Neverwinter: Getting It Right And Wrong

I was watching a Nightline piece tonight about Pixar studios, and an exec (I missed his name) said that Pixar has developed great technology, but their main goal has never been for the audience to be interested in their technology. They’re all about story and characters.

And those things are how Pixar gets people of all ages to watch their movies–the story and characters. Can PC MMOs strive to do the same thing, luring new players with great stories as well as mindless sparkle trails with console game controls?

I’ve come to believe that this current trend is just a reset, establishing a new, wider baseline to build on. Players will get bored, and the bar will be raised again. In the meantime, while the difficulty and complexity strive to accommodate all ages and tastes (and the next gen consoles, probably), it seems like a perfect time to double down on great stories and memorable characters.

The essential components of fiction and immersion are so often are lost with the focus on graphics and gameplay. Not even a lot of bloggers talk about characters and story. This is one reason I like watching Angry Joe. He appreciates characterization as an important aspect of a good game.

I’ve only played one installment of Devil May Cry a long time ago, but I watched Joe’s entire review of “DMC” because I was intrigued by his criticism and analysis of how Capcom rebooted their main character, Dante.

I didn’t necessarily agree that it was a horrible thing, but I’m not a fan. I can understand getting bent out of shape over seeing a beloved character turned into something else that might appeal more to the next generation.

I do think Neverwinter needs more focus on their story and less on combat and crotch shots. I’m not even going to get started on that video. We’ve come a long way from the Neverwinter Nights 2 days, when players complained in the forums at release about the overly conservative, silly-looking Star Trek underwear.

Earlier tonight I was watching Youtube videos of the Neverwinter beta, and I was thinking that no one is talking much about the story of Neverwinter or the characters. One exception was the video on Massively last week that talked about story and lore in the form of Mount Hotenow, which actually focused only 30% on clips of players fighting.

That video pulled me in like no other. Fire Giants are classic. I want to level up, go to the volcano, and fight a war against the fire giants.

Anyway. I’ve linked my favorite video below of the ones I watched. Ghost has a smooth, easygoing voice (overly aggressive, egotistical voice in videos kind of turns me off). He also seems to have a higher opinion of the character creation than some I’ve heard, which is encouraging.

Neverwinter seems to be getting the character creation right. It’s critical to allow players make a likeable, viable character to start the game, if you want to hook them.

This is in contrast to my experiences with DDO (you don’t get full attribute points to make your character unless you pay at the start of the game) and SWTOR’s blunder (only a few races available.) So that’s my opinion on that. Here’s the video, and a direct link.

Neverwinter Beta Dates Announced

Cryptic announced beta dates this last week. It looks like this kitty will be in on March 8, assuming the data gets processed properly on Cryptic’s end, and I receive my key. I’m looking forward to writing some impressions of the game.

I’m really excited to see the toolset. I was thinking today about the zones that I made with the Neverwinter 2 tools. I still remember the little town, the waterfall that I made over the dam area, and the paths through the copper cliffs at sunset.

Per Neverwinter dev posts, the NDA situation is still under consideration. Also, the game is confirmed to launch with only 5 classes. This might be enough for a month or two, but they really need more than this.

I commented in a previous post about the strict divisions of races into factions in Elder Scrolls and how this might turn off players. D&D has a similar situation with the classes. D&D fans have favorite classes. The wizard class is represented by a “control wizard”. What does that mean? It sounds like I’ll have a limited subset of wizard skills/spells that I can use. To me this 4E (4th Edition) wizard isn’t a true wizard by 3E standards, nor will be the additional wizard classes added later to the game.

I don’t even want to think about the F2P situation. If I want to keep playing video games, then I need to find a way to cope with the constant, annoying sales pressure. I couldn’t even go to Target the week before last and buy chocolate without freaking out about the amount of manipulative crap on the price tag.

I walked out of the store without chocolate. I’m buying bulk now at the Farmer’s market, and I’m shopping at Walmart more. Walmart is a lot like World of Warcraft–lots of staple goods at reasonable prices all the time, with no nonsense.

I’ve actually been thinking about going back to WoW because it isn’t F2P, and it supports dual-boxing unlike SWTOR and GW2. I probably will at some point, but it’s hard to find the time right now to make one or two subscriptions worthwhile.

And so a big advantage of a Free-To-Play game rears its serpentine head immediately.

The Weekly Worm

In fourth grade, my teacher Mrs. Black had me do this special class project. I’d write a weekly illustrated newsletter for our class. So I did little drawings and wrote jokes and whatever brilliant journalism I could scribe in pencil, and the teacher would photocopy those and hand them out to the entire class.

That was a lot of pressure in fourth grade.

I remember that I had the idea to list the students who got a gold star as one of the “columns”. It turned out that only I and Lisa ever got gold stars, which was embarrassing. So I dropped that column as a dubious self-pleasuring exercise.

After about six weeks The Weekly Worm became more of a thankless task, a chore. I never heard anything like “Nice job, Jackie! Loved your article about Star Wars lunch boxes.” So I appreciate all of my readers and those who comment on Kitty Kitty.

The highlight of this last week for me was Scott Hartsman leaving Trion. I really hold Scott in high esteem, and I think he is a big reason for the esteem I have for Rift in terms of integrity. I’ve read through his Twitter and personal site, and I see no news as to where he is going.

Another tidbit I noticed this week came from Justin at Biobreak, with a quote from SOE President John Smedley suggesting we might see Everquest Next this year. Hartsman has worked most of his career on Everquest 2, so maybe he’ll be involved. Crazy notion.

In any case, I’m intrigued to see where Hartsman goes, and Everquest Next adds a third big MMO pouncing into the spotlight this year along with Neverwinter and Elder Scrolls. Elder Scrolls of course announced beta signups this last week as well, so you might jump on that if you haven’t.

I’m hoping. I’ve been checking my mail every day. It’s a battle of the betas at this point. Neverwinter vs. Elder Scrolls.

The TESO signup questionnaire was impressive. If the game is as good as the signup sheet, Elder Scrolls might rock the world in 2013 like Keen is predicting (#8). Also this week, we heard that Trion will be publishing Archeage in western markets, which is another step towards planting paws on those exotic shores.

I almost forgot that Neverwinter put up a new dev blog about gear. I’d like to quip that the blog post about gear is as forgettable as gear itself, but even as a non-gear oriented player, I have to admit that I’ve had a few special pieces of gear that I do remember.

I remember a lovely Hunter spear that gave me guilty pleasure, although it didn’t last very long. My newer Rune-Keeper, however, has never held a memorable rock. Hunters are just sexier in general.

You know, not blogging about that Tolkien MMO is going to be more difficult than I thought, especially when it’s such an fun target. Maybe I could just stick to pictures.

Best Of The Week: On Races And Equality

My fave game news this week was the new Elder Scrolls Online dev video that was released today. (Linked at bottom of post.) I also liked the news that Defiance (the TV show coming on the SciFi channel that is linked to Trion’s new MMO) will be sexy, like Battlestar Galactica, and also star Mia Kirshner, who was a major character in the L-Word.

Apparently the brothels in Defiance are women-empowered and feature equal-opportunity male studs. Lovely. Unfortunately I don’t think we’ll see a lot of romance in Trion’s Defiance game since it’s mostly about blowing stuff up.

In other obliquely game-related news, BBC reported today on sexism on fantasy and sci-fi fiction covers. This was a good and interesting article, offering no concrete conclusions or solutions (of course) but much better reading and visuals than the average game forum debate.

The art of the week goes to Almalexia cosplay by Anhenrose. The living goddess Almalexia is a divine of the Tribunal in Morrowind, oh, glorious and lovely Morrowind, in the second age of Tamriel a member of the Ebonheart Pact. So. Which of the three factions are you going to play in the Elder Scrolls Online?

The video released today makes the decision even more intriguing.

The lore preview video was delivered fabulously by Lawrence Schick, “Lead Loremaster” for TESO, who riveted the kitty’s attention with his fire and brimstone voice. He wrote the old D&D module White Plume Mountain, so he knows something about fire and brimstone. White Plume wasn’t my most fave adventure module back in the day, compared to Gygax’s Giant and Drow modules, but it was fine and playable.

The three-faction setup in TESO may cause player vs. player conflict both in game and in real life. The races are highly divided, moreso than other MMOs. Rift and SWTOR both feature two sides with dedicated races that are defined more by ideologies that transcend their race identities, while WoW offers two sides with enough race choices for everyone to like.

A lot of RPG players have already played the single player Elder Scrolls, on the other hand, and have surely have developed favorites among the races that they might prefer to play. Since the factions are at war, apparently you can’t just go play whatever start zone, but at this point it’s unclear as to how guilds and friends will work in terms of factions.

Players are already speculating in online discussions that everyone is going to want to play Morrowind and Skyrim, which are the dominion of the Ebonheart Pact. I too would love to see Morrowind in updated beauty and without Imperial presence (because TESO will take the stage in the older second era time period.)

I loved the old religion in Morrowind. The factional conflict between the Tribunal vs. the Nine was a part of the lore depth that made Morrowind such a great game.

I also like the Aldmeri Dominion though, which features two of the three Elf races, plus a female Elf leader. Unfortunately, I’m not a big fan of how either the Bosmer or Altmer look in the Elder Scrolls, or their racials, and at least one poll suggests other players feel similarly. Aldmeri may be the weakest faction, but with Khajit added to the mix, it will be the definition of sexy.

Yes, the Aldmeri Dominion will be the place to be for making ERP under the moon-sugared stars, leaving the war to the Nords and the Orcs.

I’ve actually played a Breton instead of an Elf in every Elder Scrolls game that I’ve played (for the Mage-friendly stats and the looks) which would mean The Daggerfall Covenant, but I sort of loathe orcs. Redguard are alright, but I can’t imagine allying with orcs, nor does a merchant king sound very appealing.

I went Defiant in Rift partly for the female leaders, and that will play a part in my TESO decision for sure.

So will I play TESO at launch? I’m not a fan of the active block-and-dodge action combat. It does depend a little on the payment landscape. I still have a mindset that I want an MMO to be a long-term home and commitment. I know that while I shied away from Guild Wars 2, I’ll be 500% more likely to pay whatever ticket price to see Tamriel just as a tourist.

More Reading:

Ask the devs: Aldmeri Dominion
Ask the devs: Daggerfall Covenant
Ask the devs: Ebonheart Pact
MMORPG Article: Faction Balance in TESO
RPG Gamer TESO Hands On
2009 interview with Lawrence Schick.

PCGamer Neverwinter Article

Tonight I subscribed to the digital version PCGamer to read the February Neverwinter edition. It’s only $20 a year, much cheaper than individual physical copies. I found the Google Play service to be functional on the PC, although it’s designed to support Android.

The cover of PCGamer says “Neverwinter: The First True Dungeons And Dragons Video Game.” Right away I was trolled by this nonsense. How can they get away with these things? My snarky sense was tingling at square one.

The article starts off by saying that D&D has “one really bad feature film“. Actually, there are three Dungeons And Dragons films. Maybe Kat Bailey, the freelance writer, is saying that two of them are not bad. I like them alright.

“It’s dark days at Helm’s Hold.” I wondered if this grammar should have passed the editor. The art throughout the article was really nice though. Nifty pictures is a D&D tradition.

I’ve noticed while watching the Neverwinter gameplay videos that the interface has the look and feel of D&D, the original Neverwinter, and maybe even Baldur’s Gate a little bit. I’m intrigued to look at the design more closely if I’m invited to the beta.

“Neverwinter lacks a cursor“. In other words, you can use so few skills at one time that you’re using a couple hotkeys and your mouse buttons to fight. No clicking. No need. This is a console game. See this video at 2 minutes for a direct explanation with a visual.

“There is some element of skill involved, but we still want it to be accessible...” Well, it’s comforting that at least some skill is involved.

The article also mentions carrying around gear sets for different roles. I’m not a huge fan of dragging around different sets of gear to boost different stats. In fact, I’ve never done that. I’ve rarely played my Runekeeper at cap in that Tolkien MMO because of all the effort involved in grinding up gear just to be able to play the game.

On the other hand, the article mentions clerics being able to swap spells for either healing or damage, so it isn’t just about the gear. This is very good. These two angles of approach together might form a trapezoid of character versatility that will be able to hold interest for a wide range of players.

That’s all the commentary for now! A traditional high school essay conclusion would say that I didn’t learn a whole lot that was new in this article, so there isn’t much to report. If you want to see it for yourself, a free trial of PCGamer at Google is free.

Quotes Of The Week

Massively posted an article on Neverwinter last night, but the new information (to me) came from the forums in the last week, a flood compared to the last months. Some of these things are positive and worth noticing. More classes than those currently announced are the biggest and best thing. The henchman system also sounds wonderful.

Where have I heard the “level with you” claim before? We’ll just have to see if Cryptic delivers. In old school Dungeons and Dragons, I remember you really needed to take your henchman or henchwoman along on every adventure if you wanted to keep them leveled. I assume there are rules for skipping that in this day and age, and likely in Cryptic’s Neverwinter.

I’ll quote the best Neverwinter bits below, then follow with some other quotes that were extra-interesting in the previous week. For more Neverwinter dev posts, just go to the forums and click the Dev Tracker subforum.

Also, don’t forget that the February edition of PCGamer has a Neverwinter exclusive, featuring a key code for an exclusive mount. This edition is supposed to hit news stands Jan. 8th.

“Henchmen are essentially AI companions that will fight alongside you. There will be a nice variety of henchmen and pets at launch that have a wide range of abilities. Some will heal you, some will tank for you, some will do some heavy damage, others are just quirky and interesting. Your henchmen will also level with you, and you can augment their abilities with enchantments and gear as well as change their appearance.

For the Foundry, we have been taking the philosophy that we do not want to charge authors for creating content. I believe we will have to limit the number of free campaign slots you get, but that is in place to prevent a flooding of our servers with bogus quests.

We want to allow PvP map creation in the Foundry, but this will likely happen after launch because PvP is one of the last features being added and we need a lot of lead time to add it to the Foundry.

Character creation is being fleshed out to allow more customization at the moment, but currently you can choose from several core D&D races (I’m not really sure how many will be in at launch). You can adjust all the body proportions as well as hair, eye and skin color. You can also add scars, tattoos, and other flairs to your character.

Currently you can pick between all the announced classes as well as a few unannounced classes. Each class additionally lets you choose a paragon class when you hit the right level, complete with its own feats, powers and gear. I don’t know if a freeform class option will be available at launch.” ~ Crypticmapolis, Senior Environment Artist on the Neverwinter Foundry team

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“SWTOR basically slammed the door on the subscription model’s dick, while introducing some new noxious ways to implement free to play.” ~ TAGN

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BLESS is a classic MMORPG in a medieval European setting. To us, the most important elements of an MMORPG are not only immersive graphics and combat, but also a strong setting, story and even NPC dialogue, all intertwining in a complex, yet engaging manner. You will be able to step into an entirely new world that is both believable and comprehensive, made possible by BLESS’s background story, which we have taken painstaking effort to build. In BLESS, you will be able to adventure with intriguing characters against a realistic backdrop. Unlike traditional MMORPGs, players will be motivated to engage in a variety of role-play scenarios. ~ Jacob Han speaking with MMORPG.com. More on the importance of story and choices in BLESS at Massively.

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“Dorito-gate” ~ Angry Joe, Top Ten Gaming Controversies of 2012. For more information on this, watch the video starting 17:50, or read this long article on Kotaku. There are reasons I like to read/watch game bloggers like Angry Joe and the ones listed my blogroll, and not news sources that are paid journalism. I really like honesty, both in criticism and in honest enthusiasm for a good game title.

2012 MMO RPG Year In Review

In this post, I’ll talk the normal best-of 2012, as well as game design ideas I’m calling “faction immersion”, and wind up with what I’m looking forward to in 2013 (Neverwinter, and changes to this blog).

I’m just going to throw all this out there in a concise mess, like a cat getting into a sewing box. I’ll declare an underdog winner for best game, and go into what I’m most looking forward to in 2013.

This topic has percolated in my brain for days, going in all different directions. I’ve been distracted by my break-up issues with LotRO and my most recent flirtation with Fable 3.

The best thing so far about Fable 3 is that it introduced me to Angry Joe through his hilarious review. (Angry Joe is my new game-blogger love, by the way. You’re probably relieved, Justin.) The second best thing about Fable 3 is the DLC (i.e. black dye for $3, and three new dog models being nearly a 400MB download). The Fable 3 DLC is mainly good because it gives me new ways to insult DLC.

Best Game Experience of 2012

A lot of people, like Angry Joe in his video blog yesterday, are calling Guild Wars 2 the game of the year. It probably is, but I can’t call it the GOTY because I skipped it. Why?!? Did I miss my saving roll on intelligence?

To sum up: Rohan and the The Secret World. Then my new computer didn’t arrive until November. There are plant people in GW2 instead of true hot-blooded pointy-ears. Also, I played GW1 to level cap as a Monk. GW1 was good, and GW2 is far better, but the original is still stuck in my head in a way that makes #2 sound not as thrilling as “Kingdoms of Amalur” for example. If ArenaNet had called the game something else like “Legends of Tyria”, that might have helped.

One example of something I don’t like about the GW: the single short skill bar. Justin Olivetti on Massively wrote just this morning about his fear of letting a group down, and recounts when his GW1 guild raid needed him to have his rez skill handy, but he didn’t, to his humiliation. Why didn’t he? Mainly because of the four-inch Guild Wars skill bar. (I’m calling it four inches with tongue firmly in cheek.)

I am also assuming that Guild Wars 2 is on the start of the curve of F2P store oppression, which is yet another reason to avoid a commitment. I can’t speak on treatment of women, except that you can play one in the first place, which is something to appreciate and not to take for granted.

I played a nice little Flash RPG last night called Talesworth Arena. It offers three classes, which only turned out to be all male after I started playing. I honestly thought that psionicist class was a punk lesbienne with girl-chesticles.

Anyway. I can say my peak vicarious GW2 experience without playing the game is watching Angry Joe orate about it. So until I play this supposedly great game, my pick for best game experience of the year is The Secret World.

The Secret World: One Final Blurb

The Secret World was a breath of fresh air. I played the beta and knew I’d buy and play the game. I ordered a new computer to do it. I loved this game for my first month. The graphics are fantastic, which translates into a good-looking character that looked and felt like a tough cookie, even if she wasn’t. This was good for immersion. Killing lots of zombies is also fun.

TSW has nice cutscenes and voicing. There are lots of puzzles, which is very different. Unfortunately some of the puzzles need Google to solve them, and you can spend a half hour trying to solve a puzzle on your own, only to then Google and find out there was no way you could have ever solved that puzzle on your own, so you wasted your time.

I’d like to go on about a lot positive things in The Secret World, like the skill wheel system, but the game is in a state of flux having just gone F2P, so I don’t feel comfortable with the facts. Just go play the game, if you haven’t.

I notice you can get store pay-for-progress boosts of AP now, and movement boosts. Subscribing gives you +100% XP for kills which is pretty normal, like LotRO. So this seems like friendly F2P so far.

I’ve tried to solve the puzzle of this being a one-monther for me. Here’s the most interesting of my reasons and observations.

See my Buddhist graphic above? (First of all, it’s a Buddhist graphic because I have no TSW screenshots because they didn’t work. Known bugs aren’t fun.) So I’m a peaceful Buddhist on a good day and an evil witch on a bad day. Meanwhile, Justin Olivetti (Biobreak) adores The Secret World more than any other game writer I’ve seen.

See his bio link? Yes, he’s a youth pastor, a Christian I assume. That’s fantastic. So what’s the most popular faction in The Secret World, with headquarters in the game’s capital city, London? The Templars, the faction that Justin said he knew he was going to be playing, even before the game launched.

Is there a conclusion here? The Secret World really opened my eyes to the importance of faction immersion to gameplay–feeling like you’re a part of a group. It makes complete sense to me that a Christian would get into a faction that relates so much to Christian history, and they even have gear and overhead symbols with cool-looking cross emblems. Super-cool, if you’re a Christian.

For me, TSW really made their three factions (Templar, Illuminati or “lumies”, Dragon) important to their immersion and story, then failed to write them in an appealing way.

So there I was with two faction choices since I refuse to play Templar. I made a young, blonde Buddhist hippy girl, who tried to join the Dragon. So they grabbed her, threw her out of a van, told her the way it was going to be, shooed her off, and were basically rude. They didn’t make me feel welcome or happy to be a part of them, especially since they are terrorists.

My second character was Rainie “Queensnake” Lee, a Chaotic Good poker player from Las Vegas with a shotgun and a character trait (made-up for RP purposes) for quick figuring of low odds of survival. She joined the Lumies, but totally didn’t fit into their corporate culture. I did feel like a low-level employee, so I guess that worked, at least, but not for Queensnake. She was ready to high-tail it back to Vegas and start drinking.

They gave her an irremovable implant against her will, and lots of orders.

So what I needed was for these factions to be happy to see me. I needed to feel happy to see them, like I belonged in some way. Maybe I needed an occult tattoo from the Dragon, like the hunters in the Hostel movies. I don’t think the Dragon appeals to players who want to play evil. Evil is a lot about ego and stroking, not putting up with rudeness and some kind of divine child king. Yolari and I agreed that the Dragon could have been magic-based, and that TSW needed a faction of magicians and sorcerers.

Is that it? No. Lack of immersion was compounded by the hordes of monsters everywhere. Zombies, sea monsters, insects, demons pouring from hell all within spitting distance from each other. Why? Gameplay reasons, I assume. Justin has played this game for months, and even he apparently still doesn’t know what the fog is about.

For immersion to happen, things need to make sense. As Jack Bickham says in his writing book Scene and Structure, for fiction to be believable, it needs to be even more believable than reality. Readers simply don’t follow when random things suddenly happen with no explanation. “The world is ending, and end times are near! Be scared!” I’m just not scared.

That’s another thing with good fiction, especially in an RPG. It needs to be personal. The factions were impersonal, and the bosses didn’t care about me. I didn’t care about them. I didn’t have a dog, an in-game family or friends (to my character), or anyone for my character to care about in that game.

(Except for Yolari, and I do feel a little bad about calling it on her while she was up for playing the game longer. Yolari then refused to give me her 2012 game of the year comments for this blog, maybe due to shyness, but probably out of vengeance for abandoning her to the giant insects.)

Do MMO RPGs need to cater so much to these RPG tastes? No, but a good story is worth the effort, because it gets a player involved in his or her character. A player who likes their character stays. Some writers aren’t doing it as well as they could, unless they are working for Bioware. Or maybe the writers would like to do more, but unfortunately the game producers and team leads are themselves not writers, and have other considerations, like cost, and mass killing is mandatory as everyone knows.

Looking Forward 2013

Like the graphic above hints, my goal is to go retro in 2013, and play a lot more single player. I’m returning to the RPG roots. I bought Dragon Age Origins:Ultimate from Steam last week, and my goal is to play that again, this time on PC, with DLC and the expansion, and in Spanish. Ditto for Skyrim, which I just bought tonight. I also want to play Baldur’s Gate again, since maybe my favorite RPG ever, Baldur’s Gate 2, is coming out in enhanced edition in 2013. BG2:EE and Neverwinter are my two most-anticipated games of next year.

Elder Scrolls Online is a wild card. I’d really like to see interplanar travel, which I hope to include somehow in my prospective Neverwinter modules. The Planescape Torment experience is something I’ve wanted to relive for years now. I was always hoping Rift would take adventurers into other planes, but not yet, if ever. They added more continents instead. Elder Scrolls, of course, has Oblivion and Shivering Isles, and other realms where gods live.

I’m looking forward to Neverwinter (i.e. their robust player content creation tool) because I want to write games my way. I want to write a great RPG story. I’ve already got dark settings looming in my head while at work, interesting characters speaking in my inner ear, and plot twists involving corruption and evil. In direct response to the failure of Secret World to hold my interest in terms of immersion, my goal is to write a faction that you’ll be working for, and write it well.

A big caveat about Neverwinter is the fact that it is F2P. Wanting to play Neverwinter is like wanting to eat an apple that I know for a fact is laced with slow poison, because I’m hungry.

I’m also still looking for World of Darkness to appear on the horizon. I’ve also started studying Flash programming, so I can make not only better guides, but also maybe write my own little game. I’m on the fence right now about whether to take classes at the local college this spring. I did try to enroll, but my account had an issue, and now the offices are closed.

Also in 2013, I’ve got ideas to design a new website focused on bilingual language learning. This means that I might move Kitty Kitty Boom Boom over to a proprietary domain and work on a blog that is bilingual in Spanish. I’m thrilled that Steam is offering downloads in Spanish, and that a lot of games these days have a Spanish translation.

I’m a serious student, and I study Spanish every day. I’m currently halfway through the Fellowship of the Ring in Spanish translation. Playing Dragon Age and Skyrim on my new PC will be like studying and playing at the same time.

This might be my last post for a bit, unless some amazing news breaks about an upcoming game, like World of Darkness or the SWTOR expansion that I would feel compelled to talk about. Thanks for reading my blog, and best wishes for happy gaming in the New Year!

Neverwinter the MMO: What We Know

Editor’s note: This post is still a good overview and critique of Neverwinter’s features, but it’s a little outdated. My apologies. I can’t control where search engines send people. I have since played and commented a lot on the Neverwinter beta. Try the Neverwinter category in the column to the right under “MMOs We Follow”. Thanks for visiting.

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When Cryptic’s Neverwinter was originally announced, I wasn’t interested. I assumed that it would be a crackerbox game that would insult a real robust D&D game system. In some ways that has proved true, as Cryptic has translated D&D into the action combat popular today, including a targeting reticule. The demo videos show a third person shooter flavor and a focus on rampaging through kills using a handful of repetitive skills.

Still, reports are praising Neverwinter left and right, and this crotchety old D&D player is at least willing to give it a chance. Maybe the demos are simply trying to avoid looking boring, and there is a D&D spirit in there somewhere. The Foundry dungeon creator is a big plus.

I built a NWN2 campaign at launch, but due to Obsidian’s game design, it never came to fruition. I wouldn’t mind making a similar project into a reality. A big, central question is what exactly can be created. Can I make an entire town? Can I make a campaign with adventures around the town?

I don’t know the beta disclosure rules at this point since I haven’t been invited, but I can legally say two things at the time of this writing. I’m a Champions lifetime account holder. Cryptic promised all Champions lifers will be offered a spot in the beta. They didn’t say when or what beta, though. That’s the trick.

Seems like there’s always a trick with a F2P game, and I’ll use that format in the following points, lumping pro and con together since nothing is perfect in this world. Haha. Ha. So this blog post is a condensed summary formed from some hours of reading and watching Neverwinter preview media, with my opinions. This is a game blog, after all!

The Foundry:

Good because it’s supposed to be the great goddess of all UGC (user generated content) tools. It’s available at launch, ready to let all players easily make dungeons and even “full campaigns” (but how, exactly?) if they wish. Supposedly everything in the game is in the tool, and nothing will be left out or require unlocking like the tool in EQ2. You can also really design snap-together dungeons like in the original NWN tool instead of using preset templates. You can also custom shape body parts of monsters and NPCs, which is amazing (Shacknews article.)

Bad because it’s a given that Cryptic will release more content, and designers will likely have to buy it to use it. Cryptic will profit off of your creative work in exchange for this service, a lot more directly than NWN. Highly-rated designers may be compensated by perks or currency for their work. This feature is not currently clarified.

UGC is a really interesting concept, really, and I haven’t personally played an MMO that features it yet (i.e. City of Heroes) so I’m not prepared for a real debate or critique of its implementation.

An addition note: player-made dungeons will be highly integrated into the game world itself, which makes me wary in terms of immersion. When you start the game, you get a “landing page” on your screen, which is “meta”. You can find quests and missions on this landing page a lot more conveniently than talking to the traditional barmaid in the world. You’ll quest based on 4-star user ratings for the convenience. Not too immersive.

Free to Play:

Good because the game is free. 100% free OMG. Store items will only be cosmetic or convenience boosting. Per Craig Zinkievich, the goal is “want to buy, not need to buy.” (GC demo.)

Bad because yeah right. I’ve heard it all before, and I no longer believe anything that game devs or publishers say. If there is one sure thing about promises, it’s that they are broken. Still waiting for LotRO‘s store to be “convenience only”. Still waiting for the promised LGBT romance in SWTOR. Won’t be waiting long for Guild Wars 2 to widen their whale-catching nets. Craig Zinkievich says they aren’t supposed to talk about the “pet system” yet, but I would think it will play into the store.

Open World:

Good because it’s super important for immersion. This is what Perfect World made Cryptic develop in order to make their game better, into a real MMO.

Bad because the world is still highly instanced a la Guild Wars and every area is fragmented into multiple layers like Cryptic’s previous MMOs. Neverwinter uses that same architecture but with the addition of the open world that was added.

Dungeons:

Good that there are tons of dungeons, and each zone has its own end-story dungeon similar to Rift. You can queue for 5-person (come on MMORPG.com, get with the gender correct verbiage) dungeons from the UI. You also know player designers will create plenty of solo dungeons.

Bad is the glowing quest trails that will lead you through dungeons to the quest objective (GC demo.) This is another hand-holding console game feature, and like in Dungeon Siege 3, it can be turned on and off. Also, the game will auto-control loot in player-created dungeons when you use graded pre-set encounters that support loot. (i.e. preventing you from designing a dungeon that hands out powerful artifacts to level two characters.) So it appears that yes you will be able to solo dungeons, but you won’t get “parity” of gear that way.

Leveling and Endgame:

End game is dungeons with uber loot and PvP (GC demo.) Cryptic is underscoring that landscape content will be solo friendly, and you know players will create solo dungeons, so the game should support a variety of playstyles. There are supposedly no raids, unless that changes due to the launch date delay.

Combat:

Bad because there is no tab targeting. They are using an aiming reticule. Get ready to aim that magic missile at the monster, only to have it move and you miss (Edit 3/12/13: in the beta, this wasn’t that bad. Healing spells are indeed difficult, but offensive spells are not too hard to target. Emotes are more of a pain. You have to face and target something to emote to it, at the time of this writing, instead of just clicking.)

4th ed. D&D rules are used, so your skills are now powers, including spells, and you can generally use them at will off cooldown instead of having to rest. Wizards of the Coast is responsible for changing the D&D rules to make them more officially friendly to modern video games, so don’t blame Cryptic.

There is also apparently in-combat fellow revival given to all classes (E3 Dungeon Delve Demo), like GW2. I’m not a fan of this mechanic, trivializing death. It isn’t in the spirit of D&D any more than the focus on console action that involves jumping around while attacking to avoid damage. In fact, each class has an active dodge/block type ability to mitigate damage (see E3 Dungeon Delve Demo).

I’m sure Neverwinter is a much richer game than just this, but this is not how I want to play an MMO. In my opinion, as a roleplayer who played 100+ hours in the 2nd edition days, it’s not really how D&D should be played. My finger tendons also cannot handle much more than LotRO, making me often prefer a PS3 controller. Maybe these new console action MMOs will be a boon for using a console controller, actually, but in Neverwinter I’m more interested in calmly designing dungeons and writing stories.

I loved the original Neverwinter Nights by Bioware. In the NWN “persistent world” UGC that I played, a level one or two character against a single skeleton with 8 HP could be a hard fight. Pulling two skeletons at once could be death and a trip from the graveyard. That was real danger and adventure in a dark crypt! I don’t know what Neverwinter is, except catering to a new generation of gamer.

Lastly, the simplified hotbar is fine for console games, but will it hold long-term interest for MMO players? How interesting will group mechanics be? Part of the fun of leveling a wizard is a big bank of spells that slowly grows as a measure of your arcane power. In Neverwinter, that is squelched. A wizard will have to pick and choose, filling the small number of available slots that he or she shares in size with a fighter. With the spammable “powers” on your bar, what will the differences now be between a wizard and a sorcerer, if Cryptic adds a sorcerer class at some point?

Character Creation:

Good because there are supposedly a bunch of races at launch, including Human, Elf, Half-elf, Dwarf, Tiefling, Drow, and more to come. Per Gillrmn in the Neverwinter forums, post 4e (as in after Gauntylgyr novel by RA Salvatore), “Tieflings are not half-devil child but humans who went into now-defunct devil pact. Drow have come out and Drizzt is in the region. So they are quite common than before especially in Neverwinter as it is being reconstructed and has always been multi-racial city.”

Bad because there are only four classes. Fighter. Cleric. Wizard. Rogue. No druid, sorcerer, bard, paladin, etc. although there are class branch specialties. Also, Cryptic decided that 20 levels wasn’t enough levels for today’s players who need lots of levels as a reward system. Neverwinter will feature 60 levels at launch (MMORPG.com). Don’t reach for that handful of nacho chips–you might miss hitting a level.

Lore

Good because Faerûn, the land of the Forgotten Realms campaign setting, is of course the greatest and most storied setting in D&D, home of the legendary Drow Ranger, Drizzt, Bruenor the dwarf, Cattie Brie, and others. Andy Velasquez says Neverwinter will be canon alongside the stories of R.A. Salvatore. The pen and paper 4e campaign book “Neverwinter” was supposed to release with the game, but due to the delays, the PnP version was released earlier.

In fact, according to Jack Emmert the game setting is influenced by Salvatore’s FR novel, Gauntlgrym, as well as its sequels, Neverwinter and Charon’s Claw. So the land is in the aftermath of the Spellplague, offering a lot of convenient opportunities for adventure.

The more immediate story is that Neverwinter is in local upheaval due to the volcano erupting (Mount Hotenow gives the northern city its warm climate.) The volcano eruption caused devastation and unleashed baddies. Good swords and magicians are needed to help restore order from the chaos. (Massively article.)

Graphics:

The visuals are supposedly spectacular, and look good in preview videos. I’m not so impressed yet with the overall artistic presentation as I was with Kingdoms of Amalur recently, for example. The special effects look fine. You get the feeling that your skills are making things happen in a way that’s exciting. You’re still spamming a few non-CD skills while waiting for your few more powerful ones, then triggering those, repeat, like in GW2 and the Elder Scrolls MMO next year.

Crafting:

Crafting is in the game.

That’s all for now. At the time of this writing, after reviewing a bunch of available videos and articles that have come out in recent months, I agree with a reader comment on Massively that recognized how little we really know about this game besides the Foundry, which Cryptic continues to show off as Neverwinter’s crown jewel. I have to think that when Neverwinter is held up against other contemporary games that call themselves MMOs, there are going to be a few deficiencies.

The best scenario is that Neverwinter is the next great D&D game. It’s something to hope for, but based on everything I’ve seen, Turbine’s DDO looks like it will retain its position as the more serious D&D game for real fans. Eberron suddenly seems fitting as a setting for stodgy old DDO when held up against the light of the much-marketed and much-used Forgotten Realms, which seems more fitting for Neverwinter’s casual, commercial, loose-with-the-rules style.

I’ll be adding more to this post as I have time. This is just my own personal game research, shared in blog form. For more reading, see below.

Further Reading/Sources:

Jan. 5, 2012: I’ve posted a newer post with updated information here.

Official Neverwinter Forum
Neverwinter Forum What-We-Know Thread
Neverwinter Previews: Cryptic’s Dark Horse Rising (MMORPG.COM)
Neverwinter Wikipedia Entry
PAX 2012 – Neverwinter Foundry demonstration and Q&A with Andy Velasquez
Helm’s Hold preview video
PAX East Developer Preview
Neverwinter Gameplay Demo Gamescom 2012 with Craig Zinkievich (30 minutes)
E3 Dungeon Delve Demo with Andy Velasquez
Massively article
Official Foundry Blog Post
Lore Trailer article on Massively.
Shacknews Foundry article 9/11/12.

Best Of: MMO Youtube

Tonight I sat down for a few hours and watched Youtube videos of Guild Wars 2 and Elder Scrolls Online at E3. Here are the two that were most interesting and informative. I hadn’t seen these yet. I liked seeing the armor and relic displays from Elder Scrolls in the first video. The second video is a well-made GW2 review that was just posted today. This video echoes my own skepticism about whether such a simple skill bar can be interesting and not “spammy”. The Elder Scrolls bar is supposedly even more simple.

I also saw a good video that went over the Guild Wars 2 cash shop. It looked like a basic prototype of the LotRO store. You can buy bank space, character slots, +10% damage and -%10 damage, +100% XP, and lots of cosmetics and fun items like fireworks and polymorph potions. Why haven’t I played the GW2 beta? I’m not pre-ordering for access. I applied twice but wasn’t invited, and I haven’t gotten a key any other way. So far I’ve seen mostly positive things. Hope you enjoy the videos.

The First Pillar Is First–Dragon Age 2

Before the launch of SWTOR, Bioware talked a lot about their new model of four pillars of game design: Exploration, Combat, Progression, and Story. Bioware uses characters with strong motives to energize their Story pillar because characters are the heart and soul of story. Characters move mountains, ravish princesses and princes, and start wars.

What’s the heart and soul of Progression? I’d say it’s the hero’s journey–the desire to venture forth to battle, seek treasure, overcome obstacles, and become powerful and great. Everyone wants to live a hero’s life. So what about Exploration? The first pillar is the first for a reason–it’s of first importance for fantasy fiction. We often take it for granted.

Aside from the continued simplification of DA2 , which is more a matter of opinion, (I’ve been trying to come up with a good euphemism for “dumbing down” because the phrase is getting stale) setting is the main weakness in the opening chapters of Dragon Age 2.

The Bioware devs were apparently so close to their project that they didn’t write for the average Jane. I didn’t even realize until I’d played Dragon Age for a few hours that this was a city campaign. The narrator just said a short blurb about Kirkwall during the boat voyage cinematics, something like this:

Kirkwall–the city of chains. A free city, in a manner of speaking.

And some other vague historical things that I didn’t bother write down after making a new character to verify whether or not I was imagining my perception of this. Speaking of historical things, everyone has probably read Robert Howard’s fiction, for contrast.

Know, oh prince, that between the years when the oceans drank Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas, there was an Age undreamed of, when shining kingdoms lay spread across the world like blue mantles beneath the stars – Nemedia, Ophir, Brythunia, Hyberborea, Zamora with its dark-haired women and towers of spider-haunted mystery, Zingara with its chivalry, Koth that bordered on the pastoral lands of Shem, Stygia with its shadow-guarded tombs, Hyrkania whose riders wore steel and silk and gold. But the proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west.

Okay, we’re psyched to go to seek our fortunes now, right? Gather your party and set sail for the tombs. Meanwhile, I know almost nothing about Kirkwall or the Free Marches where the city of DA2 is located. It’s probably somewhere in the depths of the journal that I’m supposed to be reading but never really do.

This design, by the way, is a real weakness of Bioware’s voice-over imperative. You speak to NPC’s and go back and forth with one-liners, but this isn’t close enough to describe a world, so you get these big “info dumps” in fiction writing terminology–you read a huge essay on a tablet or something.

Guess what is considered a no-no for fantasy and sci-fi writing? Info dumps. Avoid them, because your reader gets bored. Try to weave setting into the action and dialogue instead–something MMO writers so often just don’t do. Guess what? This latter strategy doesn’t work for Bioware. Voice file sizes will go haywire. Players will get bored listening to NPC’s drone on about backstory.

And with respect to the Exploration pillar, what can you really explore in Dragon Age 2? Linear dungeons with dead side-passages that lead to trash. The city overall is really nicely designed, though–the areas are big enough and the art and architecture are beautiful.

Bioware claimed that Dragon Age is the spiritual successor of Baldur’s Gate (these classics are on sale right now by the way–buy one get one free until the end of February at Good Old Games). I admit that in DA2, I’m finally feeling this a little bit. This is a really good thing.

You’ve got the snarky party banter. You’ve got this great city where random things do seem to happen, and adventure seems to be everywhere. My point is that I wish I felt a lot more of the good vibe of a great city adventure campaign–with more attention to the “first pillar.”

Also, I greatly admire the stylish, sleek maps and interfaces in DA2–this is some brilliant artist work–but the tried-and-true realistic fantasy art romances me better. (The art in the map graphic above is my own.) I kind of have the same reaction to the new stylistic, modern-looking maps in LotRO, which I’ve gone back to playing a little bit in the past few days–as predicted.

I signed up twice today for the Guild Wars 2 beta–once for English and once for Spanish. You too can throw in your bid for the next two days with the hopes of being chosen. Visit the article on Massively.com if you need a link.

I hope GW2 is great and surprises me, but I can’t help but feel like–as with SWTOR before launch–the game is slightly overrated right now. The similar combat system as the original, combined with the desire of Arenanet to put GW2 on consoles, are also speed limiters on my enthusiasm. The WvWvW PvP sounds interesting, but it makes no sense at all to me in terms of immersion.