After sitting in the queue for about an hour and half I finally got on and rolled up a Tiefling Trickster Rogue. No biggie. First day of a free MMO that has an impressive IP attached to it.
For us old grognard table top types, yep, it’s inspired by 4th Edition. You’ve got the usual races and classes and their expected abilities. No real surprise there. But it’s still an MMO so don’t expect that table top feel. There was one thing that did feel a bit like table top. That was generating your ability scores. Heck, there even was the sound of dice clattering. But I think the system was bascially roll until you get the numbers you like.
As far as being an MMO, maybe Guild Wars 2 has spoiled me. Neverwinter has the same old NPC’s with with an ! or ? over their heads. And so far seems like pretty much the same old type of quest lines. At least I haven’t gotten the “gather 12 wolf pelts” type quests, yet. I managed to make it to 6th level last night for whatever that’s worth. I really find the “you only heal at a campfire” mechanic a real drag. It’s either gulp down healing potions or back track.
The graphics aren’t anything really special. I’ve seen better and I’ve seen worse. The character customization during generation really doesn’t seem to help that much or make that much difference. The characters still look basically the same. It looks like hair and skin tone are the only things that are really noticeable once you get into the world and start playing.
But the UI, well, that’s something else. It might have been just my display but the icons were really tiny. And the controls. The usual keyboard keys for movement and various hot keys for your abilities. The left and right mouse buttons are for your At-Will powers. The mouse controls mainly the camera but you can also steer your character with it. It took me quite a while to get used to that. I spent a lot of time looking at the sky in the middle of a fight.
I didn’t have a chance to mess with it but I think the real strength of Neverwinter is going to come from The Foundry. This is user created content. Dungeons, quests, cities and so on. I haven’t a chance to really mess with it or go through any adventures but like I said, this is what I think will make Neverwinter really cool. Probably, it will be only a matter of days before someone does their iteration of Keep on the Borderlands or Tomb of Horrors.
So there’s a few things that I’m not crazy about but you can’t beat the price. Free. Now there are some in game micro-transaction but Cryptic says that you don’t need to pay “to win”. We’ll see about that. In the little gamer’s opinion, it’s worth the time to play around with and have some fun.