Neverwinter : Beta Impressions from Total Biscuit

On reading forum posts about this it turns out that healing potions are found randomly with other loot in lockboxes which are "made" by the leadership profession. As a first character, it will be my first choice. Having healing potions, even randomly crafted ones, will be hugely advantageous for alts.

On another note, in the beta4, you could not mail items to your alts. You would have to create a second account, mail it to a character in there and then mail it to your alt. The game does not have a shared bank space (yet) and you cannot mail your alts. I smell another convenience purchasable in the cash shop looming. Makes sense though, they have to make their money somehow.
 
Aah, the good old days of having to have a middle man to transfer goods between alts. I'm surprised they are going backwards with this, it has become tradition to have shared banks and things now. Unless of course , shared bank slots will be these convenience items.

But yes, they have to make their money somewhere, so as much as they are touting how truly free this game is , i can't imagine a big budget + franchise game like this not to have hooks to make you pay. It's just not worth it from a financial perspective, surely they are paying licenses to Wizards of the Coast for using Forgotten Realms/DnD . So this is not some indie operation where a few guys can operate this out of a basement while doing their day jobs.
 
"Open beta", also known as release date ;-P, is just around the corner, with the expensive pre-orders getting to start playing at 18:00 on Thursday night and the not so expensive ones on Saturday night at the same time. Everyone else gets in at the same time on Tuesday. So far the community is very good, much better than other communities, I think. It is probably because a large chunk of the forum community are roleplayers and people having real high hopes for a good D&D IP experience.

I am throwing myself into this fully on RP mode. Joined a RP guild etc. It is going to be interesting spending in game time gathering in a city location and chatting as opposed to a headlong rush through content. Who knows, maybe this will have me playing longer than 3 months. The whole community created content is going to be very interesting to experience.
 
I might play on Saterday/Sunday while i wait for my flight. I am rather sad about this "expensive early headstart" thing, hoped to play on Thursday already.

I'll most likely go for a Wizard this time around, i wasn't too exited by the other classes (Rogue is my 2nd choice). Especially now with all the reliance on potions and things, making my typical hybrid-self-healer class choice useless (i.e. the Cleric).

The wizard, ironically , had the best or rather most effective "dodge" of all the classes. The Cleric does that slide thing, but it's not far enough to be effective, Rogue does the rolling around thing, which isn't as effective either (in terms of distance dodged) , but considering the Rogue is a melee type of class, it's a good trade-off and works well in the context of melee.

The Great Weapon fighter have this "charge" or "sprint" thing, i hated it, it seemed more like an offensive ability (to get to a mob) than a way to avoid to damage. It has its uses i suppose, but i felt you need to start running well ahead of time to avoid certain hits.

The Guardian, they don't even have a dodge. They got block instead, which works great actually, it's just not very interesting or exciting ;). If you like just standing there , tanking, and not having to constantly run in and out of special circles on the ground and things, then Guardian is a good lazy class to be ;-)

So Wizard gets a teleport aka "blink" (in WoW terms) which you can pull off quite regularly. It's fast and the distance covered is quite noticable.
 
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Wyvern said:
So overall, yay or nay on this? Who is actually spending money on it?
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It's F2P, so i see no reason not to play it . I have however bought one of the founders packs, so i'm biased to say yes, at least until the next big MMO.

I am not convinced Neverwinter will be very big in the long run, but it has potential to be a cult* hit (if that foundry player created content takes off) . It's very instanced,very much like Guild Wars 1 was . This alone removes the "massive" in MMO and chances are it will be a much more 5-man / solo / small scale experience with a large hub to congregate and trade. Beyond the action combat (a bit more actiony than GW2) it is very much typical MMO material if you ask me. It is set in Forgotten Realms, so there is that in terms of theme (something i am a fan of).

I do however believe something like WildStar and Elder Scrolls Online will kill this game when they launch, if you know what i mean. Rather, i haven't seen anything in the beta that will make me play Neverwinter constantly every day for the next 6 months. It looks to be trending towards playing "mini campaigns" in short bursts. If you ignore the foundry/player content, it's not exactly revolutionary or special, it's definitely more action and is following GW2 trends as opposed to WoW trends.

*By cult hit i mean a bunch of serious passionate players creating and playing the content. Kinda like Neverwinter Nights was with the "modding" . Most people finished the game and moved on, but a group of players kept creating content for NWN and is still playing it to this day. This does not necessarily mean millions of players, so it remains to be seen what happens in the community.
 
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Yay for me, I have no idea how long it will be till wildstar or TESO. Those are very mainstream MMOs and I will try them if I can afford them, but NW seems like a very returnable MMO to me. I can manage craft/trading using a web app while I am playing other games, can return to it anytime for free and it has a dedicated healer (well mostly) class role and many many stories to play.

I ask myself: why did I return to SWTOR and the answer is : I can play a healer in instant dungeons and I could play stories solo (although there is also a finite number of that). Every other MMO seems to run into "end game" and the story runs dry.

NW seems to have the possibility of having both those factors for me. Will have to see in 3 months time.
 
Yea, there's not alot of MMOs with content designed to be consumed in "bite" sizes. WoW [and most other MMOs] has pretty much devolved into dungeon runs for this , but it's basically repeating and grinding the same content. NW has the potential of offering you a new dungeon every day or week, without having to wait for Cryptic.

There's a bunch of MMOs on my list that i would love to return to, but their content is never designed for this type of return. It just takes too much effort to "get back into it" , only to realise they've only added 1 raid dungeon requiring some extreme gear rating or something.
 
Having an absolute blast. There is a ton of lore depth in the game, I am actually very impressed as to how much they built the lore into the game.
 
Also having alot of fun, the founder gear is definitely a boost.

I finally got into Crafting and Companions, and i like them both. I can see Cryptic went all out with the "time" factor. Everything takes alot of time without your physical attendance (something i like). So crafting is reminding me alot of Fallen Earth, its just simpler and streamlined , but the concept is identical, some things can take like 10 hours or even days.

As far as i can tell with crafting there is no actual "gathering" or "stand at craft shop and press some button over and over" . You hire these henchmen who go out and gather for you , so you send your miner out and it takes 10 minutes for him to come back with some ore. If you have enough ore you can then craft something, again, it's more a case of someone else crafting it, and this can again take say 15 minutes (depending on the item). There's no real henchmen going out doing all this, but this is their way of explaining the fact that you click a button "gather ore" and wait for ore to appear. I see you can later then hire more miners and i suppose they will bring back more ore per shot etc.

The genius of this is , now they have , just like Fallen Earth, a web interface (and hopefully a app soon) where you can do all this. Since you don't need to stand anywhere, or walk anywhere. So you don't even need to be in the game and can log into the website, set up your crafting and there you go. This website is http://gateway.playneverwinter.com . I see you can play the Auction House there too, nifty.

Obviously you get raw materials as loot , mostly from harvesting these nodes that require some sort of kit, but it implies you can log in at work and set up some crafting. Kinda like EVE or something with their training.

As for companions, i like it, they gain xp, they level up and you send them on training (which again take more and more time the higher their level). As far as i can see, you can have by default 3 companions that gain xp with you, but only 1 actively summoned. You can buy more "train slots" with $. Any other companion goes into an "Idle Bag" and don't get any xp.

It's kinda like LOTROs legendary weapons. Actually it's probably identical in concept, except it's henchmen with their own abilities (like with guildwars). You can slot enchantments on them to improve them etc etc.

And now you can see where they are going to try and make their money, you can "rush" or "instant complete" any of these above things by paying Astral Diamonds (you can get AD with $ or from certain in-game activities). There's also a bunch of "exotic" companions which you can train too, pretty much what i saw Marvel Heroes Online is doing , so it becomes a little bit of a collectible card game effect ;-)

Anyhow, i like this kind of meta game. I can set up my crafting training queue and focus on playing the game. I don't need to stand anywhere, don't need to break from my normal gameplay to do crafting. I always felt crafting is such a PITA and consists of terrible gameplay, at least now i just need to remember to set up my queue ;-) .
 
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I rolled where the guild i was in when i played fallen earth (the older gamers). Either way, i will see what happens when the game is fully launched before i roll a 2nd char. My wizard is alot of fun in pvp and skirmishes it seems ;-)
 
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