Neverwinter Nights Online. (Cryptic Studios)

[Venkman]

Finally grabbed this. Actually enjoying it. But it helped that someone said earlier they thought of this more as a Diablo-type game than a WoW-style MMO. That works for me. I turned off the chat feeds and am trying to remove the chat panes altogether. As a single player dungeon romper wtih some light NPC interactions, it holds up ok.

I just wish, as a Control Wizard, I could cast on the move, and that I wouldn't stop for 1/2 a second after each teleport. Minor quibbles though.

Not having any problems playing during the invasions. I'm on the same server you all are. Generally the portals have maybe 4-6 people. I assume it's because most people have moved on from the newbie level farming or something, as I found out when a portal opened up right on top of me and I was the only one there.

[koro]

Apparently they've been doing some work on their end to make the portal stuff not unplayable laggy, so it's not going to be like the first couple days of the event.

[Stormwaltz]

Yeah, the lag has hugely improved since the "night sky" patch. I barely see any at all now.

I'm routinely dying as one of 1-3 PCs fighting a given incursion, but with no death penalty who cares?

[Stormwaltz]

/scratch head

Is the new Alchemy profession broken? I went through the three-step process of making an Unstable Potion, used it, and absolutely nothing happened.

[apocrypha]

/scratch head

Is the new Alchemy profession broken? I went through the three-step process of making an Unstable Potion, used it, and absolutely nothing happened.

...Yet.

 





j/k I have no idea, I got bored of this ages ago.

[koro]

http://nw.perfectworld.com/furyofthefeywild

So Cryptic's given some new info on this. The gist is:

- New zone (Sharandar)
- A "Campaign System", which appears to be a WoW-style phased zone questline
- Better Foundry tools
- Weaponsmithing and Artificing crafts
- Moon and Sun Elf playable races

No new classes (everyone was expecting Ranger), and no non-renegade Drow.

Pretty disappointing, but then again, what isn't with this game?

[Chinchilla]

So beta is ending?  Go figure I grab this as beta. If it is ending I am surprised they will release it in the state it is right now. I'd rather go back to GW2 than play this in its current state.

[Stormwaltz]

"Beta" ended this week.

Though there are lots of little disappointments in the game, I'm gravely disappointed with the level of cosmetic customization. That's the area Cryptic has owned every other company at since 2004 - it's their distinctive strength. In Neverwinter, you can fiddle with your PC's body at creation, but there's only one set of armor for each class in each level range, and the number of cosmetic outfits in the entire game can literally be counted on one hand - and all put one of them are cash purchases. The variety of dyes is virtually nonexistent, and again - all cash purchases.

And then there are the companion NPCs. Rather than re-using STO's lovely, polished system that lets you customize Bridge Officers to the same degree as PC's, they decided to make Companions completely static. You can unlock a few extra, fixed appearances as you level up, but that's it - and that's why you see legions of clones in every screenshot. Want someone tho looks different? Sorry, you have to buy a whole new Companion for cash money. And then level it up from scratch. It pretty much guarantees I won't ever use a Companion other than my maxed out Dire Wolf.

What the hell, Cryptic? What the hell?

[PalmTrees]

Customization is lacking choices, but you can use the gear merge thing to transfer looks and open up some more. At 60, changing the look of my focal robes cost me ~60k AD, so kinda pricey. My CW wears the armor of lolth look, but I also could've used illithid, asmodeous, etc. Found a pair of gloves that have no graphic, so I could go bare-handed if I wanted. They really need more choices, and a preview in the auction house.

[Falconeer]

I heard something about a PvP zone, Gauntygrim or something? And wars between guild. Is that any remotely true? Could anyone give me a rundown of what's available PvP-wise and if any of those rumors are true?

[koro]

Gauntylgrym is the big end-game PvE raid. It's basically Moria, but with elementals instead of orcs.

What happens is your guild leader sets your guild to one of the two factions vying for control over the place (you can't even begin to do Gauntlgrym without being in a guild that's aligned itself). Then, when the Gauntlgrym event begins, you queue up, and then you're tossed into a 20 v. 20 competitive thing.

The first round is a PvE race, where you and your group kill a bunch of shit on the way to a boss, and whoever gets the most points gets a big buff going into the next part.

The second part is a 20 v. 20 PvP match, where you're trying to capture and hold points while fighting each other. Whoever has the most points wins, and gains access to the actual PvE raid itself, which drops tier 2 gear. The losers of the PvP portion get relegated to the loser's raid, which drops the nigh-useless tier 1 gear.

From what I've been told from the tiny number of people I know who still play, it's more or less a flop. You can only do Gauntlgrym when the event is going, and it only happens a few times per day, taking the schedule completely out of your hands.

That's not even going into the topic of a PvE raid in a largely PvE game whose PvP is an absolutely dire afterthought requiring a PvP match for access.

Edit: There's a video a page or two back with info telling how GG goes. I can't be arsed to find it, because it's yet another decent idea that's poorly executed by Cryptic.

Edit 2: Falconeer, I know you're a big PvP dude, but if you haven't been playing Neverwinter and are thinking of trying it out for the PvP... don't. Just don't. It's fucking awful, and you need a $40 mount to even begin to be competitive. It doesn't even have the interesting novelty that Champions' PvP had with its zombie horde thing. Cryptic's been bad at PvP for nearly a decade, and they're not getting any better.

[Falconeer]

Thanks a lot, Koro. Yes, I wanted some straight facts because I guy I know has been trying to get me and a few others by saying that since the official launch they added guild wars and an open pvp zone. It smelles like a huge crock of shit so I needed some authentic info. Looks like this "friend" was trying to scam our guild into playing something we would have hated. Ha.

[Samprimary]

Yo what wait what, this isn't or will shortly not be a beta anymore?

duuude does that come packaged with a scaling down of their development into a 'post-release' mode

[Malakili]

Yo what wait what, this isn't or will shortly not be a beta anymore?

duuude does that come packaged with a scaling down of their development into a 'post-release' mode

It "launched" this week.  I honestly don't know why I just put that in quotes.  I guess the new model for betas and launches is so odd to me that the distinction is minimal.

[Samprimary]

If "launch" comes at all paired with a drawdown and reallocation of a lot of the staff and resources being invested in this game's development (as it so often does) then it's time to abandon all hope for this shit.

I seriously thought this game was going to be released in a year or two more based on my experience of playing it. I almost wrote a post like a week ago saying "yeah neverwinter is in a good place for where it is, this is a good framework, and they have plenty of time to get to where they've fleshed out the classes to a complete list and dealt with all the current problems."

and then one of you would have to have been all like

yeah no this game's official launch is in like four days lawl

and I would have been all like

[koro]

Yeah that would never have happened. Cryptic's built their company on marketing themselves as an outfit that can crank out a B-tier MMO from concept to release in ~two years of dev time and a small budget. If not for Perfect World mandating a drastic shift in the base game's design when they bought Cryptic, it'd probably have been released on schedule a year ago.

[Malakili]

Yeah that would never have happened. Cryptic's built their company on marketing themselves as an outfit that can crank out a B-tier MMO from concept to release in ~two years of dev time and a small budget. If not for Perfect World mandating a drastic shift in the base game's design when they bought Cryptic, it'd probably have been released on schedule a year ago.

To be fair, they are pretty good using that model.  Champions, Star Trek, and Neverwinter are all more or less fun to play in terms of mechanics and lack in terms of stickiness, but are good enough to get some people to put cash in. Given that they are smart enough to keep budgets low and actually release things on a schedule, this is probably the closest to the model of the smaller MMO some of us have been wanting to see instead of the 200 million dollar "WoW killer" recipe for failure.

Granted, most of us want a sandbox that follows this model, but whatever.  Maybe that is Star Citizen.

[Nonentity]

So I downloaded this and was playing it on Sunday on a whim. Seems fun, I don't know that I will spend like, money on it. Will be a fun little time-waster, I guess.

[Hawkbit]

First 12 levels were fun, then it made me want to play GW2, so now I'm back there.  ;)

[Threash]

First 12 levels were fun, then it made me want to play GW2, so now I'm back there.  ;)

Wow, that is the same exact thing that happened to me.

[Stormwaltz]

Out of boredom I made an alt today, and accidentally discovered that Neverwinter actually does have an archer: the cleric.

What is this I don't even

[Stormwaltz]

"Choosing Ground," an elf quest in Tower District, may be the most broken quest I've seen in years. The bug I filed:

1. I activate the east beacon.
2. Orcs spawn.
3. I kill them all and get loot... but quest never advances, and the rock becomes sparkly/activatable again.

Result: Quest can never be completed, but I get infinite loot on demand.
Expected: Quest to advance.

[Hawkbit]

Hey, that's a pretty quality bug report. 

[Xilren's Twin]

"Choosing Ground," an elf quest in Tower District, may be the most broken quest I've seen in years. The bug I filed:

1. I activate the east beacon.
2. Orcs spawn.
3. I kill them all and get loot... but quest never advances, and the rock becomes sparkly/activatable again.

Result: Quest can never be completed, but I get infinite loot on demand.
Expected: Quest to advance.

Sad thing is, that quest has been bugged the whole of the open beta's existence.  Maybe you can tip a dev some astral diamonds to fix it?

[Stormwaltz]

For me, at least, the game is utterly broken and unplayable tonight.

I seem to be unable to connect to the patch server. The client freezes and locks up whenever it's run. I've even tried reinstalling from scratch.

[Ginaz]

Looks like rangers are officially a go as the next class for the game.  Should be in before the end of the year in the next big update.  I have no link to provide right now since I'm on my iPhone.  I'm sure the info is available if you Google it.

Edit: Info in the link.
http://nw.perfectworld.com/news/?p=1010121

[Tannhauser]

Yeah, I'm going to roll a Ranger unless it costs a lot of money.  I like the bow and arrow classes.

[Scold]

How's this looking for a content creator? Can I focus more on content creation than grinding my character?

[Ginaz]

How's this looking for a content creator? Can I focus more on content creation than grinding my character?

It's completely separate from the game and your characters and free to use.

[Ginaz]

Newest update featuring the ranger is now live.  Playing the ranger has been fun so far.  Ranged attacks are pretty devastating.  I haven't used melee too much as the mobs tend to die before they get to you and also because you don't get to use melee until lvl 10.  This is also now available on Steam and extra character slots are 33% off, which is nice because its probably the most reasonably priced item/service available.
http://nw.perfectworld.com/news/?p=1052601

[5150]

This is now available on Steam (in case anyone cares)

[Numtini]

I popped in and remembered why I liked it so much at the start.

[Threash]

And rangers just got released, free.

[Goumindong]

Rangers are officially a lot of fun. Your ranged and melee skills are on separate CD's and you get at different points dash-ins for melee, and dash outs for ranged. So you can open up ranged, change to melee, dash in and use your encounter/daily powers then switch to ranged and dash out and use your encounter ranged powers. Then pepper until its time to dash in again

[shiznitz]

Is Dash a one key mechanic, i.e. do you control movement on the dash?