AFK, NeverWinter

[EricKei]

http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/5...ematic-trailer

I did a only slightly biased writeup on it if anyone wants me to copypasta it ~_~

[Mel]

I am interested in finding out what you think about it as well. I got an email about it this morning and started the download.

[EricKei]

Really effing long Neverwinter preview data

A bit of advice - In order to lower the amount of upfront data you need to download, some components of the zones download while you play. If you want it all up front, go into the Launcher options and uncheck the checkbox that refers to background downloading.

MEGAPOST AHOY! -- note -- this is from the perspective of a D&D Online player. Also, this was written in early March. Some things have changed since then.



'Tis about the soon-to-be-released fully F2P Neverwinter MMO

Writeup I posted elsewhere -- from the perspective of a D&D on/offline player

Played halfling Rogue (of course), lots of stabbity goodness and aggro avoidance

Game builds on the F2P concept that Turbine has done so well on (at least, as compared to other games...) and refines it. Literally 100% free, according to the creators. No subscriptions, no initial buy price. Everything, including ZEN (online store currency) can be earned in-game and/or on forum, and supposedly everyone can eventually unlock everything.

Combat is fast paced, helped by the fact that you auto-track the nearest enemy when using your basic attack (everything else except for AOE's and the like are targeted). HUGE help.

For those who have NOT played many MMO's -- remember, DDO is not the "standard", it's a successful anomaly. If DDO is D&D 3e with an MMO wrapped around it, Neverwinter is an MMO with D&D 4e wrapped around it, and an insane amount of attention paid to lore (it takes place at the same time as the newest set of Salvatore books). Set in and around Neverwinter city on the West coast of Faerun.

Oh yeh, things are subject to change as of actual launch yada yada...

Quests are handled standard MMO style. Quest-givers have a yellow ? mark if they have something available, or a ! if they WILL have one eventually. You gain EXP from every mob you kill, as well as from almost every quest.

Leveling is in line with standard MMO conventions -- The level cap is 60; Lv 1~15 are effectively the newbie levels/tutorials, tho they're basically out of the way by level 10, which is when you get your second class-defining power (Stealth for rogues; you get the first such feature at Lv1, which is Sneak Attack for rogues). SA works exactly the same as in DDO: If the enemy isn't paying attention to you, you hit harder. Stealth: has a time limit, certain powers will refill the meter, and special attacks specify in the tooltip if they do NOT break Stealth; many specials get damage/range boosters when you are Stealthed. Note that mobs will still be *aware* that your toon is present if you are in Stealth, they just won't actually do anything about it (they literally stand around with ? marks over their heads )...

More on F2P: As their only way to get $$ for this game is the cash store, their cash store pricing does seem to be a bit excessive; this may change. They offer 3 pre-order packs, with the priciest going for $200 US and including a ton of goodies like a spider mount (and another mount, a unique Companion (basically a Gold Seal hireling, no time limit, who levels and accepts gear/augs), a variant Drow "race" that can only be unlocked via that pack, a bunch of unlocks, a Masterwork item with a removable augment, 2 million in Astral somethingorothers (same concept as DDO shards), and, of course, the icing on the cake, the Robe of Useless Items. It does exactly what it says on the tin.

back to levels -- I hit 27 during the free weekend, if that's any indication of leveling speed. I didn't exactly go grinding quests hardcore, either.

Companions/mounts : Once you finish the Tower District storyline quests (I did it at 16), you gain access to Companions. As I mentioned above, they're basically permanent hirelings. The game is (theoretically) balanced such that you can solo the entire game *except* for certain storyline dungeons by bringing a Companion along. So far, only certain dungeons have forced me into a party (basically the biggest storyline quest for that zone), and they have a handy queueing system to account for that. Once 5 people are in a party, you all get warped in to run it.

They have their own EXP bar and gain "ranks" as their levels. Note that ALL exp you gain is duplicated for them: If you gain 4K exp from a quest reward, so do they. Their only real downside is that you need to send them off for an ever-increasing amount of time to "train" in order to get the ranks -- you always level immediately, but their Rank exp can be banked, if desired. Rank 1-2: 30 seconds training time. Rank 14-15: 30 minutes training time. This time apparently counts down when you are logged off, so you can always just bank a level or 3 and send them to train just before you logoff for the day.

Mounts: Available at lv20. Basic horses are bought with gold, others like armored horses and exotic mounts like flaming hellsteeds are bought with the astral thingies (which you tend to earn over time or you can just buy the damn things with real $). Main purpose is to look cool and give you a run speed boost. Apparently nothing short of a successful enemy attack or knockdown will force you off of your mount when running away, which means you can literally just zip past melee mobs most of the time Attacking or using any other ability also makes you dismount.

Auctions: Didn't mess with. Items are posted with and paid for with the astral currency, NOT gold

Treasure: Random chests found pretty much anywhere are first-come first served, tho they re"spawn" after 10 minutes or so, it seems. Loot from mobs is apparently invisible to non-party members unless you let it sit on the ground for a long time. Said loot when In a party appears to be first come first served in parties, tho gold is auto-split. The party leader can set a "need" or "greed" flag to determine who gets rare and bound items. Boss-room chests allow everyone to loot and get their prizes without waiting. NOTE -- If a quest offers a physical reward (which is almost always) and it ends in a boss fight, your final reward will be the one and only item in said chest, and it will always be class specific. All gear is class-specific, as well. Rogues use daggers and light armor, if they pick up a greatsword or a holy symbol, the icon will be red to indicate that the item is unusable. Some items, like rings, are universal.

Combat and powers: At least as of level 27...You have At-Will powers (read: no cooldown or so short they might as well not have one) -- Lv1 AW is always your basic attack (and yes, you can remove it from your hotbar if you get something you like better), you use the main 2 mouse buttons for this. I forgot the names of these, soooo.. I had a basic (autotracking) attack, throwing knives (12 max, they regenerate 1 every 2 seconds or so), and a flurry attack -- after a brief windup, your toon does something that looks a whole lot like the graphic that appears when you turn on Subtle Backtabbing (mini-teleports), and you hit ten times in about 2-3 seconds -- each attack is weaker than the normal melee attack, but each can cause a stacking Bleeding effect and each hit can crit.

Encounter powers are ones you will use frequently -- cooldowns for mine were in the 8-12 second range. These are assigned to Q, E, and R (Stealth was TAB). At my level, I had mine set to a backstab (+50% when stealthed and does not break stealth), a teleport-backstab (stealth adds range but not damage), and an anti-aggro move that drops a "shadow clone" and makes you tumble backwards. (note -- only rogues can tumble/dodge, afaik). Most mobs -- even undeads -- are fooled by the clone, and it can take a few hits, more than enough to let you take out 3 or 4 normal enemies. Named mobs and tougher variants are another story, but you still have time to thin the herd before they start wailing on you. Daily powers -- These are the more powerful ones - the only limit on their use is building up "action points", different classes get these different ways -- for rogues, successful attacks build it up, so they can usually use these after 2 or 3 packs of enemies. These are things like AOE attacks, infinite stealth for 10 seconds, or rapid teleport-attacks for 10 seconds that auto-track all mobs within range.

Stats, skills, feats -- Very much MMO style. The powers listed above come at pre-set levels, aside from "Paragon Powers" that start at lv30. No skills per se. "Feats" are points that you spend in a manner similar to Borderlands: You start with access to 3 passives, spend X amount of points across those to gain access to the next set, etc. Things like +3/4/5% max HP, Crit chance or crit damage boosts, etc. By level 30, you gain access to ONE of the three Paragon Paths of your choice (the other two get locked out once you choose). These are essentially amped up versions of the prior "feats" as well as new passives with nifty bonuses.

Stats -- Same basic 6 stats, 1 primary stat and 2 secondaries. For Rogue, Dex is primary, str and cha are secondary. The game rolls up stats for you during chara creation, you can reroll as often as you like, but you cannot actually assign them; my guess is that they're working on a point system behind the scenes -- I rerolled a few times to try for decent numbers, and I don't think I ever saw a dex under 17 nor any other stat below 8. It seems to favor the 3 stats you "need", the primary moreso. Race affects these, as well. On halfling, I had +2 dex and +2 to a choice of either int or cha. I wanna say my starting stats were something like 20dex/13str/13con/11int/12wis/14cha. Note that str and con do not seem to be as huge a factor in this game as in DDO, as there is no to-hit stat (if your weapon swing hits the mob, you hit them, period) and HP get ridiculous pretty quickly (1000+ at level 10) -- mobs have similar high numbers). You get 2 more points to assign however you like every 10 levels.

Bonuses from gear all stack -- Power is raw attack damage, Critical is crit chance and damage, Restoration is, well...just what it sounds like. Get it over 100 (not that hard) and you start regaining HP every 3 seconds. The lower your hp (as a % of max), the more hp you regen; higher Regen stat increases this further. Companions auto-regen themselves when not in combat. As a Rogue (read: squishy), my power was in the high 400's and critical was approaching 600 as of my last play session; others were in the 0 ~ 150 range, not enough to provide much of a noticeable boost. Other stats include armor-piercing, movement, and a physical mitigation stat.

Companions addendum -- Available ones I saw included the available classes (Defensive fighter (sword & board, generates extra aggro -- I chose this guy), 2-handed weapon fighter, Control wizard, healer-type, and animals (basically rogues -- best direct damage but they're squishy))

Zones -- Except for the starter zone (which is HUGE), zones are generally laid out as wilderness areas with a safe starting area. Note that mobs that have aggro on you can and WILL chase you right back into those safe zones. The NPCs will help to fight them off, but don't expect them to be very effective. All dungeons are instanced.

One gripe I had that was with the players, not the game (inevitable in any online game) was the whining and bitching in general ("Zone") chat about the presence of bugs (in an unreleased game...) that had me turn chat off in the main/starter zone -- apparently, there are plenty of people out there who do not comprehend that the purpose of letting people play a Beta is to find and squash as many bugs as possible...

They didn't let people play for free out of the goodness of their hearts, people. These are the same sorts of braindead morons who make death threats to reviewers who DARE to give an 8 out of 10 score to a game they happen to like (see also Uncharted 3) and seem to think that such a score indicates a horrible game.

Sadly, I even saw something similar on their forum -- Cryptic actually held an event at a specific time on Saturday where they asked that as many people as possible log on at once during a specific hour, with the intention of *trying to crash the server* so that they could get a better idea of realistic server capacity. The event worked: it crashed within the hour. One commenter actually posted "This does not bode well for the actual game." ... Really? REALLY? o_O

In all fairness, these idjits did not infest any of the other zones, it would seem Most of the wilderness zones were filled with LFG spam ...from people who apparently could not figure out that "Press K to queue up for a party" means that pressing K will put you into an automatic queue for the party-matching system x.x (It's literally that braindead. Press K, click on the quests you want to party for (you can pick as many as you like that are connected to that zone) and Bob's your uncle. When someone starts a new party, they can (apparently) opt to grab people out of the queue).

But you don't have to take MY word for it...

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/12/19/ne...class-trailer/ -- rogue trailer (from an earlier beta, it would seem) The 10-hit attack is around the 1:18 mark or a bit after

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/14/ne...izard-trailer/ -- Control Wizard trailer

http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/neve...-generation/2/ -- review from PCG

http://nw.perfectworld.com/media/videos -- videos on official site (more recent up top)

Oh yeah, me forgots -- They have a "Foundry" system in place that lets users make their own public quests, building dungeons from the ground up. Some good ones were present already in beta.

Open beta starts April 31, and they've said there will be no character wipes once it's done...So, for all intents and purposes, it's launch. Kinda (tho when the "official" launch is has not been announced)
http://nw.perfectworld.com/news/?p=849741

NOTE - according to a recent news release, the way you gain powers has been changed to a point-buy system, rather than "you get power X at level Y"

[EricKei]

TLDR: I like it.

Anticipate a 20+ minute wait in the queue after making your toon (hit ALT-ENTER to switch to window mode, it'll mute the music if the window is out of focus, so you can do other stuff). I can only assume that this will improve once the initial rush month or so is over. As you would in most MMO's *coughWOWcough*, I recommend turning off Zone (general) chat ASAP.

As I mentioned, turning off chat avoids the idjits. I rather enjoyed the game without their constant whining. As with most games, I expect the initial surge in players to level off and smooth out after a few weeks.

When making yer toon -- you can reroll as often as you like until the stats come up the way you want. Your primary stat really should be highest (I have seen 20 starting out for dex on my halfling (who has +2 dex and a choice of +2cha or +2something else. Cha is a Secondary stat for rogues so I took that)...The secondaries are in blue. NOTE: CON not terribly important unless yer a tank. Game does autohealing in safe areas when NOT in combat/being chased. INT affects cooldowns and magic, there are no "Skills" in the D&D sense in this game, so it's not critical to have it above 10 unless yer class uses the stat.

I have a friend or two on the Beholder shard, so that's where I'll be.

Handle is "kayara myrlan@erickthekei" for friend-adding purposes. (always charactername@loginname)

toon: halfling rogue - Kayara Myrlan (same as my ddo toon on khyber if anyone plays that)

PS: despite the lack of character wipes, the game is currently in open BETA. Keep that in mind ^_^ And feel free to swamp them with bug reports as needed.

[Mel]

I don't play DDO (though I've been meaning to try it), but I do play LOTRO, also by Turbine.

I'll look forward to trying this, once my download is done. Thanks for the review.

[Fire_on_High]

Sadly, I even saw something similar on their forum -- Cryptic actually held an event at a specific time on Saturday where they asked that as many people as possible log on at once during a specific hour, with the intention of *trying to crash the server* so that they could get a better idea of realistic server capacity. The event worked: it crashed within the hour. One commenter actually posted "This does not bode well for the actual game." ... Really? REALLY? o_O

Good thing for them to test; Champions Online which uses the same underlying engine I believe has issues here. Still, it improved immensely and I'm sure they've learned a lot from the earlier mistakes.

[Jack T. Chance]

What are the available character classes and races in this one? Everything I've read leads me to believe many of the standard races & classes players normally have access to in D&D may be missing this time around. If I can't play as my standard (Wood) Elf Ranger, I may just reinstall and play around with Neverwinter Nights 2 instead.

[KhirasHY]

Open beta starts April 31

NEEEEEEEEEEVEEEEEEEEEEEEEER!!!

Ok, so I'm trolling, what else is new?

I looked at the game...but honestly, I'm just not sure how into it I would be. The module I would love most if it were made into an MMO style would be Pathfinder, but only if it allowed you to dynamically build your characters with things such as Feats, just like you were in a tabletop game. IE, every 2 levels you get to select a new feat that you meet the prereqs for (or every several levels, to account for the fact that you're hitting level 60, not 20 as a max). That was always one of the most fun aspects of D&D type games for me, building the character up.

Still, I may try it just to make a Paladin or Cleric and see how I like it. Somehow I doubt I could make a Harrower, since it's not Pathfinder A lot of the fun of Paladin is having to stay Lawful Good though...and I don't think there's an alignment system here for that...

[EricKei]

From http://neverwinter.gamepedia.com/Neverwinter_Wiki

Jack - - No rangers yet, but this may change (quite likely to, imho). Rogue/Cleric/Wizard start out with ranged moves or get them very early.

Classes

• Guardian Fighter
• Great Weapon Fighter
• Devoted Cleric
• Trickster Rogue
• Control Wizard

Races

• Human
• Half-Elf
• Wood Elf
• Drow- Won't be available for the first 2 months (intentionally)
• Dwarf
• Halfling
• Half-Orc
• Tiefling

Khiras - 8p Yeah yeah

See the wiki. Starting at level 10, you get access to "feats" as in being able to put points into bonuses like extra hp, damage, crits, et al, as opposed to traditional feats. This is (apparently) based on whatever the most recent version of the D&D 4.x ruleset is. It's also in line with the most recent cosmic rewrite of Faerun (What's that, you say? Dieties dropping like flies and the rules of magic got all FUBAR because of an apocalypse? ... AGAIN?!)

Guardian fighter is the closest to Pally so far.

PS something I left out because it was introduced since the last time I played - it has crafting. In a rather pleasant switch from most games, crafting components have their own inventory section that does not interfere with normal inventory in any way. Most are self-explanatory. Leadership takes absurd amounts of time once you get past the "crafting tutorial" section (your NPC "buddies" do the work while you are off doing other stuff, apparently) to make it harder to Powerlevel yourself. Nevertheless, this has not stopped at least one person who was willing to pay real-world money for timer bypasses from the ZEN (cash) store. *shrug* (ps, please don't get fratchy about that, I'm tempted myself). Hiring higher-quality helpers can apparently reduce these times by as much as 75%.

Types ------ Time per task --------- What it does

Leadership 2-16 hours Directs mercenaries in performing tasks that award Experience, Gold, random items, and/or Astral Diamonds.

Mailsmithing 15-30 minutes Directs mailsmiths in creating armor for Devoted Clerics and Great Weapon Fighters.

Platesmithing 15-30 minutes Directs platesmiths in creating armor for Guardian Fighters.

Leatherworking 15-30 minutes Directs leatherworkers in creating armor for Trickster Rogues.

Tailoring 15-30 minutes Directs tailors in creating armor for Control Wizards.

[fireheart]

Aw, I was hoping for a ranger. (I tend to alternate between ranger, rogue and outright fighter depending on my mood. All of them are always female half-elves with default stats-this is on NWN btw)

[lordlundar]

Cryptic's still the dev so I won't touch it.

[EricKei]

LL - Understandable. I'm certainly not planning to spend any real money on it I feel the same way about NCSoft.

fh - I'm a "classic" NWN/NWN2 fan myself, it's just been a while.

edit - Today's patch fixed the queue nonsense -- made queues much shorter/higher capacity and prevent it from randomly jumping from the actual # to a (false) one much higher. I was able to get in with zero wait this afternoon US CST

[Chanlin]

Up to level 11 as an Elven Trickster Rogue. Going by the name of Tauriel@chanlin on Beholder currently.

I think it is interesting so far, I just hope it has a better end game than Champions or STO.

[EricKei]

Anyone here, feel free to friend me. @ericthekei on Beholder

Found out last night that they allow you to manage auctions, crafting (thank GORD!), etc via a website-- http://gateway.playneverwinter.com

[Crossbow]

Still considering it. Not like a need another game to play, and certainly not another beta (oh, who am I kidding. Most of what I play is beta releases...) but the guild is looking for something new, and we played the hell out of NWN back in the day.