Neverwinter Expands and Escapes Open Beta June 20th

[IanDavis]

Neverwinter Expands and Escapes Open Beta June 20th

The new Caverns of Gauntlgrym event will accompany the MMO's official launch.

​

Cryptic's MMO Neverwinter has been biding its time in open beta for the last few months. Now, it's ready to give the game one final coat of polish and push it out the door. On June 20th, Neverwinter will get a massive rebalance patch, new end-game content, and an official launch. Don't worry though, everything you've worked for is coming along for the ride.

Cryptic's been paying close attention to Neverwinter these last few months, and decided that it needs a little work. The patch will touch on every element of the game, from class balance, powers, queue system, auction house, PvP, companions, user interface, performance, and even more. The full, massive list can be found [a href=http://nw.perfectworld.com/news/?p=907501]here[/a]. Excited players can get a taste of this upcoming Neverwinter mix on the new preview servers, which should be online shortly. Free respec tokens will also be handed out to help players navigate the rebalance.

Along with the massive patch, the full launch also will bring a new, high-level area. As the breathless narrator announces, "once the thriving capital of an ancient dwarven civilization, the lost city of Gauntlgrym is now a battleground for level sixty adventurers in Neverwinter." It's supposed to merge PvP and PvE into a massive, three-phase event, giving high-level players something else to do besides making brutal dungeons in the Foundry.

After you've had your fill of dwarves, how about an elven chaser? Cryptic has also announced the first expansion module for Neverwinter, entitled Fury of the Feywild. It currently resides on a [a href=http://nw.perfectworld.com/module1]placeholder page[/a] that proclaims "coming summer 2013".

Source: [a href=http://nw.perfectworld.com/news/?p=907501]Neverwinter Blog[/a]

Permalink

 

[Grabehn]

I still have this game and it's quite entertaining, love that there's no real need for you to group with people, and the story is quite engaging on its own. Even thou I can't enjoy it as much since there's still no Fire Wizard and that one is right on their intro video.

 

[Matt K]

Eh, I played it a bit but got board pretty quickly hopefully these new additions will make the game play better (got board essentially spamming the same few powers over and over again).

 

[piinyouri]

Sounds like they're making a lot of skills better fr the Cleric, which is my main class.
I'm pretty excited overall. : D

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

I recently spent 2 weeks at this game, not really even playing all that much each day, and quickly got to level 56 on my Wizard.

I stopped playing because the further I got into the game, the worse the game got. The community was terrible, at least on the Mindflayer shard, and the fact that there have been approx 4 different duping exploits running rampant since day one has pretty much ruined the economy. Same shit as in Diablo 3. People were printing money, duping gems, and glitching to have 100% fusion rates on enchantments without a ward.

I hadn't even looked at the Auction House in all that time but I was curious to see what kind of gear there was. Once I saw that the ultimate end game gear was all there for a mere 15k AD I was immediately turned off from playing further.

I had already gotten to the point where it took me 3 days to even find anyone to do a dungeon with, because chat is limited by zone, because I was always too high a level to even use the shitty queue system.

But I'd rather spend 40 min in a queue to end up with no cleric, than spend hours spamming zone chat looking for more than one other person to squad with.

Mostly you just get people telling you to stfu for breaking the 30 min of straight chat silence they were enjoying beforehand.

I've never played an mmo with such a small, linear, world and general lack of content. It ensures that once you complete the quests in an area, you have ZERO reason to stick around. And doing said quests will mean you are going to be much higher than the level of all the enemys, so your gear is always behind, you miss out on all the skirmishes because you can only see them by queueing and getting into dungeons takes forever.

I didn't try pvp, because I hate pvp. Especially when it involves having to use an entirely separate set of gear specifically for pvp.

The only mmos I have regarded less than Neverwinter would be Rift and Runes of Magic. I couldn't play either for more than an hour.

These proposed changes sound like a step in the right direction though. Aside from the HEAVY nerf that Control Wizards seem to be getting. I never had a use for Avalanche, but its nice they are fixing it. I also never had a use for Ray of Enfeeblement, because it did crap damage and delivered a crap debuff. Shame they are nerfing it even more.

Fixing Sudden Storm is great, maybe they could also fix the fact that it cannot crit, and cannot damage more than a few hp when cast on mobs sucked in by Singularity.

Storm Pillar was already a joke of an at will power, but nerfing its already sad damage is not helpful. Making the pillar last more than 1.5 seconds would certainly help it.

But the thing that would make me ragequit if I were still intent on playing it would be the HUGE nerf to Steal Time. That is the bread and butter of CWs skill set. I would have nerfed the AP gain on shield pulses WAY before I cut out the Arcane Mastery stacks on Steal Time.

Maybe the changes to Freezing Cloud will actually make it worth using. Though with the AM stacks being cut from Steal Time it pretty much means you will need to spam Magic Missile all the time to keep them stacked or lose most of your DPS.

All in all, the game desperately needs some major fundamental changes in order to rise to being on par with other mmos, let alone excell them.

Also, the fact that all the gear you get looks about the same from 1-59 isn't a big draw. Its all the same neutral color as well to get you to buy those dyes from the shop, but you are constantly getting new gear, that looks the same, with slightly better stats so its pointless.

Basically you make a new toon, play a few days to get to cap by doing foundry quests/praying, buy your endgame gear from the AH and then have ZERO to do.

If nothing else I fervently hope that this patch makes both Warrior classes relevant. All I read and saw first hand in game was GWF and GF getting insta kicked from queues because they did nothing but drag squads down.

 

[Helen Jones]

I've never played an mmo with such a small, linear, world and general lack of content. It ensures that once you complete the quests in an area, you have ZERO reason to stick around. And doing said quests will mean you are going to be much higher than the level of all the enemys, so your gear is always behind, you miss out on all the skirmishes because you can only see them by queueing and getting into dungeons takes forever.

I never got to a high level, and imagine I will still play, but this was my biggest problem even early on in the game. I was expecting a break from the grinding-type quests of WoW, but if anything these quests were more boring as the respawn timers were completely out. (Too many enemies everywhere that posed no real challenge)

The rest of the content seemed pretty cool to me, and whether it was my realm or area the general chat was completely welcoming and talkative. But then I only saw a small part of the game.

OT: the endgame looks very cool and like a great idea, but I'm not sure I'll face levelling to it without some serious quest rewrites

 

[Lazy Kitty]

I've been playing it quite a bit during the weekends and it's lot of fun.

I hope we get to keep our characters and stuff.
Especially that Caturday cape.

Too bad there isn't an spell to let me summon my own zombie rotters or maybe imps.
They're weak, but just having a couple of them follow me around would be a nice touch.

 

[Marak Daga]

Wow just tried that game and boy is it shit. Too little dnd and too much wow clone.

 

[DanielBrown]

Mjeh. I tried it a while ago. Got to level six or something before I became too bored to continue.
Not saying it's a bad game, since I didn't get that far, but it wasn't for me.

 

[MercurySteam]

Gonna dust off my 33 Cleric and get back into it and see how long I can go before a need a break.

 

[piinyouri]

snip

I play on the Beholder shard and I honestly haven't run into even half of the issues you listed. (Might just be a shard thing, maybe everyone on Mindflayer are poop heads.)

1. Haven't heard anything about duping or whatnot. Every party, every single group I've been thrown into for a skirmish/dungeon w/e has been kind, fun, and productive.

2. I have noticed certain dungeons can take forever to get a full party, while others seem to fill up instantly.

3. Once again, never had anyone be that outright rude as to ask someone to leave the group. The groups I've been in are talkative in the chat enough. I don't personally want a LOT of talking.

4. If you do the Foundry quests for some time, then try to jump back in to the main game, yeah you can really throw the progression out of whack. That one is a problem I'll admit.

5. I tried the PvP out because of the AD reward. I NEVER ever do PvP. I don't even really know where to begin. But, I tried it, and had fun surprisingly, and no one was a sore loser about it, even congratulated each other after the fact and all that.

6. It is a beta. Not everything is there/in a finished state/polished yet.
I mean I understand your complaint against there not being much to do, but maybe check back once the game has gotten on it's feet?
Though in my personal opinion I'm thinking they are going to let the Foundry take of the "new places to go/new things to do" for the majority. Hopefully they'll release some more level title sets and things for it, allowing map makers to make new and exciting adventures.

 

[Bigsmith]

I have an account, and I did enjoy it for a bit. I got a Guardian fighter up to level 25 or so before I had a problem with bag space and apparently the only way was to buy more with Zen as the auction house was down.

Then I noticed how silly the classes are, why have two types of fighter when in DnD they don't? Why not let the player build a fighter the way they want to? why can't I play a two weapon fighter, a fighter that uses a ranged weapon, a fighter that uses a weapon + shield or a fighter that users a two handed sword.

Why can't I play a paladin, a druid, ranger, monk ect.

It also needs a separate slot for capes, I want to wear my caturday survivor cape but it replaces my neck slot item.

On a positive note I love the way combat works, dodging blocking, telephoning and the likes.

Sadly the game stinks of WOW. The thing I've always loved about DnD is the class diversity, I can play a fighter in one game and a different fighter in another and each will be completely different, I'm really sad this hasn't translated into a the game.

 

[antipunt]

I was bulldozing through this game, and generally enjoyed the ok-story and hack/slash lawn-mowing power I had. Then I found out that apparently my class (rogue) was pretty OP. Not all that surprised to be honest >_>

 

[Arnoxthe1]

It's really weird how they seem to want to ignore it's predecessor, Neverwinter Nights. Haven't seen a single mention of it. True, Neverwinter Nights isn't an MMO but it still had very solid multiplayer.