Not Your Daddy’s D&D: A Review of Neverwinter MMORPG

Jun 29, 2013

PVP – There are more player versus layer maps being added to Neverwinter but mainly there are only two. I have to say the five on five PVP isn’t terrible but after joining a handful of times the bloom is well off the rose. I haven’t experimented much with PVP to this point but it’s certainly something most players who have completed the end game will spend much more time invested in due to the lack of much else to do other than Skirmishes or Foundry missions.

Bonus Play Astral Diamond Earnings – Piggybacking on the PVP, there are also Skirmishes (which are five player co-op mini missions ending in a boss battle), Dungeons (five player crawls which normally lasting thirty minutes or so), as well as the aforementioned Foundry missions. Completing these on a daily basis bring you bonus experience and Astral Diamonds. The issue here is, as you rise in levels, you’re required to repeat these multiple times to be able to score the bonus ADs; in my current level region I have to complete Foundry missions three times in a day to get the special bonus. Since you queue for all of these, outside the Foundry adventures, you begin to spend a lot of time roaming around just waiting to get into the multiplayer modes since if you’re queued for anything and in the middle of a dungeon you’re whisked away and have to restart the dungeon later. It gets to the point you probably will start taking a pass on some the additional content since a great amount of online time is spent either waiting or repeating the same missions over and over again.

The Indifferent

Is it D&D? – While there’s plenty of Dungeons & Dragons flavor throughout the game, with famed locations, monsters, and lore this isn’t a true port of the pen and paper game online. Much of Neverwinter isn’t a departure from what MMOs have presented before and there may be a sense of “been there, done that” for vets of the genre. Keeping that in mind I still have a lot of fun playing and there is enough of the core game included in the experience so it isn’t completely alien.

Boss A.I. – One of the weaker aspects of the dungeons or finales of many of the areas is a boss battle and more times than not they’ll play out in the same way. After you’ve gained a few levels the bosses tend to have a couple of devastating attacks they’ll use on your character. There’s always a visual clue as to when they’ll perform one of these attacks so all a player has to do is make sure they aren’t button mashing their own attacks so they’re able to move (or dodge) out of the way in order to avoid the smashdown. To make up for this, the design throws plenty of mobs of weaker minions at you to constantly whittle away your hit points. I find that design technique to be a bit irritating since a mob of zombies shouldn’t be a bigger impediment to winning the boss fight than the actual boss itself. More varied attacks and less predictable AI would go a long way into making the boss fights more than running, gunning, and downing health potions as soon as you can.

Crafting – While it’s nice you don’t spend time endlessly grinding to track down crafting ingredients, crafting overall is a little hit or miss. At the lower crafting levels all you really do is make sure you purchase or find the components and set your worker to creating an item (or perform another crafting mission) and then going about your adventuring until the required time to complete the task has passed. Once you move into higher crafting levels you find many of the components are not readily available and only available through purchasing crafting packs. I like the fact you aren’t traversing the landscape looking to mine items all the time but you hit a ceiling on what you can really do unless you spend a lot of time hoping for the item to drop after defeating a mob, going to the Auction House to get the item through Astral Diamonds, or breaking down and buying one of the packs hoping you’ll get it that way.

The Social Aspect – Tons of people are drawn into MMORPGs for more than just the gameplay as the social experience is the draw. Since I haven’t encountered anything in the main game which can’t be completed solo, there isn’t much incentive to join Guilds or team up for anything outside of the Skirmishes, PVP, or Dungeons. I can’t say once you’ve completed the end game the need to rely on other players will change much so at this point there really isn’t much reason to speak with other players in game.

Classes and Class Imbalance – This isn’t really something I’ve personally experienced although there’s a lot of talk about how the Trickster Rogue is too powerful (especially in PVP at higher levels) and the Great Weapons Fighter is a letdown. Since I’ve progressed through the game as a Devoted Cleric I can’t personally comment but I have seen patch change notes which show tweaks here and there regarding all the classes, so I personally believe this will eventually get ironed out.

At launch some people may be disappointed there aren’t a multitude of class choices, especially if they’re diehard fans of D&D, but I believe there’s enough variety at launch for most players. If Neverwinter is to succeed in the long haul there will have to be additional races and classes rolling out to incent people to play multiple characters. From my time in the beta and public offering I have the impression Cryptic and Perfect World will devote some serious time to developing more content for Neverwinter to become their evergreen title.

Quest Paths – This will probably bother World of Warcraft veterans since they’re used to each race or class having different early game quest paths. Neverwinter throws all new characters into the mix in the same area with the same objectives and adventure options available. Later, as you complete areas, you’ll eventually have multiple parts of the world map open to you but the adventuring paths are always going to be essentially alike for everyone.

Overall Neverwinter just may be my best experience I’ve had with an MMORPG. By no means am I the traditional online player so you have to take my opinions for what they are as most people checking out this review will have far more experience with MMOs than me. It may be I can walking into the game world without any preconceived ideas of what a great time I’d have only to end up disappointed. That said, I’ve had a very good time playing and will surely continue to do so for a couple hours or more whenever I have a chance to. Neverwinter may not strictly be Dungeons & Dragons ported to an online environment but there’s enough of the D&D feel and flavor where fans of the system shouldn’t be dissatisfied.

While the reality no “free to play” game of this size is ever truly free I never have the feeling I must spend money to progress. Or, in other words Neverwinter doesn’t make me say it’s a “pay to win” title. Sure, you won’t be sporting the most exclusive gear and components unless you want to lay out some cash but there’s tons of gameplay here and it shouldn’t cost you a dime.

Neverwinter is well worth a look for those who dig the fantasy MMORPG scene and if you ever find yourself on the Mindflayer server and encounter a Cleric named Cormac Mac Arrn be sure to say hello.

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Jeff McAleer

Founder/Editor-in-chief of The Gaming Gang website and host of The Gaming Gang Dispatch and other TGG media for fifteen years, Jeff takes on any and all sorts of games but is especially ready to tackle roleplaying games and strategy games. He's been involved with the hobby since he was just a wee grade school lad, over four decades ago.