Neverwinter Online from a DDO player's perspective

[psteen1]

I got into the beta this weekend for Neverwinter, and played it pretty consistently for two days. Overall, this is no DDO, but it was a fun game. What surprised me is how a lot of the mechanics are so similar... here's my breakdown.

Similarities
Both games involve a central city hub.

Dungeons are instanced. Dungeons are about the same amount of fun and interest.

You can have hirelings, and they are just as stupid as DDO, though useful at times, just like DDO.

The community is still full of the same mix of annoying trolls and normal people.

Both are trying to squeeze you for more money.

Graphics in Neverwinter are about on par with DDO (which is pretty pitiful for a brand new game).

Both are action-MMO's, meaning that there is no auto-attack, and require mouse clicking to do basic attacks, and you supplement with hitting abilities from a hotbar.


Where Neverwinter is better
I feel like the action is more compelling. You can't attack while moving, and many don't like this, but it does stop everything from being a run-and-shoot kitefest when you have ranged attackers in the group. Standing still gives attacks a real feel of weight behind them, and I found myself not missing the ability to move one bit. With a wizard (which is the only class I played), you simply stop attacking for one brief second and teleport to a different location when mobs are coming after you.

Wilderness areas are not instanced and can have lots of people playing in them. Some may not like this; I am a fan of this type of play which is seen in most other MMO's as well.

Abilities are more dramatic. (more eye candy perhaps, but also just fun and exciting to use).

Dodging is a really fun mechanic... you see certain places light up in red and you know to get out of there!

Wizard's don't even attempt to melee. Their mouse attacks are ranged. I like being able to cast without thought of conservation of SP. I thought I wouldn't like this initially, but I gotta say, there is nothing more annoying than running out of SP in DDO and either carrying around a stash of pots, paying real money for pots, or just being deadweight on the team.

I did a PvP 5x5 capture the flag match, and thought that was a good time. I don't even bother with PvP in DDO, but I will play it regularly in Neverwinter.

There are events held every hour, which are all listed nicely on a home page.

The foundry (player created content) has great potential.


Where DDO is better

Multiclassing is awesome in DDO and customization is so much more interesting. You have some limited customization in Neverwinter (and at later levels which I didn't see, perhaps there is more). However, for people who just pure class everything, I think Neverwinter is just as good in customization.

I am not crazy about 4th edition rules. Neverwinter lacks the feats and skills of DDO.

DDO has deeper game play, more things to click, more spells to cast, more types of damage to both inflict and protect yourself against... buffs and wards seem largely non-existent in Neverwinter. No clicky items in Neverwinter.

True rezzing to keep a good toon going... I love this part of DDO, and think that more MMO's should do it.


My summary:

Neverwinter is fun and I will play it and probably not do it completely free-to-play, meaning money will be spent. It is a fresh breath of air from the same old DDO content. But I don't see it becoming the multi-year obsession that DDO has been for me. Ultimately for me it comes down to character customization. What draws me back to DDO is not the content, which I am rather sick of, but rather that there is always another type of character to try out.

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

This is one of the best and most accurate perspectives I've seen, glad you had fun in NWO.

Yea if NWO would of had DDO like character customization, we would have been talking a whole other animal here. It would have been a major blow to DDO, as many more would be moving over.

As it stands now, DDOs most loyal, (trolls or not, most forum users love this game regardless what they say. They love the game and the community.) are going nowhere. But, there ARE a ton of DDO folks over there now, and it will continue to attract more.

Funny enough, NWOs character customization is a joke, as is DDOs stale arse content. Whats amazing to me, is that DDO and NWO vets have long standing pen and paper D&D aficionados as part of their playerbases, that just hold the community together, and move it forward. I can tell you first hand... the Neverwinter community is the best I've seen in gaming besides the DDO community. I'm glad you can see "beyond the troll" and actually found another fun game to play!

[Uska]

If they lose more the console feel I might try it again but I dont see them changing the game enough for me to like it I tried it and other then the name I didnt feel like I was playing dnd at all and I didnt like the warning on the ground to get out of there felt to much like "Dragons Lair" the old laser disc game. DDO isnt perfect but at least at times I get the feeling I am playing dnd.

Maybe if they hadnt based NWO very very lossely on 4E I might have liked it but it really doesnt follow 4E much more if any than CO follows its pnp base in fact as far as I know it uses a heavly modifed version of the same game.

[psykopeta]

from my PoV, nwn is the new wow

and ddo is the new d&d(yeah, not ad&d, nor 3.0 nor even 3.5)

everything has benefits:

nwn can get wow players w/o worries, no need to think for playing, it's a mmo arcade, fun and easy

ddo can't get wow players, simply it's out of their comprehension, in fact i suggest tons of players to leave ddo because has no relaton with the gam they're looking for (questions like: what's the best class, what's the best pvp combo, etc help you to discover em)

fun for everyone, simply the players must have enough brain to know which game is made for their preferences and not the "i play this because i like...". the only result of this is "make ddo more like wow" or "make nwn more d&d" that will end with both (in fact with every) games because they weren' designed for that

[LeslieWest_GuitarGod]

Its not just the WoW sement thats playing NWO tho, and that's the strangest part. They've hung on to a HUGE bulk of their old school D&Ders, who are currently or will be soon making great UGC (not always hack n slash either...). Here's another thing. There's a lot of readers of fantasy (especially Salvatore's readers of course) that's having a blast with the lore and graphics environments, which is altogether better than whats over here in DDO. They tend not to mind the console style combat, because their immersion is tapped by different resources.

So, it's not as cut and dry as it appears on the surface

[9Crows]

i tried neverwinter this weekend also ...i didnt feel like i was playing d&d either

while fun it was much more like a standard mmo than d&d

while ddo isnt d&d it is still the closest thing by far

being in the d&d verse means i will play it some,but being like a standard mmo means i wont substitute it for ddo

[Flavilandile]

I'm not going to comment the rest as I will make my own opinion when the beta has ended. I'm just going to comment one line.

There are events held every hour, which are all listed nicely on a home page.

DDO used to have lots of events too at the launch ( not every hour, but regularly ).
Then they slowly started to disappear, and now there's no event at all...
GMs are not paid to make events anymore. They are paid only to give one of the following answer :
- This is a known bug, please fill a bug report.
- This is /not/ a known bug, please fill in a bug report.

and to eventually get a stuck character unstuck.

[griffin_230]

I've been playing the beta this weekend too. Seems to be tons of people online so I think they are stress testing the server(s). The latest build seems very stable, there was only one time where it looked like my instance was bugged and couldn't progress and I had to restart the client.

As soon as you start, there's a bit of awkwardness. You can't zoom while playing unless you're in a different mode. You can't move the cursor around the screen either, unless you hit ALT and enter a different mode.

The graphics for Neverwinter remind me of LOTRO's. Also, there seemed to be some weirdness going on with the texture mapping system. Just looking at the ground and not doing anything else, the high res textures would change to low res ones and then back again after a bit. Just rotating the camera would produce the same results. Very odd.

The combat is a hybrid between a console action game combined with a 3rd person shooter (especially if you're playing a ranged toon like a Control Wizard). With the limited power slots, the setup reminds me of DCUO. DCUO's combat feels better suited to a controller too and I wouldn't be surprised if they decided to convert NW to the next-gen consoles. Diablo 3 was another game that I was reminded of when I was playing NW and D3 is coming to consoles as well.

After playing DDO, I wasn't too keen on being rooted during attacks/casting, but it wasn't that big a deal for me after a while. Initially combat would involve a fair bit of moving and teleporting to avoid incoming attacks (I was playing a squishy Wiz), but once I got a healer companion, it was quicker and easier to just stand and heal through the damage and spam attacks for trash mob fights. Most fights became a lot more simplistic after getting a healer companion. Joining random groups was easy with the ingame event/skirmish/dungeon finder and it was fun to break up from the soloing.
At level 20, you can get a mount.

I liked the public questing zones which are in most other MMOs except DDO. Just seeing other people not in your party and in the same area is good and makes for more interaction. They can help or hinder you.

I was looking at the global game chat too to get other people's thoughts on the game. I tried to filter out the "WoW was the first MMO" guys. Although there were players who enjoyed the game and liked the combat, others felt that the levelling and customisation was too simplistic. They felt it was too much "on rails". Quite a few felt that it was MMO-lite.

My impressions are that it's very easy to get into (the game holds your hand with the glittering trail and there doesn't seem to be any puzzles - and I don't mean turn the statue around a few times), but it looks like it's aimed at casuals for quick pick up and play sessions. Not necessarily a bad thing. Basically, it feels like a console action game with a D&D theme. The game should do fine.

[Postumus]

DDO used to have lots of events too at the launch ( not every hour, but regularly ).
Then they slowly started to disappear, and now there's no event at all...

Just out of curiosity, what do you mean by 'event?' DDO has Mabar, Crystal Cove, Festivus, etc so what would the difference between these events and the ones DDO used to have?

[Ragnar7]

I tried the Neverwinter beta two weekends in a row. Honestly, I had high hopes for it, but it's nothing like dnd or ddo. I found the gameplay pretty boring and although I didn't get too far, ridiculously easy.

I was really hoping it would be good since I can't really play ddo anymore. The lag is insane, failing quests 3 or more times in a row due to lag to the point where the whole group just logs off. All they work on is ways to get their hands in our pockets instead of fixing issues a large number of players repeatedly tell them about. The new astral shard AH was the last straw for me. When I read the release notes that was basically the only thing in the update.

[Grosbeak07]

Just out of curiosity, what do you mean by 'event?' DDO has Mabar, Crystal Cove, Festivus, etc so what would the difference between these events and the ones DDO used to have?

They are more like hourly events... pvp tournament and stuff like that. I haven't really paid much attention to it.

[Flavilandile]

Just out of curiosity, what do you mean by 'event?' DDO has Mabar, Crystal Cove, Festivus, etc so what would the difference between these events and the ones DDO used to have?

Gamemaster made and driven events, with live Gamemasters ( you know the +whatever guys ).
I'm not talking about toggle on, toggle off events where there's no live people involved.

[Kmnh]

My impression si that nwn is worse than a fun DDO party and better than DDO with a party of exploiters.

It's a shame that Turbine refuses to fix the destiny exploits.

[chance2000]

My Take on Neverwinter MMO

So far I have put maybe 20 hours over 2 weekends of the beta.
My Dwarf Smigit there is Level 27 5k to level 28.
He is riding around on a huge buckskin Clydesdale horse.
Everything can be gotten with in game coin so far.

Now I first played pen and paper D&D in 1976.

The next mission I am slated to do I get another companion cleric as reward.
Is it better than DDO? NO!
Is it better than WOW? You bet.
Parts of it are better than DDO (memory leakage) been playing it on my laptop hooked up to my 32 inch TV.
Will I leave DDO for it? NO!
Will I play both? You bet.

After level 20 it does get much tougher.
The 1st weekend I played I do not remember if I died if I did it was not much.
This weekend in true Smigit style I have died many of times.

A bunch of things you can solo, some you have to group for.
One I grouped for in the graveyard because it was to hard for me.
Well I was level 25 and the monsters were level 27.
I like the open world part myself.

The city graphics there have a slight edge.
I prefer the DDO characters look and feel.

I really missed all of Smigit's tool bars and twink gear.
Now I did make him a Bio.
Second time I have woken on a beach with no idea how I got there nor my belongings.
Once in Eberron, and now Neverwinter. Got to lay off those dwarven spirits!

It is an enjoyable game, it is more hack and slash than DDO is.
So far there is xp grind and no real gear grind yet.

I have only gotten stuck one time so far between a rocky hill and some rocks.
Had to log out and back in then do some jumping to get out.

I see there being enough of a market for both games.

I like being able to use my laptop and give my pc a break.
Now my laptop is an ok one, Quad core 2.5 ghz Acer with 6 gigs of ram, built in video.
I can play DDO on it. It handles Neverwinter much better.
Getting out of DDO take me a bit of time like a min or two until the client closes.
The ddo launcher still runs in the background and I have to close it.
Neverwinter you exit and the entire thing closes down.
7 years makes a world of difference in game coding.
I like both Games one the ten scale where I give DDO a 7 Neverwinter gets a 5 Wow, Rift, Rise of the Immortals a 3.

That is my take on it.

[Grosbeak07]

So I too tried the NWN Beta this weekend.

It is DnD in name only. It plays like a console game and the sparkly trail reminded me so much of gauntlet is wasn't funny. I would expect to find this game outside a movie theatre.

Really I saw nothing original in that game. Pretty much all the "extra" features are in play here in DDO, Guild Wars 2 has better scenery and better lore honestly. This game is so generic its not fun.

Made it to Level 10. Never died once. Never even got close to dying. Was kinda bummed. Even had to check the options to make sure there wasn't a difficulty setting.

I played a Dwarf cleric and it was not even close to a Cleric in DDO, which given the rule bases is understandable. Oh yeah, and the whole waking up on the beach after a Dragon attacked your ship... real original Cryptic.

Rooting. Quite possible the worst possible game mechanic they could have come up with. AI was unnatural, slow and predictable.

The worst part was the near constant disconnect which shut down my router. I play DDO, Lotro and GW 2 for long stretches of time with no lag, disconnects or crashes. I play for less than 20 minutes and my router freaks out. Yeah... its beta and all that, but between that and rooting, killed any interest I may have had in the game.

I know it doesn't release until later 2013, but for a new game... its looking pretty lame.

[ZzpxpzZ]

I also would say I am a bit disappointed in how NWO ended up.

I was a big fan of NWN and the though of a modern MMO with DnD character customization excited me greatly.

Unfortunately, thats not what we got.

DnDs and thus DDOs biggest strength is the extreme depth of character customization which is basically not present in NWO in any level deeper than most other MMOs out there. Also,the TR system in DDO meshes character customizability to make an extreme level of replayability compared to other MMOs out there.

I have also always strongly disliked rooting in action style MMOs. I tried to convince myself it was fine in TERA but really, rooting only leads to slower combat and makes things get boring a lot faster.

Alas, when it comes down to it, I was really looking forward to this game when it was first announced, but as we got our hands on more information, the worse it started to look.

[dunklezhan]

Also been on the beta. Felt more like DnD than I expected, woeful character customisation... but actually quite a strategic approach to what your character actually does with that (a bit like Guild Wars).

I'm not going to do a big write up here, here's the biggest high and biggest low:

Biggest high: Foundry content. Truly, the UGC is amazing. Whatever tools they're giving us to play with stuff there, you honestly in some cases can't tell the difference between the UGC stuff and the 'real' stuff. in some cases, particularly storytelling, the UGC is actually better, if less flashy because they can't have cut scenes etc. Make no mistake, the foundry system is awesome.

Biggest low: they have missed the point of free2play being a microtransaction model. If things don't change following the beta, all kinds of 'often needed' consumables will be available as 'astral diamond' purchase only. Now this isn't strictly speaking cash money - you can get this stuff in game via an hourly mechanic, running proper dungeons (not just quests) and a few other things but no way can you do this fast enough to stay on top of what you'll want to be doing with some of these things. Detail isn't required here but suffice to say Turbine still have a serious edge in terms of equitable free to play and pricings if things stay as they are at neverwinter.

Will I quit DDO to play this? Probably not. But maybe. Maybe. I will certainly play NWO on my off days from DDO though.

[dunklezhan]

Ok now I have a big write up (obviously when i say something is good or bad that is a personal opinion):



TL; DR
Don't expect "Dungeons and Dragons" for anything except the Intellectual Property nomenclature and lore. Lore wise it's very, very tight. Rules/system wise this is an action combat MMO using a name and lore to build a world. It doesn't suffer for that in my view, but go into it with that in mind. It is NOT a simulcrum of tabletop rules like DDO still largely is. This is "The Sword Coast Online", NOT "DnD online".


The litmus test is this: this morning I am missing it now the beta is over. This will definitely become my 'alt' game when I'm feeling full up of DDO. If they fix some of the issues I have with the game (primarily the astral-diamond only consumables), I can actually see it dragging me away from DDO entirely.


The very long version:


Combat
Definitely enjoyable. Combat can be repetitive, and does have cooldowns, but honestly at least as a control wizard I didn't find myself building up an attack 'rotation' which makes all the difference to keeping me interested.

Oh - but you are 'rooted' to the spot when attacking. You generally have movement options to get out of trouble, and all you have to do is STOP ATTACKING and you can move freely - this seems to be beyond lots of people though, and I appreciate that for a lot of DDO players this will be a total showstopper on principle. Me? I found it actually quite refreshingly tactical.



Character customisation
Er... not really. Lots of physical customisations you can make, and you get to roll your base stats but honestly beyond that at Chargen there's nothing.

As you level you get points to put in 'feats' (which are all passives as far as I can tell) which you can't easily respec - so there are 'builds', but you can't really ruin them as all choices are good ones. A bit like DDO's proposed new enhancement system last year - which in my view would have been fine if they were starting 'greenfield' like NWO. but they weren't, which is why the 'new' enhancement system they proposed was an extremely silly idea. After all this time introducing a system to reduce complexity and the ability to make bad choices if you so choose, what on earth were they thinking?! Ahem. In danger or going off on a random rant. I'll stop there.

At higher levels there's a separate 'feat' tree called paragon feats that you can further specialise into.

The way customisation is really delivered is like guild wars: you have a limited number of abilities from your total list that you can have active at once, meaning that although all characters of a particular class have all the same abilities available to them, you reach a point (L10 ish) when you dont have enough active slots to have them all out and ready to use - meaning that which powers you choose affect how your character plays - that's how you get character differentiation. In town you can swap them around quite freely, in quests it's harder. But it does mean you can have a 'in group' and 'solo' powers layout reasonably well.

Is it dungeons and dragons complexity? not even, remotely, close. Is it even DDO complexity? Ditto.

So if you NEED that in a game, this is not the game for you. I *like* to have it, but I I could live with the way NWO have done it.


User Generated Content

Some of the quality here is AMAZING. This is a major thing, make no mistake. I can't believe how handcrafted, customised (and in the case of the best ones, utterly seamless) they feel.

So they can't script boss fights in UGC - really doesn't matter. You can still place a powerful stock monster, give it a name and customise it's appearance. When you're down to 5% health and desperate for your health potion to come off cooldown, it FEELS like a boss fight, believe me!

If only Turbine had a way to do something like this for DDO. Honestly it's a thing of beauty and is going to be a huge draw for creative types.



RP potential
Actually, quite a lot. I've seen some happening, I've seen many threads on the forums. It feels like a real world (they've absolutely packed the city with wandering citizens, all going about their business it seems. really gives it a 'realworld' feel), you can engage with the voiceover NPCs when they give out quests, the UGC allows talking encounters... yes. Could definitely be. Those of you who know me know that this will be a major draw for me.



Graphics
World looks amazing, characters less so - but I think this is just a beta thing. They're still polishing and there's no way with a world that looks this nice they're going to bland out the characters with poor detail. This is personal choice though - I've heard some say that the graphics are bland or dated. Having only really played DDO for the last three years and being very happy with the graphics here, NWO looks pretty **** good to me.



Sound
Music's a bit over the top (everything that is happening is VERY DRAMATIC! IT MUST BE, BECAUSE THE MUSIC SAYS SO! DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUN!!!!!!!!. yes, it is so dramatic I can actually hear those extra exclamation marks), but good quality (and you can turn it down of course). Sound effects are good and meaty. Voice over acting on everything except UGC content.

Party chat - individual volume sliders! Woo!



F2P costings & value
This... this could kill it for me. They have no subscriber options, so they're monetizing practically everything it seems.

That won't matter too much providing drop rates etc are high enough, and cash shop prices are low enough to top up.

But that latter point right now is a killer. Identify scrolls are astral diamond currency only. You can get a hundred or so ADs every hour by going to the temple and praying... but a simple identify scroll currently costs 800! The £ to Cash Shop Point value is every so slightly lower than Turbines too (meaning points are more expensive in terms of how many you get for each pound/euro/dollar) which means that at present, the value of items in that shop really are way, way off - so that's just a great big fat 'nuh-uh' from me on that score - a lot of unidentified gear drops.

Having said that - drop rates aren't actually awful (like the level sigils weer when DDO first went F2P) and you just have to not identify anything your class can't use. Trouble with that is if an item is unidentified you can only vendor it for 1cp. So it feels like you need more scrolls. It's like their marketing department is sat in front of you every time something unidentified drops with their begging bowl out. *shudder*.

I'm not panicking though this is still the beta and they're still balancing. In the last 2 betas apparently they were available in normal vendors for gold, so that's clearly a switch they could turn back on if they wanted. Forums aren't happy, there's no positive feedback about it, I expect a u-turn of some sort.


Party Mechanics
Currently party mechanics are buggy - there are issues with handling NPC dialogue when in a group, you can't use Voice or text chat from a loading screen, vendor screen or NPC screen (you can still hear ok but that's a bit useless if what you're wanting to do is check its ok for you to click 'next' on the NPC dialogue)

Party leaders can kick mid-instance with no by your leave, vote or anything.

I know this something that can split a community in two from the various forum threads here on the subject. I don't personally mind leaders having this opportunity, but it should be based on a vote, there should be a cooldown or other penalty on it etc etc. Right now, no - leader doesn't like you, they can kick you right before the boss fight.



Loot mechanics

Not great really. What's in chests is the ENTIRE party's loot reward. And you can only access the chests one at a time - nothing stops the first person looting it all, and I'd be very surprised if the last person to a chest ever gets anything. Plus gold drops on the floor in an apparently free for all fashion too - so more arguments over folks 'hogging' the (pitiful amounts of) gold. However in reality it is dividing it up amongst the party - so ok, but misleading because it's not obvious that it's doing that.

However, other loot from mobs (bounty turn ins, random item drops) ARE only visible and accessible per character (then need/greed/pass loot rules take over if it's a rare item). So it is possible to drop things per character and if I were perfect world/cryptic I'd be looking to make everything that way.



CONCLUSIONS AND CAVEATS:

First bear in mind the caveats (which are more about expectation setting than assigning value judgements):

1. This is NOT DDO2. Do not expect things to be remotely the same, mechanics wise.

• Character customisation is not done at creation it's done as you level and even as you go on missions.
• You really cannot ruin your build because all the choices are 'good' choices.
• You cannot multiclass.
• As a DDO friend who was there with me put it 'the game does all the thinking for you' - and she didn't mean that positively. I disagree with her that this is necessarily a bad thing - but it's worth bearing in mind that DDO is a much harder game because you don't get hand held (no matter what some frothing forumites would have you believe).

If these things are red lines in the sand for you, you will not like Neverwinter.



2. This is not pen and paper, except in terms of Lore.
I

• t is the barest facsimilie of 4th ed pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons, mechanics-wise. In that they've used some terms from DnD 4th ed. Beyond that, its completely different.
• As an old time pen and paper player... I don't personally give a stuff about that, it's a totally different medium and it works better this way in my opinion.

I know that the fact that the 'rules' aren't transparent or a direct port of one of the paper versions of the game will really properly upset a lot of people. I'm not one of them, but bear it in mind.



3. It's early days
At launch I expect will still have annoyances, some of them game breaking as far as certain players are concerned. Just like DDO did (e.g. DDO loot used to work more or less the same way NWO did, way back at launch in '06 but they fixed it pretty soon).


DDO vs NWO

Apples and oranges, cats and dogs, not remotely a fair comparison.

The games offer very different things, both with a DnD Lore flavour. In terms of lore flavour and immersion, NWO is the clear winner, by miles. I can comfortably say that after only a weekend. I understand the plot of NWO, at least as far as L20 (out of, I think, 50 levels). I could tell you all about the plot thus far. In terms of character customisation, general difficulty and equitable treatment in it's business model, DDO stomps all over it.

Whether you think what is left in NWO after you exclude those categories is fun (like quest objectives, the UI, or combat, for instance) only you can say for sure - so try it when it comes out and see.

Honestly, while there are many niggles, overall the only true showstopper I see that will stop me personally playing this game - and playing it quite a lot - when it comes out is if they mess up the cash shop. After all if niggles could stop me enjoying a game I'm pretty sure I would have quit DDO in the first couple of weeks.

[psteen1]

Some really thought provoking posts in here. In response to an above poster who only made it to level 10 though, I don't think that is enough time to really judge the game (that is like making just past Korthos in DDO).

And I agree the character customization comes with time although it is nowhere close to DDO. But you have limited hotbar slots, and lots of abilities, so you have to make decisions. Even by level 20 I could spec myself in two different ways entirely as a control mage (a ice mage or an arcane mastery mage). I'm guessing by level 60 there will be several more ways to spec myself, and each ability seems pertinent.

DDO isn't perfect customization-- when you think about it, everyone pretty much takes the same feats and ignores others.

[Grosbeak07]

Some really thought provoking posts in here. In response to an above poster who only made it to level 10 though, I don't think that is enough time to really judge the game (that is like making just past Korthos in DDO).

And I agree the character customization comes with time although it is nowhere close to DDO. But you have limited hotbar slots, and lots of abilities, so you have to make decisions. Even by level 20 I could spec myself in two different ways entirely as a control mage (a ice mage or an arcane mastery mage). I'm guessing by level 60 there will be several more ways to spec myself, and each ability seems pertinent.

DDO isn't perfect customization-- when you think about it, everyone pretty much takes the same feats and ignores others.

Fair point, but I just didn't see how the game was going to change much. Yes I expect it would get more difficult and you would have more things to explode on your screen, but the gameplay was going to be the same.

Since most games have you start at level 1 (unless you pay cash), the game needs to be able to hook a player in those first few levels, or you won't keep players. NWN lacks that hook. Of course what that hook is varies from player to player. For me in DDO (Back in 2007) it was Shan-to-kor, the first time I saw that giant (construct) come charging out at the party... I was hooked.