With the second beta weekend for Neverwinter coming up (well, the 3rd … but the second I have an invite to and that’s all that counts) I’m going to spend the next two weeks talking about this game which, as a licensed D&D property, should be near and dear to all our hearts. We start with the game’s colorful history.
Neverwinter Nights is arguably the first ever graphical MMORPG, with the only real argument against coming from saying that no one thought to call it that at the time so it doesn’t count. Its debut on AOL in 1991 predated Sierra's release of “the Realm”, widely considered the first graphical MMO and the game that coined the phrase “massively multiplayer”, by 5 years. The game was re-released in 2002 by Bioware, got a sequel in 2006 from Obsidian, and a side-quel in 2008 in the form of the Storms of Zehir. SOZ was marketed as an expansion but used a completely new engine and updated game play and was sold as a standalone game because Wizards of the Coast would not allow a new game to be published using the 3rd edition rule sets, but had already agreed to up to 3 expansions to NW2. This point becomes important! Each game released to critical and commercial success and it was clear there was more to come.
Obsidian is a top tier studio who are used to getting the projects they want, so when approached to do a 3rd installment they refused unless given creative control of the project, which included the latitude to ignore the 4th edition rule set and make the game in the player preferred 3.5 edition. This isn’t due to some D&D loyalty and was explained by the studios as 4.0 simply lacking the charter customization and options that are the hallmark of Obsidian games. Bioware had no interest as they were involved in a extremely high profile licensed MMO already (which we later discovered to be SW:TOR). Although most of the information from this point on is sketchy at best, the time line that can be best pieced together is something like this:
Obsidian got the green light for the project as a 3.5 edition game in 2008, around the time of 4th edition's less than stellar release. Work on the project was halted around 2009 when Wizards of the Coast R&D started working on 5th edition, presumably because 5th edition very closely resembled 3.5 and would allow for the customization Obsidian was looking for and release a game on a edition now twice removed was not a great idea. This is about the time the world’s economy went to hell. With Wizards hard up for cash the release window for 5.0 was moved from 2011 to 2014, and the idea of funding a game that wouldn’t be released for years was no longer attractive. Obsidian’s involvement was ended, and the game was passed to Cryptic Studios, the developer that brought us City of Heroes. The game was officially announced in August 2010 as “Neverwinter” and quickly disappeared completely until it was shown in a surprisingly late stage of development at E3 2012. We learned it was in fact an MMO, had been in limited beta for almost a year, and was getting a 2013 release.
My first impressions of the game are positive, although it’s not going to be a blockbuster. What’s most exciting to me is the game's focus on the D&D feel and the focus on the story of the world's transition from 3rd edition to 4th edition, the only part of 4th edition that didn’t suck (and was in fact some of the best D&D stories written to date). From petitioning your god for extra xp and loot if you are following their philosophy correctly, to one of the first adventures sending you to a pub followed by a sewer, to the detail put into recreating the sword coast, this game simply feels D&D in spite of the very un-D&D 4th edition rules set. With the day event, I’ll only really have time to play again on Sunday, but look forward to a lot more details next week.
Part 2 - Updated March 29
NeverWinter allows players to create their own content using a toolset called the Foundry. Players can run this custom content whenever they want, with loot and experience generated by the system based on the difficulty of the content. The Foundry is an extremely refined toolset, already used in City of Heroes and Star Trek Online, and allows for complex scenarios, triggered events, variable win conditions, and conversation trees. To me, this is the defining feature of NeverWinter ... I'm more than willing to put up with imperfect game play to be a GM, or experience content that my friends produce for me. This is the core of the D&D system, and the fact that it will be preserved is extremely exciting. More so, given that NeverWinter is completely free to play, I can invite my friends on the adventures I create without them needing to make a financial commitment.
The combat and systems in NeverWinter are great. Combat is enjoyable and fast paced, you feel powerful as combat uses the same "epic combat" system of SW:TOR, pitting you against multiple opponents in each encounter rather than the one on one MMO standard. Exploration is rewarded in the way of hidden chests or experience even in the most linear of adventures, a point lost to the modern MMO. The loot system uses the traditional D&D on "pluses", with +1 items being rare, +2 being more rare, and so on. It's a great touch!
Common to Cryptic games there are events and interactive stories abound. Every few hours a global message will inform players they will reserve bonus xp for joining in a PVE raid encounter, PVP, or doing a given set of story missions, sometimes unique to that event. This helps the game feel alive in a way I haven't felt in an MMO for a while.
On the negative side, NeverWinter looks like it should have been released in 2008, graphics wise (because...it should have been released in 2008). I'm amazed a new set of paint hasn't been tossed on by Cryptic, but at least the art style is amazing. They do everything they can to get as much as possible out of the low polygon count and grey/brown palette ... but there is only so much they can do. My biggest gripe about the game however is the lack of player customization and options. Currently there are only 5 playable classes and almost no way to make them your own. This doesn't represent D&D and is going to be a turn off to a large part of the target audience.
All and all, this is a game you need to try, or at least install so that when I start posting Raven themed adventures to the Foundry you'll be able to play them ;)
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