Neverwinter Recon

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

... Seriously?

Seriously. Compared to the vitriol on our site in 2005/06, that's nothing!

However Im fully aware many still loving DDO will still love DDO afterwards. This is for those looking for a change and prefer this style of play. I think its great. All that matters to me.. is it fun to play. Even still, I consider DDO my #1 game, because it's closer to the D&D I grew up playing. But I'll play both.

[Musouka]

No I will never go to mmorpg for assessment of a game like this. DDO and Neverwinter have been punching bags for years on that site. Used to be a great source, still check it on occasion, but its filled of the Steam kiddies that jump from 1 f2p to another every week. So thanks but no thanks!!

No one's accusing anyone of anything, take it easy. Its all personal taste.

that website is just awful vitriol to nearly every game.

Whenever people link articles on that site, I can't help but laugh.

[slarden]

I participated in the beta and I believe DDO and Neverwinter to be games that appeal to mostly different people.

DDO is a very complex game with many choices and a significant time investment to build an end game character. The folks that spend 20+ hours on DDO per week will never like Neverwinter. The big disadvantage of DDO for some is that it is so easy to feel like you are behind and can never catch up. It's also easy to build a character only to find out you made a big mistake with your build and correcting it will take forever. Just picture putting everything into a level 20 Ranger Arcane Archer only to find out the capstone doesn't work as advertised and the most effective archer in the game requires 6-12 levels of monk with 10k stars, half elf and 2 levels of a 3rd class. I've been playing the game quite a bit for 2 years and feel as though I'll never caught up to where my characters should be. Yet, I still love the great customization DDO has to offer.

It's rather simple to start playing Neverwinter, hard to make a mistake and I ran through numerous quests without ever needing any of the store purchased items. When I died the quest wasn't a wipe, I just teleported to a point earlier in the quest where I could try again. It's a new game so you won't feel overwhelmed when people start linking gear. It has a less of a grind. And for people that enjoy designing dungeons for their friends and/or participating in their friends dungeons the foundry is quite simply the closest thing that exists to the P&P D&D culture I've ever seen. Expect DDO to have something similar as soon as they can pull it off.

The potential downsides of Neverwinter....lack of end game grind... the power gamer will be decidedly bored very quickly. There is nothing to brag about because everyone will have nice stuff. Secondly, pretty much everything is purchasable with real $ which means a person that throws $500 at the game will be very well geared very quickly. While this makes absolutely no difference in the quests because they are all completable without it, it will create a significant power balance in PVP unless they figure out a way to take the money advantage out of PVP. This exists in DDO as well, but in DDO the impact of $ spend on PVP isn't as significant. Other than PVP, purchasing items with $ will give no real advantage for PVE, however it will allow people to get nice things very fast. People are basically paying because they want it now. Just like the bestsellers on DDO - tomes, stones of xp, etc.

For the most part I think Neverwinter will be something that will appeal to the casual gamers, people that feel they can't keep up with more complex/grindy mmos, people with more money than time, people that enjoy creating their own content and people that always like to try something new. The foundry system will effectively provide an unlimited amount of content and I generally got better gear in the foundry quests than the cryptic quests because of how the scaling works and the xp bonus they provided which put me way ahead of the standard quest levels.

Big product differentiator for DDO: Customization and unlimited things to obtain and farm
Big product differentiator for Neverwinter: Ease of entry into the game and the foundry

Winner: Both - they will both continue to thrive and do well. Neverwinter will likely get some DDO casual players. Over time some Neverwinter players will migrate to DDO for the deeper end game and more complex character options. In the end there is plenty of room for two D&D games especially when they are so different.

Even though Neverwinter will have more appeal to many new players, I think DDO will have no problem continuing to attract new players. I think the revolving door of free-to-play players that like to dabble in all the games will continue to mean new DDO players will have no problems getting into parties and finding people to quest when starting out.

[slarden]

From my understanding forum mod and other cryptic employees that were not the level design dev team use the foundry to make some quests to show off the system. One that I played I know was made by someone who is a forum mod and represenative not a actual developer if that makes sense.

The forum mod is a volunteer/alpha tester but not paid. His foundry quest was rated the highest and I did enjoy the chain he made, but I actually found a few quests I liked even better.

I am not sure if they disabled creating quests with the foundry because it is still buggy or they wanted to people to actually play the content instead of spending all weekend making their own quests.

[whereispowderedsilve]

bump back to 1st page, off you go! :P! ! So all 3 of the NO threads can be together like a happy family! :P! !

[Charononus]

The forum mod is a volunteer/alpha tester but not paid. His foundry quest was rated the highest and I did enjoy the chain he made, but I actually found a few quests I liked even better.

I am not sure if they disabled creating quests with the foundry because it is still buggy or they wanted to people to actually play the content instead of spending all weekend making their own quests.

Ah cool good to know, I wish I had been able to play the beta test weekend longer but was only able to play sunday after they fixed the bluescreen bug.

[Nightalas]

I participated in the beta and I believe DDO and Neverwinter to be games that appeal to mostly different people.

DDO is a very complex game with many choices and a significant time investment to build an end game character. The folks that spend 20+ hours on DDO per week will never like Neverwinter. The big disadvantage of DDO for some is that it is so easy to feel like you are behind and can never catch up. It's also easy to build a character only to find out you made a big mistake with your build and correcting it will take forever. Just picture putting everything into a level 20 Ranger Arcane Archer only to find out the capstone doesn't work as advertised and the most effective archer in the game requires 6-12 levels of monk with 10k stars, half elf and 2 levels of a 3rd class. I've been playing the game quite a bit for 2 years and feel as though I'll never caught up to where my characters should be. Yet, I still love the great customization DDO has to offer.

It's rather simple to start playing Neverwinter, hard to make a mistake and I ran through numerous quests without ever needing any of the store purchased items. When I died the quest wasn't a wipe, I just teleported to a point earlier in the quest where I could try again. It's a new game so you won't feel overwhelmed when people start linking gear. It has a less of a grind. And for people that enjoy designing dungeons for their friends and/or participating in their friends dungeons the foundry is quite simply the closest thing that exists to the P&P D&D culture I've ever seen. Expect DDO to have something similar as soon as they can pull it off.

The potential downsides of Neverwinter....lack of end game grind... the power gamer will be decidedly bored very quickly. There is nothing to brag about because everyone will have nice stuff. Secondly, pretty much everything is purchasable with real $ which means a person that throws $500 at the game will be very well geared very quickly. While this makes absolutely no difference in the quests because they are all completable without it, it will create a significant power balance in PVP unless they figure out a way to take the money advantage out of PVP. This exists in DDO as well, but in DDO the impact of $ spend on PVP isn't as significant. Other than PVP, purchasing items with $ will give no real advantage for PVE, however it will allow people to get nice things very fast. People are basically paying because they want it now. Just like the bestsellers on DDO - tomes, stones of xp, etc.

For the most part I think Neverwinter will be something that will appeal to the casual gamers, people that feel they can't keep up with more complex/grindy mmos, people with more money than time, people that enjoy creating their own content and people that always like to try something new. The foundry system will effectively provide an unlimited amount of content and I generally got better gear in the foundry quests than the cryptic quests because of how the scaling works and the xp bonus they provided which put me way ahead of the standard quest levels.

Big product differentiator for DDO: Customization and unlimited things to obtain and farm
Big product differentiator for Neverwinter: Ease of entry into the game and the foundry

Winner: Both - they will both continue to thrive and do well. Neverwinter will likely get some DDO casual players. Over time some Neverwinter players will migrate to DDO for the deeper end game and more complex character options. In the end there is plenty of room for two D&D games especially when they are so different.

Even though Neverwinter will have more appeal to many new players, I think DDO will have no problem continuing to attract new players. I think the revolving door of free-to-play players that like to dabble in all the games will continue to mean new DDO players will have no problems getting into parties and finding people to quest when starting out.

Well done, I'd say this is a really good and realistic comparison of DDO and Neverwinter!

For D&D enthusiasts there is still a third option, which is persistent worlds of Neverwinter Nights 1 and Neverwinter Nights 2. As an example, the release of Baldur's Gate: Enhanced Edition 2-3 months ago brought a lot of new players to the most popular persistent world for NWN 2 called Baldur's Gate: The Sword Coast Chronicles.

[Taojeff]

I participated in the beta and I believe DDO and Neverwinter to be games that appeal to mostly different people.

DDO is a very complex game with many choices and a significant time investment to build an end game character. The folks that spend 20+ hours on DDO per week will never like Neverwinter. The big disadvantage of DDO for some is that it is so easy to feel like you are behind and can never catch up. It's also easy to build a character only to find out you made a big mistake with your build and correcting it will take forever. Just picture putting everything into a level 20 Ranger Arcane Archer only to find out the capstone doesn't work as advertised and the most effective archer in the game requires 6-12 levels of monk with 10k stars, half elf and 2 levels of a 3rd class. I've been playing the game quite a bit for 2 years and feel as though I'll never caught up to where my characters should be. Yet, I still love the great customization DDO has to offer.

It's rather simple to start playing Neverwinter, hard to make a mistake and I ran through numerous quests without ever needing any of the store purchased items. When I died the quest wasn't a wipe, I just teleported to a point earlier in the quest where I could try again. It's a new game so you won't feel overwhelmed when people start linking gear. It has a less of a grind. And for people that enjoy designing dungeons for their friends and/or participating in their friends dungeons the foundry is quite simply the closest thing that exists to the P&P D&D culture I've ever seen. Expect DDO to have something similar as soon as they can pull it off.

The potential downsides of Neverwinter....lack of end game grind... the power gamer will be decidedly bored very quickly. There is nothing to brag about because everyone will have nice stuff. Secondly, pretty much everything is purchasable with real $ which means a person that throws $500 at the game will be very well geared very quickly. While this makes absolutely no difference in the quests because they are all completable without it, it will create a significant power balance in PVP unless they figure out a way to take the money advantage out of PVP. This exists in DDO as well, but in DDO the impact of $ spend on PVP isn't as significant. Other than PVP, purchasing items with $ will give no real advantage for PVE, however it will allow people to get nice things very fast. People are basically paying because they want it now. Just like the bestsellers on DDO - tomes, stones of xp, etc.

For the most part I think Neverwinter will be something that will appeal to the casual gamers, people that feel they can't keep up with more complex/grindy mmos, people with more money than time, people that enjoy creating their own content and people that always like to try something new. The foundry system will effectively provide an unlimited amount of content and I generally got better gear in the foundry quests than the cryptic quests because of how the scaling works and the xp bonus they provided which put me way ahead of the standard quest levels.

Big product differentiator for DDO: Customization and unlimited things to obtain and farm
Big product differentiator for Neverwinter: Ease of entry into the game and the foundry

Winner: Both - they will both continue to thrive and do well. Neverwinter will likely get some DDO casual players. Over time some Neverwinter players will migrate to DDO for the deeper end game and more complex character options. In the end there is plenty of room for two D&D games especially when they are so different.

Even though Neverwinter will have more appeal to many new players, I think DDO will have no problem continuing to attract new players. I think the revolving door of free-to-play players that like to dabble in all the games will continue to mean new DDO players will have no problems getting into parties and finding people to quest when starting out.

You are mostly incorrect about everything here.

1. You can't know for certain if people who play 20+ hours here will not like Neverwinter. Just because people like one thing that does not prevent them from liking similar or different games. This is rather silly, now if people are trying to judge Neverwinter by conformity then sure, it would fail and vice versa the other way around. I love DDO, been playing since beta, do all my own builds been running 1-6 man raids since way back in the day (2 man titan, 1 man queen, all the way up to short man CiTW). My love of DDO does not prevent me from seeing the complexities and fun of Neverwinter. I know for a fact that a good deal of people from DDO are planning on trying Neverwinter and some have already made up there minds to make it there primary game.

2. There will be more, not less end game in Neverwinter. The beta has only shown levels 1-30 and there is still a ton of Paragon stuff, and they have already said they are going to release Epic levels. I would say there will probably be twice as much content in Neverwinter then DDO 2 months from launch.

Here are the real differences in DDO and Neverwinter.

1. Neverwinter is based on 4e and DDO is based on a 3.5 (both now loosely based).

2. Character customization is much broader in DDO, which is a more free-form system, where as Neverwinter uses trees and class roles more. Both will be changing, DDO with the enhancement trees, and Neverwinter is going to get betting Paragon paths and epic levels. Neverwinter's options are only going to grow more in the next couple years. They will never be what DDO's are now, but it will certainly not be as limiting as the first beta options. (its a new game remember). Remember DDO's 4 enhancements you could get way back when? Were there as many feats? classes, races? Ok moving on...

3. Graphics and game engine are both much better on Neverwinter. This is just an age thing for DDO.

4. UI is better, a lot more modern day MMO amenities like Guild and Event calendars etc.

5. Combat. You get about 8 active abilities to work with along with two buffs in Neverwinter at any one time. You can have many more, but you have to slot them a little like guild wars 2. Both are active combat, DDO's is more mobile but the engine is dated, many of the problems that are not present in Neverwinter. While DDO has more options for casters and hybrid builds, straight melee will find more to do in Neverwinter. Also, Neverwinter's ability combo's, positioning, tells, and effects are all more complex than DDO's. One of the things people complain about in DDO is when mobs finish their attacks after being held or stunned. That is because DDO is really a quasi-turn-based real time system, where things don't really happen in the order they may appear and the animations don't always match up. Neverwinter on the other hand allows you to block a moments notice (if you have the stamina left), dodge is more fluid. You can interrupt attacks. It has that fighting game appeal while still being slow enough to allow thinking strategies.

6. I do agree that it is too easy at the moment, but hopefully so harder content will emerge.

7. Neverwinter has more balance between races and classes so by that measure is more balanced in PvP. Yes i do concede there is a quite a bit of play to win.

8. By all appearances it is much easier to get game currency in Neverwinter then DDO, it is truly free to play. I was getting 10k astral diamonds a day at a casual pace(which you can trade for Zen on market). Still this remains to be seen.

9. The Foundry, biggest selling point hands down. If even 1% of the content is good it will have more then 10x as much content as DDO within a couple months.

10. Warlocks!!!!!! (a clever individual on the forums over there was able to figure out the other two classes and they turned out to be Warlock and Ranger).

[Jay203]

i think one of the biggest point i'd give NWO is that they don't just give blanket immunities to the mobs.

[slarden]

You are mostly incorrect about everything here.

1. You can't know for certain if people who play 20+ hours here will not like Neverwinter. Just because people like one thing that does not prevent them from liking similar or different games. This is rather silly, now if people are trying to judge Neverwinter by conformity then sure, it would fail and vice versa the other way around. I love DDO, been playing since beta, do all my own builds been running 1-6 man raids since way back in the day (2 man titan, 1 man queen, all the way up to short man CiTW). My love of DDO does not prevent me from seeing the complexities and fun of Neverwinter. I know for a fact that a good deal of people from DDO are planning on trying Neverwinter and some have already made up there minds to make it there primary game.

2. There will be more, not less end game in Neverwinter. The beta has only shown levels 1-30 and there is still a ton of Paragon stuff, and they have already said they are going to release Epic levels. I would say there will probably be twice as much content in Neverwinter then DDO 2 months from launch.

Here are the real differences in DDO and Neverwinter.

1. Neverwinter is based on 4e and DDO is based on a 3.5 (both now loosely based).

2. Character customization is much broader in DDO, which is a more free-form system, where as Neverwinter uses trees and class roles more. Both will be changing, DDO with the enhancement trees, and Neverwinter is going to get betting Paragon paths and epic levels. Neverwinter's options are only going to grow more in the next couple years. They will never be what DDO's are now, but it will certainly not be as limiting as the first beta options. (its a new game remember). Remember DDO's 4 enhancements you could get way back when? Were there as many feats? classes, races? Ok moving on...

3. Graphics and game engine are both much better on Neverwinter. This is just an age thing for DDO.

4. UI is better, a lot more modern day MMO amenities like Guild and Event calendars etc.

5. Combat. You get about 8 active abilities to work with along with two buffs in Neverwinter at any one time. You can have many more, but you have to slot them a little like guild wars 2. Both are active combat, DDO's is more mobile but the engine is dated, many of the problems that are not present in Neverwinter. While DDO has more options for casters and hybrid builds, straight melee will find more to do in Neverwinter. Also, Neverwinter's ability combo's, positioning, tells, and effects are all more complex than DDO's. One of the things people complain about in DDO is when mobs finish their attacks after being held or stunned. That is because DDO is really a quasi-turn-based real time system, where things don't really happen in the order they may appear and the animations don't always match up. Neverwinter on the other hand allows you to block a moments notice (if you have the stamina left), dodge is more fluid. You can interrupt attacks. It has that fighting game appeal while still being slow enough to allow thinking strategies.

6. I do agree that it is too easy at the moment, but hopefully so harder content will emerge.

7. Neverwinter has more balance between races and classes so by that measure is more balanced in PvP. Yes i do concede there is a quite a bit of play to win.

8. By all appearances it is much easier to get game currency in Neverwinter then DDO, it is truly free to play. I was getting 10k astral diamonds a day at a casual pace(which you can trade for Zen on market). Still this remains to be seen.

9. The Foundry, biggest selling point hands down. If even 1% of the content is good it will have more then 10x as much content as DDO within a couple months.

10. Warlocks!!!!!! (a clever individual on the forums over there was able to figure out the other two classes and they turned out to be Warlock and Ranger).

After reading your post I am not sure that we disagree as much as you think we do. My DDO guild leader (and face to face friend) has suggested neverwinter will be a better fit for us (a group of 4 face face to face friends) than DDO for several reasons:

1) our friends that play less will benefit from the more streamlined character building process and ease of entry- less chance to make a bad build.
2) seems less grindy (the new loot and augment slots is nice, but same content, more gear grinding).
3) the guild system is better suited for a small group.
4) the foundry. We like the idea of exploring different people's ideas and making our own.
5) change is good - ddo is starting to feel like work for some of us

However I do think the hardcore DDO players would never enjoy a game like neverwinter. I understand you disagree - that is just my opinion. As you said, it's a new game so they will continue to expand and I acknowledge this could turn out to be a wrong assessment. I really wish nothing but success to both games.

As for difficulty, I found the foundry to be the most challenging quests we did because they scaled to our level. The other quests ended up being below our level because they were accelerating xp so people could level faster. I could probably spend years running just the foundry quests and never get bored. I suspect there will be 1000 quests by year end. Hopefully I'll make a few quests also. I love the idea of actually designing my own quest.

[EricKei]

I did the 3rd beta weekend...some good, some not so good...

As I posted elsewhere:

Played halfling Rogue, lots of stabbity goodness and aggro avoidance

Game builds on the F2P concept that Turbine has done so well on (at least, as compared to other games...) and refines it. Literally 100% free, according to the creators. No subscriptions, no initial buy price. Everything, including ZEN (online store currency) can be earned in-game and/or on forum, and supposedly everyone can eventually unlock everything.

Combat is fast paced, helped by the fact that you auto-track the nearest enemy when using your basic attack (everything else except for AOE's and the like are targeted). HUGE help.

For those who have NOT played many MMO's -- remember, DDO is not the "standard", it's a successful anomaly (this is not a bad thing!). If DDO is D&D 3e with an MMO wrapped around it, Neverwinter is an MMO with D&D 4e wrapped around it, and an insane amount of attention paid to lore (it takes place at the same time as the newest set of Salvatore books). Set in and around Neverwinter city on the West coast of Faerun.

Oh yeh, things are subject to change as of actual launch yada yada...

Quests are handled standard MMO style. Quest-givers have a yellow ? mark if they have something available, or a ! if they WILL have one eventually. You gain EXP from every mob you kill, as well as from almost every quest.

Leveling is in line with standard MMO conventions -- The level cap is 60; Lv 1~15 are effectively the newbie levels/tutorials, tho they're basically out of the way by level 10, which is when you get your second class-defining power (Stealth for rogues; you get the first such feature at Lv1, which is Sneak Attack for rogues). SA works exactly the same as in DDO: If the enemy isn't paying attention to you, you hit harder. Stealth: has a time limit, certain powers will refill the meter, and special attacks specify in the tooltip if they do NOT break Stealth; many specials get damage/range boosters when you are Stealthed. Note that mobs will still be *aware* that your toon is present if you are in Stealth, they just won't actually do anything about it (they literally stand around with ? marks over their heads )...

More on F2P: As their only way to get $$ for this game is the cash store, their cash store pricing does seem to be a bit excessive; this may change. They offer 3 pre-order packs, with the priciest going for $200 US and including a ton of goodies like a spider mount (and another mount, a unique Companion (basically a Gold Seal hireling, no time limit, who levels and accepts gear/augs), a variant Drow "race" that can only be unlocked via that pack, a bunch of unlocks, a Masterwork item with a removable augment, 2 million in Astral somethingorothers (same concept as DDO shards), and, of course, the icing on the cake, the Robe of Useless Items. It does exactly what it says on the tin.

back to levels -- I hit 27 during the free weekend, if that's any indication of leveling speed. I didn't exactly go grinding quests hardcore, either.

Companions/mounts : Once you finish the Tower District storyline quests (I did it at 16), you gain access to Companions. As I mentioned above, they're basically permanent hirelings. The game is (theoretically) balanced such that you can solo the entire game *except* for certain storyline dungeons by bringing a Companion along. So far, only certain dungeons have forced me into a party (basically the biggest storyline quest for that zone), and they have a handy queueing system to account for that. Once 5 people are in a party, you all get warped in to run it.

They have their own EXP bar and gain "ranks" as their levels. Note that ALL exp you gain is duplicated for them: If you gain 4K exp from a quest reward, so do they. Their only real downside is that you need to send them off for an ever-increasing amount of time to "train" in order to get the ranks -- you always level immediately, but their Rank exp can be banked, if desired. Rank 1-2: 30 seconds training time. Rank 14-15: 30 minutes training time. This time apparently counts down when you are logged off, so you can always just bank a level or 3 and send them to train just before you logoff for the day.

Mounts: Available at lv20. Basic horses are bought with gold, others like armored horses and exotic mounts like flaming hellsteeds are bought with the astral thingies (which you tend to earn over time or you can just buy the **** things with real $). Main purpose is to look cool and give you a run speed boost. Apparently nothing short of a successful enemy attack or knockdown will force you off of your mount when running away, which means you can literally just zip past melee mobs most of the time Attacking or using any other ability also makes you dismount.

Auctions: Didn't mess with. Items are posted with and paid for with the astral currency, NOT gold

Treasure: Random chests found pretty much anywhere are first-come first served, tho they re"spawn" after 10 minutes or so, it seems. Loot from mobs is apparently invisible to non-party members unless you let it sit on the ground for a long time. Said loot when In a party appears to be first come first served in parties, tho gold is auto-split. The party leader can set a "need" or "greed" flag to determine who gets rare and bound items. Boss-room chests allow everyone to loot and get their prizes without waiting. NOTE -- If a quest offers a physical reward (which is almost always) and it ends in a boss fight, your final reward will be the one and only item in said chest, and it will always be class specific. All gear is class-specific, as well. Rogues use daggers and light armor, if they pick up a greatsword or a holy symbol, the icon will be red to indicate that the item is unusable. Some items, like rings, are universal.

Combat and powers: At least as of level 27...You have At-Will powers (read: no cooldown or so short they might as well not have one) -- Lv1 AW is always your basic attack (and yes, you can remove it from your hotbar if you get something you like better), you use the main 2 mouse buttons for this. I forgot the names of these, soooo.. I had a basic (autotracking) attack, throwing knives (12 max, they regenerate 1 every 2 seconds or so), and a flurry attack -- after a brief windup, your toon does something that looks a whole lot like the graphic that appears when you turn on Subtle Backtabbing (mini-teleports), and you hit ten times in about 2-3 seconds -- each attack is weaker than the normal melee attack, but each can cause a stacking Bleeding effect and each hit can crit.

Encounter powers are ones you will use frequently -- cooldowns for mine were in the 8-12 second range. These are assigned to Q, E, and R (Stealth was TAB). At my level, I had mine set to a backstab (+50% when stealthed and does not break stealth), a teleport-backstab (stealth adds range but not damage), and an anti-aggro move that drops a "shadow clone" and makes you tumble backwards. (note -- only rogues can tumble/dodge, afaik). Most mobs -- even undeads -- are fooled by the clone, and it can take a few hits, more than enough to let you take out 3 or 4 normal enemies. Named mobs and tougher variants are another story, but you still have time to thin the herd before they start wailing on you. Daily powers -- These are the more powerful ones - the only limit on their use is building up "action points", different classes get these different ways -- for rogues, successful attacks build it up, so they can usually use these after 2 or 3 packs of enemies. These are things like AOE attacks, infinite stealth for 10 seconds, or rapid teleport-attacks for 10 seconds that auto-track all mobs within range.

Stats, skills, feats -- Very much MMO style. The powers listed above come at pre-set levels, aside from "Paragon Powers" that start at lv30. No skills per se. "Feats" are points that you spend in a manner similar to Borderlands: You start with access to 3 passives, spend X amount of points across those to gain access to the next set, etc. Things like +3/4/5% max HP, Crit chance or crit damage boosts, etc. By level 30, you gain access to ONE of the three Paragon Paths of your choice (the other two get locked out once you choose). These are essentially amped up versions of the prior "feats" as well as new passives with nifty bonuses.

Stats -- Same basic 6 stats, 1 primary stat and 2 secondaries. For Rogue, Dex is primary, str and cha are secondary. The game rolls up stats for you during chara creation, you can reroll as often as you like, but you cannot actually assign them; my guess is that they're working on a point system behind the scenes -- I rerolled a few times to try for decent numbers, and I don't think I ever saw a dex under 17 nor any other stat below 8. It seems to favor the 3 stats you "need", the primary moreso. Race affects these, as well. On halfling, I had +2 dex and +2 to a choice of either int or cha. I wanna say my starting stats were something like 20dex/13str/13con/11int/12wis/14cha. Note that str and con do not seem to be as huge a factor in this game as in DDO, as there is no to-hit stat (if your weapon swing hits the mob, you hit them, period) and HP get ridiculous pretty quickly (1000+ at level 10) -- mobs have similar high numbers). You get 2 more points to assign however you like every 10 levels.

Bonuses from gear all stack -- Power is raw attack damage, Critical is crit chance and damage, Restoration is, well...just what it sounds like. Get it over 100 (not that hard) and you start regaining HP every 3 seconds. The lower your hp (as a % of max), the more hp you regen; higher Regen stat increases this further. Companions auto-regen themselves when not in combat. As a Rogue (read: squishy), my power was in the high 400's and critical was approaching 600 as of my last play session; others were in the 0 ~ 150 range, not enough to provide much of a noticeable boost. Other stats include armor-piercing, movement, and a physical mitigation stat.

Companions addendum -- Available ones I saw included the available classes (Defensive fighter (sword & board, generates extra aggro -- I chose this guy), 2-handed weapon fighter, Control wizard, healer-type, and animals (basically rogues -- best direct damage but they're squishy))

Zones -- Except for the starter zone (which is HUGE), zones are generally laid out as wilderness areas with a safe starting area. Note that mobs that have aggro on you can and WILL chase you right back into those safe zones. The NPCs will help to fight them off, but don't expect them to be very effective. All dungeons are instanced.

One gripe I had that was with the players, not the game (inevitable in any online game) was the whining and *****ing in general ("Zone") chat about the presence of bugs (in an unreleased game...) that had me turn chat off in the main/starter zone -- apparently, there are plenty of people out there who do not comprehend that the purpose of letting people play a Beta is to find and squash as many bugs as possible...

They didn't let people play for free out of the goodness of their hearts, people. These are the same sorts of braindead morons who make death threats to reviewers who DARE to give an 8 out of 10 score to a game they happen to like (see also Uncharted 3) and seem to think that such a score indicates a horrible game.

Sadly, I even saw something similar on their forum -- Cryptic actually held an event at a specific time on Saturday where they asked that as many people as possible log on at once during a specific hour, with the intention of *trying to crash the server* so that they could get a better idea of realistic server capacity. The event worked: it crashed within the hour. One commenter actually posted "This does not bode well for the actual game." ... Really? REALLY? o_O

In all fairness, these idjits did not infest any of the other zones, it would seem Most of the wilderness zones were filled with LFG spam ...from people who apparently could not figure out that "Press K to queue up for a party" means that pressing K will put you into an automatic queue for the party-matching system x.x (It's literally that braindead. Press K, click on the quests you want to party for (you can pick as many as you like that are connected to that zone) and Bob's your uncle. When someone starts a new party, they can (apparently) opt to grab people out of the queue).

But you don't have to take MY word for it...

http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/12/19/ne...class-trailer/ -- rogue trailer (from an earlier beta, it would seem) The 10-hit attack is around the 1:18 mark or a bit after

http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/14/ne...izard-trailer/ -- Control Wizard trailer

http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/neve...-generation/2/ -- review from PCG

http://nw.perfectworld.com/media/videos -- videos on official site (more recent up top)

Oh yeah, me forgots -- They have a "Foundry" system in place that lets users make their own public quests, building dungeons from the ground up. Some good ones were present already in beta.

Open beta starts April 31, and they've said there will be no character wipes once it's done...So, for all intents and purposes, it's launch. Kinda (tho when the "official" launch is has not been announced)
http://nw.perfectworld.com/news/?p=849741

edit - according to a recent news release, the way you gain powers has been changed to a point-buy system, rather than "you get power X at level Y"

[~Der_Mosch]

Neverwinter is now in "Open Beta" (aka "released but we want a fall-back argument for stuff that doesn't work"), so everyone can have a try. It won't be a DDO killer for me - I don't see enough complexity or variety in that game for me - but the foundry is a great idea.

Oh, and you might get a flashback or two at the start of the game

[~Taeb]

personally I am actually becoming more hopeful the more I see about NWO. You see I have played alot of cryptics early works, and can agree with the comment they have had varied success in the industry. They built the foundation for city of heroes which went on to become impo the best MMO ever made for a casual pug experience where being able to easily get along with and interact with others from around the world rarely proved the head ache we often get here in DDO.

They went on to build champions, which holds the title of the first true free form character building MMO, imo wrongfully as DDO thanks to multi classing and the D20 system allows for incredibly flexible characters, which sadly only breeds conflict with the team specialists and creates the heated debates of should clerics be healers, and should everyone be BYOH when its always an option one can choose to build in with minimal impact on an end game build. The one advantage to a game with hard definitions for classes and roles is avoiding all that social grief.

STO though some claim is P2W, from my chats with friends who have given it a chance, even if they didnt stick with it, it was more due to cryptic breaking more often then fixing popular features like the foundry system. Hopefully the price they payed with its beta debut on STO will lead to a better experience for those on NWO.

The fact is the classes do indeed look fun to play, and each with just enough flavor and personal style to generate the altaholic stable of characters I and many others on CoH enjoyed. Likewise the classes all seem capable of being solo centric through build choices, letting them be taken abit out of the box for those needing to fit a more personal play style.

The fact things like mounts and useful companions exist for all players will be a big plus as its easy income through a e store, and further customization in how one appears and can play.

My own biggest pondering is the RP aspect of the game, COH was lore rich and easy to become a part of the world and had strong social hubs like pocket D. Champions has several clubs to socialize in as well.

Im guessing the moonstone lounge and its vip area are meant to be that for NWO and if so is a good sign, as its true most anti RP players in ftp games are total ftp. Those who immerse themselves in their characters and the world they play in usually are happy to invest. So I hope alot of things of interest to RPers like emotes and appearance customization are not neglected. Also a character bio page which gets largely ignored in DDO was used often in CoH and CO and would be nice to see return in NWO.

Overall although I dont know if it will be a direct death blow to DDO, I do see alot of reasons to give NWO a chance and more of my money then turbine has seen since MOTU got my 80+

Can i just say one thing. If City of heroes was their best game then why did they %#&@ it up to get it closed down? thank you very much. let's ruin one of the best games by closing it down gotcha. i played some NWO but honestly i just didnt like it compared to ddo. sure graphics werent bad. the missions were fun. traps poison damage. skirmish's. your toon is very limited in abilities. Hell even in rift you can use all. DDo you can use all. in this game nope your limited. so yeah no thanks.

[vegabond1969]

Based upon my experiences in NW and my long time love of DDO, I can honestly say that both games will continue on. The pros for DDO is the character creation flexibility, the combat system, and the graphics compared to NW. IMO these things were done horribly in NW, essential point and click. Another thing that DDO has going for it is the diversity of classes, NW has four with a fifth (ranger) coming soon. Now on the flip side, NW has one of the biggest reasons to play, it's setting. DDO should have never been put in Eberron to begin with. I think that was more of a ploy to promote the new world that WoTC was releasing. The second thing that NW has is the Foundry, which I've played around in quite a bit. It has the ability to completely create an entire world campaign system if the creator is willing to take the time.

As far as combat goes in NW though, it sucks. That's all there is to say about it. The Tempest Rogue is the most over powered class I've ever played. Fun to play, but can get a high volume of kills with one shot strikes. The chain attacks are nice, but limited as well. DDO has the better combat system, imo. Character creation in NW is all but non existent. You have a couple of booster that work with two abilities only, All abilities are determined by random rolls, you can not customize this at all. Ability mods are different, Wizards get mods to Dex, Wis, and Chr I believe. On one final note, guild setup in NW requires all the members to be lvl 15 (3 in DDO) and you must have five people minimum to start one. This was a major burr in my saddle, as my wife, daughter, and I have one on DDO with just us and we like it that way. I shouldn't be required to have x amount of people at x level to form or join a guild. DDO wins there. As I said, both games have some good points, combined they would make the perfect DnD MMO, but I'm happy with both the way they are. If I had to choose, DDO would be the winner though, just my 2 coppers.

[Feihung]

Man...Golden Axe was the bomb! Don't take no swipe at my only remaining working sega genesis game>

[FalseFlag]

but the foundry is a great idea.

Oh, and you might get a flashback or two at the start of the game

So far, The Foundry and the web portal character access are the only things NWO has going for it. And yes, you'll get some flashback at the start for sure.

Now on the flip side, NW has one of the biggest reasons to play, it's setting. DDO should have never been put in Eberron to begin with.

Plus the fact that Eberron is a far more interesting, much more engaging setting than the Forgotten Realms, which is pretty much the paragon of bland, generic fantasy settings any more. So that "plus" for NWO is bogus. But at the end of the day, it doesnt' matter what the setting is if the game itself is ****. And NWO is ****. While there are a couple ideas in there Turbine should pay homage to, the game sucks. The combat is tremendously boring, the character creation an customization is awful, and the non-Foundry adventure design reminds one of what a 10-year (with no imagination) would create, if he grew up on a railroad, and wanted everyone to be really poor.

NWO looks like a D&D game that was designed by someone who saw the cover of one of the books and then skimmed the Wikipedia entry on D&D. It makes DDO look like a strict by-the-book adaptation (and from me, that's saying an awful lot).

It's a boring, generic **** game in a boring, generic **** setting.

I think it will do quite well.