75 years after the events of one of the most acclaimed RPG’s Neverwinter nights 2, Neverwinter is the MMO addition to the series and also the area of Dungeons and dragons lore. Neverwinter is a action MMO set in the area of the same name and is published by perfect world (Creators of Champions online, Torchlight and Blacklight) and gives a rebirth to one of the most cherished regions and settings in D&D but does the game hold up the bloodline or drop it into the sea of swords? As I was invited to play the beta over the weekend this will be more of a first impressions video over a review.
So according to the background lore a volcano erupted and destroyed parts of the city and the new lord of the city: Lord Neverember (Cleaver name) calls out to adventurers to help defend and rebuild the city. So you as the player go there to seek fame and get some sweet sweet gold out of it. Until a draglich (Undead dragon) fucks up your boat and you lay cast just short of the city. The story so far seems pretty legit for MMO standards but retains the feel of a true beginning to a D&D adventure and at least raises the bar compared to some MMO stories. I’m looking at you Guild wars 2 with your in ability to finish them.
So at this point you get to create your character and you have the standard D&D choices. Human, Half elf, Dwarf, Drow (a fan favourite), Teifling and bait. I mean Halfling, and then get to choose your class. As each race has racial bonuses that can effect which class you take afterwards. The classes are few for now but as this is only a beta there should be more to come. You’ve got two different fighters; the Great weapon and Guardian fighter so tank and tank destroyer. A trickster rouge, Control wizard, Devoted cleric and Ranger. Seems the rangers don’t get an archetype to follow the poor sods. So I went for a half elven control wizard as I’m not boring enough to be a human and because spell casting is always cool. The customisation aspect is quite in depth and at least gives the feel of your character being unique even if there are several others who studied the exact same thing in your wizard’s collage but never turned up for the lessons.
So you wake up on a beach in your pants and discover the draglich plus some evil bitch are attempting to take the city with the help of the undead. (you know the usual fantasy starting area) and a soldier says “Go loot the bodies of the dead for their clothes and go kill shit” (Your usual MMO setting) When I found a nice shirt and trousers on the body of some rich tosser I discovered the action side of the MMO as you have a dodge move. As I thought this was epic I was using it a lot to get around and also for it’s actual use. The dodge that I got as a wizard was a teleport spell called blink. The nostalgia was killing me so I used some magic missiles on the undead and skipped with glee through the bodies.
The further in I got the more I discovered about the abilities and skills. There are three types of ability. You’ve got your main attacks which are bound to left and right mouse buttons and can be swapped out for more under that ranking. The wizard gets magic missile and an ice beam to freeze enemies which is always fun. Then you’ve got your encounter powers which are the bigger spells and have a cool down. So bigger magic missles and shit like that. Then lastly you’ve got your “daily but there not daily” powers which can only be used after gaining Action Points from kills. The meter that logs them is a d20 and I got a nerd stiffy after seeing that. The combat seems quite balanced for the most part and I didn’t feel I needed others to help me along as I was clocking bitches up until level 10 without issues but the harder enemies did require help because of the sheer amount of them. The dodge can only help for so long but as soon as the stamina meter drops to empty then your +1 magic dick of awesomeness isn’t gonna block a downward strike from a sharp axe.
At around level 10 I got to experiance the dungeons and instances available and they were enjoyable and challanging. They sprawled for a long time but not long enough you want to kill yourself a la blackrock spire and not too short that you were like was this a dungeon or just a very hard bar fight a la Mana tombs but this was also helped by the user generated dungeons as some of them were also a decent length with a decent challange. The user generated stuff does add several years onto the lifecycle as the possibility are endless and anyone can create and publish their dungeon for people to run through thanks to the foundry but I’m not sure on the limitations as this is a free to play game.
Overall the game is a fun, enjoyable and at least challenging experiance with a large array of classes and places to explore but this is only a first impression so I don’t know what the higher level areas are like but I would like to say that it may be enjoyable but the core quests do seem very repetitive as they say go into this place, kill this guy then come back to do it again in a different place and it’s not something I would get annoyed about but some variety would be nice. If your an MMO player or an RPG fan then this a good mmo to start in as it’s free to play and plays very well. D&D nerds and lovers will roll around in everything this has to offer.
It should be released in the next few months but you can pay for founder packages to get it a couple of days early plus some extra goodies.
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