Last
weekend I was able to get myself a beta key for weekend three of the upcoming
free to play MMO, Neverwinter. Before I get started, it needs be said that
the build I played was very much a work in progress, and anything I talk about
here could end up entirely reworked before the game's release.
So
then! I have to confess that I entered
into this beta with very low expectations.
I've spent a substantial amount of time playing both the pen and paper
Dungeons and Dragons edition 3.5, and its MMO spawn, Dungeon and Dragons Online.
Additionally, I'm less than a fan of the most recent iteration of
D&D, 4th edition, so I didn't have very high hopes for an MMO based on that
ruleset. Did last weekend's beta prove
me wrong? Well, yes and no.
D&D
4th edition stands apart from its previous iterations in that Wizards of the
Coast caught wind of the gigantic piles of money that Blizzard was raking in
via WoW, and realized that those millions of people engaging in fantasy battles
on a daily basis represented potential sales.
As a result, 4th edition's rules are very much inspired by MMOs, WoW in
particular (this was a horrible idea, but that's another post entirely). Neverwinter
is an MMO based on a pen and paper role-playing game, that was in turn based on
an MMO. If someone authors a pen and
paper RPG based on Neverwinter, then the cycle would be complete, and the
Universe would probably collapse on itself.
Does that lend itself to good gameplay, then? The system was already based on MMOs in the
first place, so it should be easy to adapt back into the online space,
yes? Here's the thing, though; Neverwinter
more or less abandons all but the most basic trappings of the 4th edition ruleset
(the ability types are categorized under the same names). This is in marked contrast to Dungeons and Dragons Online, which was
faithful to the... three point fifth(?)
edition, though some people would say to a fault. In DDO the player had so much freedom in
character creation that it was entirely possible to ruin your character from
level 1 if they made poor choices. In my
opinion, remaining faithful in to the source material does not overly matter,
as long as the final product is enjoyable, especially in this case, since the
4th edition rules are fairly crap anyway.
I'm perfectly fine with Cryptic's decision to borrow the much loved Forgotten Realms setting, but ditch the
much maligned 4th edition rules.
Neverwinter bills itself as having
"action combat," which these days has become a bit of a PR tagline
for upcoming MMOs. I don't think the
label is entirely accurate in Neverwinter's
case, though. If Tera represents the genre at its most actiony - the game is played
with mouse look on the entire time, no lock-on combat, no auto attack,
abilities have to be aimed or they miss completely; Then Neverwinter falls somewhere in the middle of the spectrum - there's
no auto attack, and you use mouselook, but you still have to target enemies and
all your abilities auto-hit your currently selected target, they cannot miss
and can't be used if you have no target selected. Combat is a bit anemic at first, but becomes
a bit more engaging once you unlock a wider selection of abilities (though this
is true of nearly every MMO). The final
product ends up playing a bit like Diablo 3;
the player is limited to a narrow loadout, selected from a wider ability
pool. These can be swapped in and out as long as
you're not actively engaged in combat. Though
because I played through all the single player content grouped with two other
people, even against enemy groups combat was over before it even began, and the
beta weekend concluded before we were able to get into the first group dungeon,
so I wasn't able to get a very good grasp of how combat unfolds over a
protracted timeframe. The final aspect
that bears mentioning is that I only played the three melee based classes this
weekend, ignoring the two magic users. As
far as melee combat goes, for some reason Cryptic elected to lock characters in
place when performing their attack animations.
As a meleer playing with a pair of casters I found the stationary attack
requirement particularly annoying, as creatures would invariably charge past me
straight towards my ranged party members.
One of my friends mentioned that a common complaint when running
dungeons is that clerics end up attacked by nearly everything due to their
healing spells, while the guardian fighter ineffectively chases the pack,
trying to attract its attention.
Questing
and the leveling experience mixes the standard MMO faire of kill X creatures
and pick up Y doodads with instanced story-mode dungeons. The open world, vanilla MMO questing got a
bit boring six years ago when WoW played it out. However, the instanced story dungeons were
enjoyable, and hopefully as you advance in levels their frequency won't drop
out, though in many games that I've played that tends to be the case.
This
brings me to the final thing that I think bears mentioning: Neverwinter's selection of available
character classes at launch. There are only
five: great weapon fighter, guardian
fighter, trickster rogue, control wizard and devoted cleric. There are definitely some noticeable gaps in
class loadout choices, with zero showing from paladins or rangers at launch. Partially due to rangers' exclusion there are
no classes capable of dealing physical at range (archers) in the game. Cryptic has already stated that they have
more classes planned, but I'm slightly concerned by what this means for the game's
monetization. Since the game has no out
of the box cost and no subscription fee they have to make their money somewhere, I'm wondering exactly what
they're going to end up putting behind a paygate. New classes and adventure content are prime
candidates for monetization, so hopefully this aspect doesn't end up exploited
to the player bases' detriment. I have a
little experience with Perfect World, the game's publisher (do digital download
only games really have publishers?), in their game Rusty Hearts, they released several new characters who were nothing
but model swaps of existing ones.
All
in all I had a good time with the beta weekend, and I plan on at least trying
the game once it hits its full release.
The combat is fast paced, though a little mindless, but I look forward
to seeing how the game develops as I advance in levels and as more features are
introduced. And, you can't beat that
price point.
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