Revisiting Neverwinter Online

Neverwinter Online has been out for a little over three years now, and judging by the regular updates on WotC's home pages it appears to get a new content update every time they release a book expansion for D&D 5E these days. I had dived in to Neverwinter back in 2013 (an initial impressions review here, followed by my "lost interest" phase here) with all the hope that it would live up to its predecessor, D&D Online from Turbine, which I had played extensively and was quite invested in.

Lomng story short: Neverwinter, in 2013, was not quite what I needed to replace my addiction back then to games like D&D Online and World of Warcraft. In 2013, that is.

Cut to 2016! I've all but given up on ever truly understanding or appreciating the nuances of Guild Wars 2, and while I continue to play and enjoy The Elder Scrolls Online, I have also grown to wonder why it feels like all quests in ESO seem to fall in to one of the following three categories:

1. Bored noble elf who is tomb robbing/inspecting ruins/digging for artifacts/just being a prick deigns to let you suffer through the task on his behalf, and usually with little acknowledgement of credit.

2. Angry/sorrowful ghost either tries to stop you from righting a wrong it did, or begs you to wright a wrong it either did or failed to stop in life.

3. Desperate soldier convinces you to do what his entire army appears unable to do, mostly because they are apparently standing around waiting for you to show up and end the local conflict on their behalf.

Yeah....after a while there's a pattern that emerges from many TESO missions, and not even the awesome Razum Dar can save you from a sense of bored familiarity at these moments.

Enter Neverwinter! With a recent modest upgrade in my PC (to a better i5 setup with a 960GB SSD) thanks to a friend of mine, I've been able to run certain games at max or near max capacity that used to chug on my older rig. Neverwinter was on my "see how it runs now" list, and this weekend, recovering from an illness, I had some time to kill....

Anyway, it turns out Neverwinter has gotten much more robust than I recalled, and had really fleshed out. I still need to play longer than the 23+ hours I sank in to the game leveling a half-dozen characters up to 18-20th level, but I spent a healthy amount of time with Forge adventures as well as taking the time and effort to figure out the bizarre coin economy that Perfect World likes to implement in all of its titles, a sort of weird freemium shell game that they keep in place so you have to be careful figuring out whether you need certain marks, zen coinage bought wish cash, astral diamonds acquired through "means most obscure," auction house trades and still others that don't seem to become relevant until much later in the game. It's not probably much more difficult to decipher than the way such coinage/marks have worked in other titles such as WoW, but the inclusion of RMT in the process makes one want to be careful....

But really, that was only about 5% of the process. Once I had the inventory/item/crafting nonsense figured out so I knew what stuff was relevant and what I could effectively ignore for the time being, then it was much easier to focus on enjoying what the game had to offer that I was actually interested in. Also, I spent about $10 to get some zen coinage, which I can tell you two things about:

1. I bought some keys for the lockboxes, and outside of some training manuals for companions I was nonplussed at what I was getting.
2. I converted some Zen into astral diamonds to pick up companions and stuff on the auction house. What I discovered was that certain things were worth it (if the AD cost was low) but most stuff in the AH was vastly overpriced for the level I was at. If i make it to 70 I'll let you know if that changes.

Anyway, the quests:

First, the storylines in Neverwinter have grown considerably since release, and if D&D 5E has a module release out, it's also in Neverwinter as a scenario pack. The scenarios appear to all be free; they get your cash through zen sales to buy vanity items, special gear and gods know what else. Fine with me! It does so far appear that you can ignore the RMT element of the game and play what one might call "the base game" with no loss of experience.

The basic storylines up to level 20 remain quite entertaining. I hadn't gotten past level 12 when I played before....I really lost steam back then....and it felt like leveling was going faster and making more sense this time to me. An effect of visiting it at the right time, or a reflection of changes and improvements? I couldn't say.

Then I dived in to the Forge scenarios. When I was last playing Forge was fresh and weird but appeard to be very limited. Well, it's still kind of limited, but between 2013 and now people have really taken the Forge system to the nth level. I played some amazingly interesting scenarios, and finding the cream of the crop was now quite easy, with various agents and billboards everywhere providing you advice on what to explore.

Some of the Forge scenarios were so good I took notes on ideas to steal for my weekly tabletop session. That good. 

I have one character of each class type going on right now. Sadly there are only seven classes currently in the game, up 2 from 2013. I had sort of hoped they would have expanded it a bit by now. The classes still have a style/feel closer to D&D 4E in terms of language and thematics, but don't let that dissuade you....those thematics actually convey quite well in an action RPG, which Neverwinter most definitely is.

Back when I was into it before I had bought an extra character slot or two on sale, and had gained access to drow and tieflings. Since then, dragonborn and some weird elf variants have been made available. When I clicked on the "buy dragonborn" option it took me to a page where I could buy the dragonborn pack for an insane $74.99. WTF. In the general in-game store I think I spotted an option for like 2,000 Zen though just to unlock the race itself (no frills), equivalent to $20. Hmmmm. Not sufficiently excited about dragonborn to spend any of that, though.

So Neverwinter looks like a fine game now, with some robust user content in the forge that really stands apart from other MMOs out there. It's got me thinking about it....obsessively!.....which is something I haven't done for a while (in fact only Destiny and The Division have gotten me there in recent years).

I'll report further along as I finally break the 20s in level and start seeing the mid and upper tier of the games. Intrigued to see what the Neverwinter take on the various D&D 5E scenario books are like.

Giving Neverwinter Online a Second Chance

In a series of amusing steps I went from being a little incensed at Perfect World's severely limited "why did you stop playing?" survey to curious about the game and suddenly I'm back to playing. The process worked sort of like this, and suggests some important reasons to consider why NWO is actually a decent game, despite some oddities that may or may not be deal breakers:

Step 1-get back into FR lore/books: I resumed reading Salvatore's Forgotten Realms novels again. Also started reading some other D&D novels that are now accessible on ebook. In this process I discovered that books which once offended my literary sensibilities when they were new (i.e. Avatars Trilogy) are suddenly kind of fun to read. So my reading tastes have shifted with age, apparently. 

Step 2-grow annoyed at useless survey: Got that survey, which prompted me to think about key issues I had with NWO. Truth is, I deleted NWO because I didn't have time to focus on it and didn't want to take the time to figure out if it was going to be a costly venture or not....a legitimate issue with all F2P model MMOs.

Step 3-play a medley of MMOs and go "waitasec...": Wife got back into Everquest II with some of her online cohorts this weekend. This prompted me to download EQII to try it out with them. End result: although I sense a really interesting story and background in EQII, it left me wondering why I was doing this when I had other games under my belt that still had lots of time, investment and life left in them (i.e. D&D Online, Rift, Guild Wars 2). So I stopped EQII and skipped over to some of the old mainstays to see if they would pique my interest again.

Step 4-go back to DDO and remember it's got problems: Quickly eliminated D&D Online after a few hours playing through only to lose all the XP again with a party wipe at the end of a dungeon, reminding me of why I never got very far in the game (highest PC I have through normal progression is level 13) and also why I found it so frustrating. Annoyed at beholders I met, wishing another game would let me engage with some iconic D&D critters and environments. Hey...waitasec....

Step 5-Acceptance that tabletop space and MMO space are different beasts (also, bribes): Realized that I ought to just get over the lack of "D&D-like design" in the char gen and just try NWO again. Accidentally discovered I had 200,000 astral diamonds and that these could be exchanged to purchase in-game zen. This got me enough zen to get four characters slots and an extra companion slot. Also discovered I had a code to redeem for an orc wolf buddy (mount?) at level 20. Cool.

Step 6-Scrub brain of expectations, resume game with fresh slate (also, drow!): With a fresh mind I approached NWO once again taking my own advice from my first overview of the game: to treat it as an experience in its own right and not as a D&D-simulator for the MMO-verse. Noticed drow had at last unlocked for everyone, made a rogue. Discovered the rogue is far more fun to play than either warrior class. Why, NWO devs, do you guys hate warriors so much?!?!? So drow rogue for me!

So long story short, here's four tips to properly enjoying NWO:

1. treat it as a lore-rich experience in the Forgotten Realms. Ignore the D&D part and get it out of your head that the game should be a simulation of the D&D tabletop experience in terms of rules and processes. If this is hard, go play DDO for a while; you'll either stay there or realize, "Yes, NWO is a better and more rounded experience, even if DDO has a lot of cool stuff...it also has a lot more frustrating stuff, too."

2. Make anything other than a warrior type character. I can say rogue is good, and have been told clerics kick butt. Will try a wizard soon.

3. Remember, even though NWO is ostensibly based on 4E mechanics, it's only superficially so. The similarities are enough for me to really miss my 4E gaming days, but should not be problematic for anyone who had issues with 4E.

4. Finally, and most importantly: don't let veteran MMO gamer jadedness dissuade you! It gets me all the time when I try new MMOs, and it's a real bummer when it does. NWO is better than I give it credit for, but MMO fans are suffering from a serious level of overload and choice these days. I think NWO deserves a bit more consideration than I was giving it previously....although they still need to get more classes in (warlock, ranger, paladin and warlord would be fantastic) and at least one more race (dragonborn).

Investing in NWO probably means less time with Guild Wars 2 for me....which is okay; GW2 is a game which commands time in a slower and more methodical way for me. I'm still keeping up with Rift when the mood arises, though. I will soon have my first level 50 defiant rogue over there, and look forward to someday getting her or my guardian warrior to level cap (60) in the laborious albeit interesting Storm Legion content.

Neverwinter Survey

I received a survey from Perfect World in the 'ol email bin for Neverwinter Online, which seemed aimed at lapsed players....specifically, why haven't I been playing?

It was an interesting question because in truth I've given up on the game, and even deleted it from the PC (left it on the laptop though). So...why?

The problem with their simple survey is it isn't going to get the answers they want, at least not from me. Question one (pick one only) was "Why haven't you played Neverwinter recently?" Answers included:
My computer isn't strong enough to run the game (no issue here)
I don't like the action combat system (the problem isn't how the action combat works)
I didn't enjoy the quests (they were bog-standard MMO quests, suffering only from painful familiarity)
The character classes didn't fit my style (forget my style, they didn't fit D&D's style!)
I didn't like the character looks (meh it looked fine to me)
The items weren't compelling (this here; class-locked equipment is very much not D&D...anymore)
I wanted more PVP (could care less about PVP)
Not enough story in the quests (this might be true; it pales in comparison to NWN1 and 2)

What's missing was "this isn't what it says it is in the tin....namely, D&D. It's not even a decent representation of 4th edition. Seriously. If they didn't expect some fallout from presenting a D&D game that bears at best a superficial resemblance to D&D then...well. I guess their survey suggests this was not an option to consider, nor one they want to hear about.

The second question was even more amusingly frustrating. "Which character class did you play?" with one option to check off. Of course there are only five very rigid classes in the game, and they do grant players two character slots to start (and you can buy more). So why only one check-off?

The third and final question was the worst. "What would make you play again?" The choices were:
New character class (how about "classes," maybe 5-8 more? And with loads of customization!)
New race (yes, dragonborn please)
More PVP content (meh)
More endgame content (wouldn't know but wife says yes)
More storyline content (meh, it needs more original and engaging storyline content, that looks and feels different from every other MMO out there; also, more dynamic so it stops drawing unfavorable comparisons to the more dynamic DDO style of quests)

What a range of choices! The one's I'd like to have checked off would have included this list:
More customizable classes that actually let you customize like D&D should
A world environment that is not so linear
A gear/equipment system that looks like it does in D&D and no class-locked equipment ala Korean MMO design
A new Neverwinter Nights 3 that builds on the two prior games
More storyline content....that doesn't feel like generic MMO #1,610

I'll leave the last question as-is because it's probably true. I never whipped through to the end like my wife and her cohorts did, but when she says there's not much to it, I believe her...she's an MMO guru when it comes to absorption of content! If she says it doesn't have enough content, I am inclined to believe her.

Okay then! Survey rant off!

ADDENDUM: And not three days later I had a change of heart and loaded up Neverwinter again. My gripes still stand....but I admit, it's still a fun game. More later on why I might feel it's worth it even though I have so many other issues with NWO!

A Look at the Foundry in Neverwinter Online

Actually it's not me reviewing the Foundry, but my wife. She's been building scenarios in the Foundry and having a lot of fun with the trial and error of it all. Her experience so far can be found in detail on her spanky new blog over here. Check it out! She's also maintaining an "in character diary" of the adventures of Kynvas in Neverwinter, also fun if you'd like to see an in character travelogue through the Forgotten Realm's potentially most dangerous city to live in.

Aside from her tumblr account, she's been posting these works on 2P.com, a game news site that invited her to do so...but is having some technical issues for sign ins right now, so I suggested she might want to preserve her work in a proper blog for posterity and all that.

Hey it's Kynvas!

I'm keen to explore the Foundry.....but it's just some bad timing right now, what with me being sort of tired of 90% of all video games at the moment and almost singularly obsessed with survival horror titles to the exclusion of all else. Ah well....