldn't be a Dungeons & Dragons game without magic missiles, so it was great to see this staple as the first spell that the Control Wizard gains. Watching my Wizard fling the missiles out in rapid fashion never got old, nor did watching enemies' health go from full to empty within a few hits.

My one big disappointment with magic missiles is that you're rooted to just one spot while using them, which is different from how the class was portrayed in the official trailer. There we saw a much more mobile Control Wizard who was throwing out missiles while advancing or retreating. In reality, you become much more of a stationary turret, sacrificing mobility for firepower.

Neverwinter Guardian Fighter - Class Preview Guide and Exclusive Video (Ten Ton Hammer)

As a primary melee tank class, the Guardian Fighter believes that the best offense is a good defense. The Guard skill is mapped to the Shift key, allowing the character to move around and block most incoming damage with his raised shield. Movement while blocking is slower than usual, but the trade-off is that actively blocking enemy attacks is very effective. It doesn't just mitigate a percentage of damage, and it doesn't require a roll. If you are Guarding, you automatically block incoming blows, and when you block a blow, you take zero damage.

Neverwinter Devoted Cleric Class Preview Guide (Ten Ton Hammer)

Instead of being the group's health battery, think of yourself as a direct damage dealer with some decent crowd control abilities in addition to the heals mentioned above. Chains of Blazing Light is a core encounter skill which temporarily AoE roots the enemy group in place. Couple this with some hard-hitting dailies like Avenging Angel or Flame Strike for massive AoE damage, or while these are charging up use encounter AoEs like Daunting Light, then use the at-will attack Astral Seal for some heals and Forgemaster's Flame to snare anything that crawls out of the inferno you just created.

Neverwinter Trickster Rogue Class Preview Guide (Ten Ton Hammer)

Misdirection comes in the form of some of the encounter powers you can slot in the [Q], [E], and [R] slots on your action bar. Perhaps the most critical of all your available encounter powers is Bait and Switch. Upon activation, Bait and Switch will drop a decoy while your character jumps backwards out of harm's way. Any enemies that are near the decoy will attack it instead of you.

D&D Monsters of Neverwinter, Part 1: The Staples (Ten Ton Hammer)

Goblins, hobgoblins, bugbears and kobolds have been around for a very long time in European folklore, usually as diminutive rustic troublemakers who often performed mischievous deeds while nearby farmers were asleep. Orcs are lifted right out of the works of Tolkien, who borrowed the word from either a translation of a word meaning "ogre" or an unrelated mythological evil spirit that may have lived in underwater caves.

Dev Blog – Mounts in Neverwinter (Neverwinter)

You’ll be able to get several mounts just with gold, but you can also pick up some mounts through the Founder’s Packs and the C-Store. We’re hoping to get horses, bears and wolves in the C-Store. Remember that you’ll be able to get C-Store currency with Astral Diamonds from events, so keep an eye on the in-game calendar.

[Regolyth]

I always get hyped over D&D based games, but they seem to always let me down in the end.

[Morreion]

I know what you mean, Rego- wish there's be a huge-world sandboxy D&D MMO!





How Neverwinter Compares to Previous D&D Games (Ten Ton Hammer)

The latest D&D game, Neverwinter, carries on a proud tradition. While there have been some black sheep in the herd, many D&D games have been outstanding, groundbreaking and innovative. In particular, D&D has been very well represented in multiplayer games - the first graphical MMO ever produced was SSI's Gold Box Neverwinter Nights in 1991. While the graphics of this DOS game seem primitive by today's standards, and the game itself would not likely appeal to the modern MMO crowd, it was still an impressive achievement at the time.

Baldur's Gate was awesome!

Neverwinter Days: The DDO connection (Massively)

Where does it leave Turbine and Cryptic? While devs at either studios would never say it, both sides probably wish the other game did not exist. DDO is aging and falling from its F2P popularity highs, and it really didn't need a like-minded if prettier-looking upstart taking a bite out of its potential or current playerbase. Neverwinter, on the other hand, needs as much of a strong head start as possible, and it has to do this while proving to players that there is room for and interest in Cryptic's vision of D&D.

Exclusive Neverwinter Interview with Jack Emmert (Ten Ton Hammer)

One of our biggest concerns with MMOs is time commitment. So it’s about being able to create a system where you can just get in and have fun, or get some XP even if you only play for half an hour. You shouldn’t need to play for six hours for things to happen. I remember EverQuest, and I was there for DAoC, but I couldn’t possibly play those games now because I just don’t have that kind of time to invest. But I still want to play MMOs, so we create these experiences that we call “bite-sized fun”.

See Neverwinter's Devoted Cleric in action (Massively)

Neverwinter's Devoted Cleric isn't your standard battle cleric with a mace and religious pamphlets but a long-distance spellcaster who has the ability to fling heals and death from afar while holding up a ridiculously huge icon.

Massively Exclusive: Neverwinter's Rothe Valley

It's a peaceful farming community that's come under attack by evil Drow who have enslaved the people. The spider-queen Lolth is behind it all, and players who want to help out the farmers will be entering her dark domain for a counter-attack.

Neverwinter Days: Can the Foundry succeed? (Massively)

Can the Foundry succeed? I believe it can, and I believe it must. The base game of Neverwinter will keep players busy for a couple of months, sure, but this is where its future is at. User-generated content promises a long life if a sweet spot can be achieved to tempt players with "just one more mission." But if it is to succeed, then Cryptic needs to be painfully honest about the problems it's had up to this point.

Solving the issue of how to rate and find quality Foundry episodes is what I'd place at the top of the priority list. A star-rating system doesn't cut it for many, many reasons, and there are plenty of alternatives...Cryptic's also seriously fumbled its handling of so-called exploit missions in the past, often penalizing the rest of the Foundry's players in the process. This needs to be dealt with

Neverwinter open beta starts April 30 (Massively)

Cryptic and Perfect World are throwing open Neverwinter's beta doors on April 30th. A joint press release states that there will be no character wipes or play restrictions after the open beta period begins.

Neverwinter gives players the freedom to buy skills (Massively)

The new power points system, which will be available in the upcoming fourth beta weekend, allows for both skill unlocks and upgrades. There will be certain restrictions, such as keeping the third rank for all skills locked until level 30 and not giving players enough points to purchase everything by the time they hit the endgame.

Neverwinter Days: Choosing your first class (Massively)

Two hands, one weapon. There, that's the Great Weapon Fighter in a nutshell for ya. You're a hard-hitting slaughter machine that's tougher than spellcasters yet a bit more vulnerable than your good friend, the Guardian Fighter.

New dev blog details Neverwinter's crafting (Massively)

In a nutshell, crafting involves hiring numerous NPC assets to complete crafting-related tasks. These NPCs include Leadership Mercs, Platesmithing Miners, Mailsmithing Prospectors, Leatherworking Skinners, and Tailoring Weavers. Over time, completing various tasks will award profession XP as well as resources and rewards.

Massively Exclusive: Neverwinter pre-launch interview, part one

Why was the decision made to have a "no wipe" open beta?

We wanted to get people in the game as soon as we could. We felt confident from beta weekend 4, and there wasn't anything major changing past now. So we wanted to reward our early adopters with some sort of benefit, and they're doing a lot of great work for us, like promoting us by livestreaming the game. We wanted to give them the ability to get in and play and help us make the game better before the launch-launch.

Massively Exclusive: Neverwinter pre-launch interview, part two

Another concern is with the Foundry. How do people sort through all of these missions to find the good ones? Does a five-star rating system work? Is there a better way? How do you fight exploits or good missions being buried in crap?

One of the things you might have already seen is Foundry featuring. Every week we have our team play through a lot of these missions and say, "That one was really cool. I want to feature that one." We can flag that on our end as a featured mission. That will show up in the game with a little ribbon and be put to the front of all of the search windows. If every week you want to come in and say, "I want to play the best of what's out there right now," you can go right to these missions. Another thing we're doing is featuring missions on the forums.

Massively's Neverwinter early access launch diary: Day one

Another thing to get used to in Neverwinter vs. other MMOs is a much more mobile combat system. Learning how to dodge, sidestep, and use terrain to your advantage is absolutely crucial here unless you like being a punching bag. The dodge animations are particularly neat; my Cleric does a sort of power-slide to quickly get away. I like to imagine that "Old Time Rock 'n' Roll" is playing when I do that.

Pantsless: First impressions of Neverwinter's open beta headstart (Massively)

I found it harder to form an opinion about Neverwinter's graphics than I expected. The character models are solid; I gawked at sparkles and campfires. But you spend a hell of a lot of time in dark dungeons. Maybe at level 21 I just haven't gotten to the dungeons with sparkling, gem-encrusted walls, but so far most of my experience has been sludge-covered tunnels. At my level, a lot of the game has been gritty, dark, and not particularly beautiful. The most vibrant area I've seen is the main city, which I really enjoy. It feels like coming home after a hard day of killing dungeon spiders. Similarly, the bright, shining campfires that bring you back to full health in dungeons really do feel like finding a tiny oasis. I think the graphics are good. The graphics just happen to frequently be well-rendered sludge.

Neverwinter counters Foundry exploit by nerfing XP rate (Massively)

Cryptic is cracking down on player-created missions that utilize certain exploits to gain XP faster than normal in Neverwinter's Foundry. While the studio temporarily banned authors for making these missions in the Foundry, it looks as though a recent patch has addressed the situation by "tweaking" the amount of XP that a player can gain within a set period of time.

Neverwinter teases module 1 update (Massively)

Cryptic's got a tiny surprise for Neverwinter players today: a teaser page for its module 1 update. The studio posted a splash page featuring a mystical forest with the phrase "They would seize from the moon the way to ruin and riches" floating above it.

[Laethaka]

yeah PWE bought Cryptic while I was working there. They were/are a mess. Almost everything PWE has tried lately has bombed and this game is their single hope...