Neverwinter Nights Online. (Cryptic Studios)

[tmp]

It's more of a "gut feeling" thing I guess. I really didn't like how TERA's melee combat worked, which was basically a sheet of hotkeys with click-to-attack. I didn't like having to constantly juggle a dozen abilities while also having to engage in split-second dodging maneuvers. I liked NWO's smaller active skillset and MOBA-style key setup a lot.

I dunno, it just flowed better for me.

Ahh, is it something like the Secret World combat then? (i.e. few selectable abilities at the time and a less strict "dodge" system based on positioning outside of aoe attacks)

I suppose I should just download it and find out myself, but trying to find excuse to skip registration on yet another company web site

[Rendakor]

For what it's worth, I thought NWO's combat was very very good; better than TERA's by a long shot.

Can you elaborate on that?

It's more of a "gut feeling" thing I guess. I really didn't like how TERA's melee combat worked, which was basically a sheet of hotkeys with click-to-attack. I didn't like having to constantly juggle a dozen abilities while also having to engage in split-second dodging maneuvers. I liked NWO's smaller active skillset and MOBA-style key setup a lot.

I dunno, it just flowed better for me.

Thanks for this, you saved me a download. I loved TERA's melee, and hate MOBAs and limited skill selections.

[Fabricated]

I watched a video of the game and it didn't look bad, but the currency thing is .

This F2P thing sucks. I kinda like the base game for the box purchase, cash shop for dressup/grind-skipping/major content model if this is where we have to go.

[Merusk]

They don't let you transfer currencies around between games so you can't grind a bazillion whotsits in game "A" then sell them off for a ton of zen and transfer it to game "B" cutting them out of the market.  It keeps Zen from sloshing around accruing under one game's umbrella and then breaking the bank of a new game while ensuring PWI always has a market for it.

[Phred]

Power leveling in a Cryptic game seems like an odd choice.  Their leveling content is usually not bad in my experience, but it is usually not particularly repeatable, and the end game is usually limited at launch.  Crash through it all during headstart without really bothering to enjoy what good stuff is there and I can see a whole of lot upset people who spent 100s on the game feeling like they've got nothing to do after the first two weeks.

The expression only themselves to blame comes to mind.
Ppl who do this in MMO's should get an ingame email on hitting max level saying congrats on being a moron.

[Ginaz]

I've made a total of 5 characters so far (5 slots) and got them to at least 11 so they can all do the invocation at the alter in Protectors Enclave every hour.  Made about 15k in the past day or so just by doing this and one of my characters even gained a level from the xp he gained.   I log out my all alts at the alter to make it easier to get the astral diamonds.  If I get ambitious I might even do the dailys on each of them for the 1000 ADs for every one I complete.  My main character has already made over 75k ADs just from invoking and the dailys.

[Merusk]

I'm at 450k from selling useless greens and 4lockboxes on the AH.

Just sayin.

[apocrypha]

Open beta has started. And the login system has failed. The launcher just shows a white box and nobody can actually log in.

How many times do we have to go round this loop before someone works out how to massively scale up capacity for the launch periods of MMOs?

[Zetor]

I'm looking forward to the MMO that'll give all the people who tried to log in on day 1 a pair of actual in-game clown shoes as a gift.

[Miasma]

About the only valid programming/testing reason to have an open beta anymore is to see if your systems can handle the load.  You can't yell at them for being unable to handle that many connections in beta, wait for launch day when it will inevitably happen again.

[Soukyan]

Open beta has started. And the login system has failed. The launcher just shows a white box and nobody can actually log in.

How many times do we have to go round this loop before someone works out how to massively scale up capacity for the launch periods of MMOs?

Open beta? I was under the mistaken assumption that the game had released today. Bummer.

[Merusk]

If you release you get complaints that there's only x amount of content and your game sucks.  "Beta" means your fans can fling that back against any attacks from that and a few other fronts.

MWO still lists itself in "open beta" and World of Tanks did for a good long while as well.

Open Beta is release in truth now, not just because us cranky old people said it was shaping-up that way.

[koro]

Yeah, it's "open beta" to buy themselves a couple months of leeway with the average MMO tourist with how half-assed most of the game is.

[Phred]

About the only valid programming/testing reason to have an open beta anymore is to see if your systems can handle the load.  You can't yell at them for being unable to handle that many connections in beta, wait for launch day when it will inevitably happen again.

Except for f2p games open beta is launch day. No wipes now remember?

[Phred]

Yeah, it's "open beta" to buy themselves a couple months of leeway with the average MMO tourist with how half-assed most of the game is.

A couple of months is still a couple of months.
The tourists will be gone in 2 months max no matter what they call it and I'm sure they are aware of that.

[koro]

In news that should surprise nobody considering their login servers were down for hours, the game is pretty much unplayably laggy.

[Phred]

Heard in general chat.

Typical beta excuse. If your game isnt ready don't open it up for everyone.

I guess not playing didnt occur to him.

[Soukyan]

Yeah, it's "open beta" to buy themselves a couple months of leeway with the average MMO tourist with how half-assed most of the game is.

So is the game half-assed then? I didn't read much about it. I watched a couple of videos. It looks like there are just a small number of race/class combinations available?

[Numtini]

They pissed me off already. This morning I created an account with the display name of numtini. Now they tell me I have to link that account to my account and when I go to do so, it tells me my display name (numtini) is taken. This has to be some strange vestige of an old Cryptic beta account, but fucked if I know how to fix it--none of my other email addresses work on the Perfectworld site.

[Falconeer]

European launch is plagued with login and patcher issues. Eventually going to the forum gets you a solution to start the game, but I swear I haven't seen this much lag in a game since my attempt to play Lineage 2 beta on a Korean server sometimes in 2002. Looking forward to try it, but it's just not possible at the moment.

EDIT: There's no European servers or client and I was being dumb. I wonder if the terrible lag I am having is just for those connecting from Europe, or is it hitting everybody.

[Malakili]

Yeah, it's "open beta" to buy themselves a couple months of leeway with the average MMO tourist with how half-assed most of the game is.

So is the game half-assed then? I didn't read much about it. I watched a couple of videos. It looks like there are just a small number of race/class combinations available?

I installed and poked around a little but haven't actually played yet.  I looks like Dwarf, Human, Halfling, Elf, Tiefling, Half-Elf are available for races.  For classes they had Cleric, Control Wizard, Protection Fighter (or something), Berserker Fighter (or something), Rogue and I think some kind of more offensive oriented mage.  I don't remember all the names of the classes obviously.   I think there are 5 or 6.  If I had to guess they will fill out classes and races as things for their "Zen Store" (RMT).

I only had two character slots for free though, so that kind of sucks.  

I plan on actually playing some tonight, I'll write up my impressions of the gameplay.  I anticipate the game being fairly unremarkable and not having any long term appeal, but I enjoyed a bit of Champions, and Star Trek Online isn't the worst but neither captured my interest long term.  I expect something similar out of this - if I can get a bit of fun out of this without any monetary investment, that'll be good enough for me.

[Zetor]

They pissed me off already. This morning I created an account with the display name of numtini. Now they tell me I have to link that account to my account and when I go to do so, it tells me my display name (numtini) is taken. This has to be some strange vestige of an old Cryptic beta account, but fucked if I know how to fix it--none of my other email addresses work on the Perfectworld site.

I firmly believe that the design docs for the Cryptic+PWE account management tools consist of a pixelated trollface.jpg and nothing else.

Let me just say there's a reason my NW handle is @zaphtastic instead of @zaphir (like it is in every other game, including Champs). There's no way to change it either 

[Falconeer]

Looks like I missed something and there's no servers other than the NA ones. I am on Mindflayer, is anyone else there and having lag issues or is it just me for connecting from another continent?

[koro]

Apparently their load balancing is broken, so it's causing crippling lag and rubberbanding in a lot of instances. The servers went down about 15 minutes ago, presumably to fix it.

And upon looking at their forums (to find out when the servers will be back up; naturally there's no info about that), I was entirely unsurprised to see a lot of "IT'S BETA, GIVE IT TIME" with a bunch of snarky links to the Wikipedia article on "Beta".

[Ginaz]

Apparently their load balancing is broken, so it's causing crippling lag and rubberbanding in a lot of instances. The servers went down about 15 minutes ago, presumably to fix it.

And upon looking at their forums (to find out when the servers will be back up; naturally there's no info about that), I was entirely unsurprised to see a lot of "IT'S BETA, GIVE IT TIME" with a bunch of snarky links to the Wikipedia article on "Beta".

Just because they call it beta doesn't mean that it is.  It's a live and launched game.  Period.

[palmer_eldritch]

Probably a smart move to call the first couple of days of launch "beta".

I played around with this and it seems to be very simple in the sense that it's all about getting quests and going into instances. No emergent gameplay, very little scope for exploration that I could see in my brief playthrough.

But there were some nice elements. Some of the spells have interesting graphic effects. My control mage had a freezing ray which caused damage and also coated an opponent with ice, starting with their feet, slowing down their movement. The ice becomes thicker and rises up their body if you keep the ray on them, until eventually they are frozen solid and can't move at all for a second or two.

Some of your opponents telegraph their moves, either through circles on the ground telling you were to avoid or sometimes simply through their animations, such as a long swing with a giant sword, giving you a chance to get out the way.

While gameplay wasn't complex, it seemed fairly slick. The game has high production values. Personally I did think the voice acting was terrible but that's probably just a personal preference.

[Phred]

All you snarky ppl bitching about them calling this Beta, where the fuck have you been the last 4 years. This has been standard practice in F2P games since like forever. Alods and Rune of Magic both did this and they launched years ago so it's not like this is some new and surprising thing unless you've been living under a rock.

[Threash]

I assume it is not a coincidence that it starts exactly as dungeons and dragons online did.

[Phred]

I assume it is not a coincidence that it starts exactly as dungeons and dragons online did.

And Tera and a dozen other games.

[Threash]

Haha, my queue position starter at 5k went down to 4k in like ten minutes then it shot up to 10k. 

[Merusk]

Haha, my queue position starter at 5k went down to 4k in like ten minutes then it shot up to 10k. 

People who paid $200 for the Hero pack get to jump the queue and it's after 5pm EST and CST so they're home from work.  Your number will creep higher as, MTN and PST folks also get home.


It's an enjoyable diversion as it's F2P. Don't go looking for the sub experience as you all are so eager to compare it to.

[Threash]

No, it's a bug.  Restarting the queue gets you back to around 5k, then it shoots up again after a minute.

[Malakili]

Yea, logged in, was at 7k, went down 6.something k and then shot up to 31k.  Looks like this one will have to wait until later in the week.

[Falconeer]

The 31k is a visual bug. Eventually you keep moving in the real queue.

[Riggswolfe]

You know, in a game with no box price and no sub I think it's silly to QQ about things like lag. You're not exactly out money. That said, I haven't downloaded it yet because I don't want to mess with the lag.