I can only hope that hobbit gift boxes don’t include these messages, I can’t wait for the astroturfing on chat encouraging their use.

The basics:
Neverwinter:
Brand new, graphics are designed for current machines, get in on the ground floor.
DDO:
Seven years of coding means the game has loads of content, pretty much all races/classes available (after 6 years they finally included the druid). Seven years of coding also means an unbelievably unstable codebase and unfixable bugs. DDO also jumped the shark about a year ago and is heading downhill.
Combat/MMO “feel”:
NVO:
Pretty much yet another generic MMO. Holds tight to trinity play (they design classes around it, presumably they will fix the game to make it work). Shifting/Dodging allows for some input during combat.
DDO:
Dumps standard MMO/RTS (wargaming) background for an FPS (first person shooter, although more oldschool doom/quake than modern “play on a battlefield” types (it really hit my elder scrolls need between Oblivion and Skyrim). This replaces most MMO cliches with their own ones, including relentless use of instances (even more than NVO). Combat is constant, fluid, and moving: no rooting here (exception: you don’t have to aim during healing, although blocking by walls is possible). Healers only needed for content where you are in over your head. Tanks only needed for extremely specialized content (as in one or two raids).

I can’t really emphasise this enough. More than the D&D rules, more than Eberron/Neverwinter, this divides the two games. Basically, this divides DDO, guildwars2 (lots of DDO players went to guildwars2 and never came back) and likely the elder scrolls game from every other generic MMO out there (less so after 7 years of chugging along). The f2p basis (more than just active combat) and the wide open character generation really make DDO.
NVO:
You play a race/class. Scratch that, more like just a class.
DDO:
Unlimited options up till the expansion & enhancement change (sometime this summer/fall). Then you will play a race/class.
Bugs:
NVO:
Being fixed
DDO:
Being added (there is no way there is a budget to completely refactor the codebase the way it needs).
free2playness:
NVO: (see the review): There is a huge amount of content that is all free, but you seem to burn through it awfully quickly. I have no idea how limited high level free players are without paid options, but I’m not terribly hopeful. It seems pretty much like fee-based gaming.
DDO: With 5 years of content added since going f2p, there is now plenty of ways to level at least to 20 (you have to buy the expansion to justify leveling after that). Unless you are dead set to level fast and have the help to do such, I suspect that you could play for free without needing to pay anything up to the expansion (note: if you want to play in the Forgotten Realms, you will need to do a lot of leveling to get there. I think you need to be something like 16th level (and that’s D&D levels, not the wildly inflated levels of other MMOs) to even start on the road to the Forgotten Realms. See the last paragraph for more.
I’ve felt that DDO got the “a la carte” style payments about as close to right as you could get from launch to the next few years (which oddly correspond to when I played). Unfortunately, for those who fine pure f2p too constrictive, I can only recommend a month-to-month subscription as I have no confidence the game will survive long enough for purchased quest packs to be worth anything.
Pay2win/koboldklicker style gaming:
NVO:
see above review:
DDO:
Expect to see the ingame casino the first thing when you log in. Expect to see all gaming screens include multiple icons to take you to ddostore/pay2win options. Expect pay2win spam to cover the screen upto and including obscuring your vision during combat with pointless pay2be_adequate spam (yes, they went there. No, I can’t be bothered to check if it has gone away).
Life expectancy:
NVO:
As well as any other Cryptic game, I would assume.
DDO:
Expect current players to leave after expansion. Don’t make any purchases expecting the servers to remain active for more than 6 months. Turbine has yet to prove the codebase can survive another expansion, and the upcoming enhancement preview (note [i]all[/i] previews have [i]always[/i] gone live). Expect only minor tweaks to the “you will build your class the way we say and you will play your class the way we say” system now in alpha. I’d like it to survive, but I think anybody pre-paying for the thing is being terribly foolish. And don’t ask how many ways they screwed up while NVO launched into beta: anybody who botches the game in nearly every way (billing disasters, forum destruction, bugs, etc) at their peak visibility moment needs to be shown the door on the spot.
Recommendation:
NVO: If you want to visit neverwinter, here’s your chance. Be careful of getting inside the zynga/skinner box and paying good money after bad to keep your fee-based character going. Note that you will likely find out how you feel about the pay2win scheme fairly quickly, this game seems to level like a rocket.
DDO: If you want to play an MMO based on rules familiar to D&D 3.x, AD&D, rules cyclopedia, and D&D Next players (i.e. anything but 4e): here’s your chance. The game is set in Ebberon, but personally I find it fits seven years of powercreep (it fit after 2 years of power creep, really). Note the game seems to level even slower than AD&D (nothing like the rocketing recommended by the 3.x DMG), so you should be careful about becoming addicted to a decaying game.
Extra bit for those who want both D&D rules and the Forgotten Realms:
Also note, DDO has included bits of the Forgotten Realms with the previous expansion and this is part of the pay to play bits. Those really interested in being Elminster’s lackey (yes, some of the quests really work that way) can rush their way (there are many ways to buy rushed advancement, including a means to rush from about level 8 (late beginner) to level 15 (early advanced player). Those who retain the skills of a late beginner might think twice before buying the bag with the stone of advancement.

Ok, that’s way too much text on Neverwinter Nights Online. I think I’m going to uninstall it now, and make sure DDO is on the mechanical drive and not the SSD.

I logged into Neverwinter for a while yesterday. I thought the visuals looked a little better than in closed beta. Got a popup of someone winning something from a box in the middle of my screen while fighting the prologue boss. Lol.

I suppose I should have mentioned the graphics. You covered it under “neverwinter impressions”, but I suppose new readers might want a mention: “fairly detailed static areas, and in a realistic style. Animation is limited. I find the overenthusiastic HUD destroying the “realism” and making the whole thing look like an arcade/console fighting game.

Some background: Kobolds are the genric low level player xp fodder in DDO (although you aren’t ready for them for a few levels). They were added to an aniversery puzzle/quest/grind that included some absolutely hilarious voice acting that has made them a DDO mascot ever since (the first available pets were kobolds).

example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kSlEwJOku4

Sample (after killing a mob to save a kobold):
(to you) “kobold still hates you! kobold remember waterworks” [generic "kill all the kobolds in their homes" quest].
or more rarely (to mob) “aaaaaaaaaaaand stay down!!”
[The rewards for grinding this were pretty high (near top level gear for your level, but left a decent gap to want the "real" stuff). Players eventually got far more tired of the gameplay (and the bugs, definitely the bugs) than the kobold voices.]

“Kobold will make the shiny work.” This is that one little bonus that will make players willing to be kobolds (other than the chance to imitate the voices over voice chat. Expect voice chat to be useless at least temporarily afterwards).

And slowly the DDO forums recover their functions. Doesn’t look like they are recovering posters, but haven’t cared enough to find out. Checking a “webpage site worth” page extrapolates them (and LOTRO) to zero hits around September, but both pages have so much noise in them to make the extrapolation worthless.

[tl:dr] Read the last sections first for a quick and dirty review. They cover pay2win, fee-based costs, and zynga-styled gameplay. If you don’t run away screaming, this game might be for you.

WARNING: The following review was made while the game was still in beta. This is not Jackie (this is wumpus, a guy crazy enough to like DDO and LOTRO). Reviewer may have strong opinions on D&D that haven’t been current since 1984. Objects in mirror of opposition may be closer than they appear. Any claims taken from forum chatter could be from necroed threads long since patched over.

Creating your character:
Once you’ve created your account, downloaded and patched you need to create a character. Can’t help you with shards (servers), but I once noticed that one was staying connected while another wasn’t so consider having different characters on different servers.

This is where you first run into 4e (rants held till later). You have a choice of 5 “classes” (technically 4 classes and 5 builds, “builds” are a name of official sub-classes in 4e). Classes/Builds (at time I tested them):
Greatsword fighter: Name says it all. Oddly enough, he does less damage than a dagger wielding rogue. Supposedly strong in attacking multiple foes, I got bored quickly.
Cleric: Has offensive spells (and presumably some buffs later) and alleged healing spells. Bring plenty of healing potions, because you can’t heal thyself (I’ve heard you can heal others if you have the video game skills to target them in time. I failed at this in DDO until I learned about the F2-F6 keys, so I didn’t try here). Forum chatter implies they still are agroing everything in sight. Limited to about 5 spells available at any one time. Dumped and made a rogue.
[trickster] Rogue: One hobbity ball of fury (likely works with other races as well). Recommended if you want a more powerful character. Centers on attacking targets one at a time, although an important encounter (stunning) attack can hit more than one attacker if they are close enough together. Trapping abilities appear to be an afterthought. My hobbity ball of fury no longer feels overpowered at level 33, at which point you probably need to know more than this review can provide (or I care to learn).
Wizard: designed for crowd control (in solo cases can control at best one mob while you whittle down his hit points). Some attacking spells that almost all appear to target single mobs (regardless of what the text boxes say). Limited to about 5 spells available at any one time.
[tank] fighter: Didn’t try. My thoughts on tanks are that they belong in groups only and forum chatter isn’t kind. If they can pry agro from clerics, they can’t pry agro from tank companions (why they would want to if you don’t have heal them…).

Races: Looks like plenty of races (no gnomes, but does have tielings. Drow may or may not cost $200). Races don’t appear to change your stats much but do wonders for your appearance. Some quests appear to be tied to races: my halfling was looking for hobbit holes for my fellow halflings. Tielings in the same area got different quests.

On story:
I’m probably not the one to review the story: I’ve caught myself clicking through the story line with no way to go back. As Jackie mentioned, there is no “Smiling Jim” or anybody else to show you Neverwinter. Storytelling within quest chains is fairly helpful. It starts with the given quest and is told further in scrolls you pick up and enter text in your journal. This lets you dig as deep or as shallow as you please.

Combat:
Looks like you will only have one bar, ever (maybe if you pay to win enough…). D&D 4e strictly limits which powers you can use, and power slots slowly become unlocked by level. I wouldn’t hold my breath on another bar.
Color me underwhelmed. Combat consists of watching a few things:
Your “at wills” (the “I swing my sword power” in pen & paper): Spam these
Dodging: use shift or double tap a direction key to dodge outside of an incoming attack (helpfully colored red in the HUD). This will likely hold most of you attention. Warning: you are rooted until your attack finishes, so don’t always count on being able to dodge. Dodging may well be your most important survival skill in NVO.
Your “encounters” cooldowns to babysit.
Your health until if you add a healing companion (level 16). After that, you will only need to watch it during boss fights. If you need them, start spamming healing potions (don’t bother watching your health, just spam them as the cooldown ends (maybe regeneration would make more sense, but I doubt I’m sticking around long enough to find out).
Your action points/dailies: I’m not sure they are safe to use outside of boss fights (if you need them, thats when you will need them), this fills up a d20 with orange until you can pull off one of your biggest powers. Then wait a long time to fill it up again.

Overall combat feels more like a traditional MMO than some people claim. Movement is effectively one dimensional (dodge away). It appears two dimensional, and some quests can force it (at least one foundry quest loves cliffside battles), but in general you just move back and forth while babysitting your cooldowns.

Quest structure:
Quests often have a public zone (with mobs and quest objectives) and private instances inside dungeons. Dungeons consist of long indoor ribbons of a rail fencer/caster (but side rooms often can have goodies and nifty sights) with “encounter” after “encounter” of fixed enemy groups.

A word about 4e “encounters”. Encounter is some sort of 4e keyword that describes a set battle between player[s] and a group of mobs (you can agro more than one group if you are sufficiently foolish). This appears baked into 4e and exposed in the foundry: plunk down “gnoll group 4″ to include a specific array of mobs. You can expect to see the same encounter groups over and over, in basic sewer tunnel sequence (or crypt sequence, dungeon sequence, or sometimes large house sequence) over and over. A basic idea of what the maps and encounters will be like can be had by examining the foundry. Players seem to be finding ways to make fancier maps, but so far you just get “encounter set #n” in “basic dungeon #m” over and over. I suspect that endgame may include a random dungeon generator. It should be pretty easy to add, and you’ll see why if you open up the foundry.

One thing that shouldn’t be forgotten with “yet another dungeon #23″ is that since they are easy enough for a player to lay down, there are a lot of them and you won’t be (supposedly you can, but I didn’t bother to find out how) repeating quests (certain ones are: you can kill #x of bandits for example, but not most of the other kill #x). Some of the Foundry quests are at least as impressive as any recent DDO quest (although I wasn’t able to tell if they were using generic dungeon bases or not. Custom dungeon maps consist of placing prefabbed rooms one after another (presumably you could even construct a labyrinth, although that may get you banned since it sounds similar to already banned dungeon practices(missing encounters in missed parts of the labyrinth is cheating)).

On setting:
The setting is supposed to be Dungeons and Dragons, Neverwinter.

The first thing that happens is you wash ashore on a beach. Cliché start for a Cliché MMO, but DDO players will wonder if they found themselves in Korthos (it does look close to the DDO start, I included the pictures of them for the article). After playing more I concluded that it must be a homage as there are no other hints of DDO influence.

Neverwinter might be correct for 4e. Hasbro purposely rocked the whole place with a cataclysm to get players to buy all new books. Some of those effects play out in quest chains (the spellplague one is obvious). As a sometime Baldur’s Gate player (I played AD&D before the Forgotten Realms ever started) I got a kick out of meeting a flaming fist mercenary and was trying to place Helm’s Hold when I got there. Its likely the most popular of settings for D&D, and trying to build a MMO in Sigil would be non-trivial. I won’t question the accuracy of Neverwinter, but those who aren’t tied to 4e might question some of the changes. To someone who’s never read Salvatore or Greenwood (I got all my angsty fantasy hero from Moorcock’s Elric series) this all looks like generic fantasy #2584, but it is important to remember that Gygax nearly shaped what “generic fantasy” looks like almost as much as J.R.R.Tolkien. Beyond that, Greenwood and Salvatore have filled out the details of that generic world so much it leaks back to places like LOTRO (current D&D halflings live in wagons. Hobbits live in houses and holes. Grayhawk halflings live in houses and holes. Somehow LOTRO has a whole bunch of wagons for hobbits to live in who never leave the shire and rarely go beyond the next pub (all main characters save Bilbo were weirdos even before going on adventures).

Claiming this MMO has anything to do with Dungeons and Dragons is quite a stretch. Jackie already had an entire post about how different 4e was, and this game appears to take plenty of liberties with that. After about a half an hour my wizard was tenth level with 700+ hit points. Somehow that shouldn’t be in any edition of D&D. It doesn’t get much better when they stick to the rules. Get some levels on your wizard or cleric and expect to have a whole slew of spells to pick from? Try 2 “at wills” and 3 “encounters”. You might also get a couple of “dailies” but as the name implies you can only use one of them without doing a great deal of other stuff before you can choose between the two of them again. I don’t think I’m blowing my NDA (Hasbro has stated as much) by saying that D&D next (aka 5th edition) looks like D&D in a way that this simply doesn’t. I have a load of magic items that I can’t begin to figure out (all other editions have items with pluses and specific effects: apparently that unbalanced D&D and now every character has to be exactly the same). Word has it that you want:
power
critical
recovery
more or less in that order. I will mention that after hearing this I changed my character to reflect this and observed no obvious effects. The game does mention that items can be +1, +2 or maybe more, but I have no idea what this means to a 6000hp rogue. Crits tend to land with 4 digits of damage, so in any other D&D edition it means a .1% improvement. Character development is as linear as the AD&D first edition I grew up with, but even I am unimpressed.

A reminder about the set “encounter 4 orcs” and the one buttonbar. Between the two of them there really isn’t much choice but to simply run through your sequence of encounter powers while spamming your at wills. 4e, the single bar, and the rigid encounter formula limits you to very few options in the rules. Lack of a human DM means you can’t use the scenery or other improvisation. This can make for a game that gets boring fast.

Character Choices:
As mentioned, there are 4 classes available in Beta with two styles of fighter (tank and greatsword). This should give you a hint of character customization when they insist on handling the major changes in fighter between tanking and AOE DPS. From levels 1-20ish you have the options to choose which order you get certain powers (expect to wind up with them all pretty early). You also get to bump up certain powers (pretty much all of them eventually) another 10%. Eventually (level 30?) you will “choose” a paragon path. “Choose” is in quotes as rogue (and I expect others) have only one choice (Master Infiltrator). You also have a bunch of “feats” that mildly alter certain minor abilities as well. I held off these completely for a long time (I figured why spend $10 if I was already overpowered), but eventually choose a few things. No actual change in gameplay was apparent. I’ll point out right here that this is a place that DDO and NVO completely diverge. DDO follows the D&D 3.5 ruleset and pretty much allows freeform classes, and anything goes (and if you don’t closely copy a known good build on your first few characters you will be doomed to playing a gimp). NVO plays a basic class clone that you really can’t screw up (although they will happily charge $6-10 to change things around). NVO excels in other places like absolute gobs of content made professionally and by users (even if it all seems a bit repetitive).

One thing that isn’t wildly overinflated is the in game coinage. They’ve changed it (part of 4e?) so that 1 gold = 100 silver, 1 silver = 100 copper, and that 20th level character might wonder where they are going to scrape together 5 gold for a horse. It looks even less rich in gold than LOTRO. Note that Gary Gygax himself strongly recommended the “wildly inflated” gold system. D&D (and more so in an MMO) may have loads of adventurers descending on dungeons and pulling out untold riches. This tends to wash out the economy with gold and bring about an inflation similar to a gold rush (an analogy pointed out in great detail by Mr. Gygax). Note, once I have bought both the horse (5gp) and a spare companion or two(2gp a pop), I have no idea what I will do with the gold anyway (healing potions aren’t that bad, class kits don’t seem to scale). Real things need to be bought with zen (i.e. real money), astral diamonds (which are dribbled out as shinies for hitting your skinner bar, see below, but I think you can’t have many without buying them with zen, and lion seals (earned unbelievably slowly and I suspect simply bought with cash if you ever plan on turning in enough green stamps).

Pay2Win, Fee Based Economy and KoboldKlicker.
Lets put it this way: if you had a problem (like Jackie) with the pre-hobbit lottery box LOTRO, you don’t want to download this MMO. Pay2win is plastered all over this game and seeps into the core. There are two basic strategies employed:
Fee Based Economy: Free-to-Play MMO. Of course it’s free: just ignore that fee, and that one, and of course that one, and this other fee of course, and that one over there and… The worst part of this fee based game (beyond mere aggravation) is to completely obscure the cost of this game. All I can say is that if money is an object to you and you haven’t coughed up for the $160 sword of pwnage yet, you probably want a game you can figure out the cost. This one you can’t. If you don’t know, you will find yourself spending money you could have bought much better games than this generic fantasy # 2584 MMO, and not spend nearly so much hitting the bar for your shiny (see below).

At the levels I got to (30, and getting bored with), I have no idea which fees are “tickets to play the game” and needed, which are pay2win (obviously the $160 items are) and which are sucker bets (I’m guessing the revival potions are at low levels, but might just be needed with tougher bosses). I think they know that they will lose players with clerics who can’t raise dead and expect to get paid beyond what those players would spend.

If a fee based economy was tolerable, the other great innovation they bring are zynga-style skinner boxes: hourly prayer, daily skirmish, daily pvp, daily foundry, all to get your shinies. Note that my rogue has run out of the overpoweredness he started with, and if I was to get serious I should fix the gear, possibly pay for a respec, and likely find myself stuck in a skinner box pecking the bar for my shinies. This has been steadily infiltrating Turbine games (see Jacky’s rant on LOTRO and DDO seems to be going full steam) as well. No thank you.

Too much mention of what the reviewer did in the game. Since MMOs are huge, and I only saw a tiny slice, I figured it was important to make clear what I saw and what I didn’t try to see. Less geeky players are likely to think this is way to much pointless verbage.

I tried to break this game into different parts and review each. Unfortunately my parts aren’t always where the game breaks clean (even though they seem to be way MMOs are grouped) and this makes me repeat myself a lot. Did I mention repeating myself?

Since I have almost no background in Neverwinter and that is one of the big selling parts of the game my section is forced, and quite possibly only useful for about 4 players on your board unfamiliar with the Forgotten Realms. I still think the example of hobbits in the (LOTRO) shire adopting (specifically non-hobbity) halfling habbits from D&D, a big lore breaking shocker and a great example of just how pervasive the Forgotten Realms are. Less geeky types probably just see an old fart screaming “Han didn’t shoot first, Han shot [period].”

No I don’t like 4e. I don’t like it in its natural habitat of an MMO. The sooner D&D next hits the better. It takes a lot of verbage to state why this doesn’t work in an MMO or in a video game, although I think “one button bar” seems to sum it up pretty well.

If I wanted to be mean I would compare NVO character classes to DDO. That wouldn’t begin to be fair, as this game seems to be trying to be more like WoW (and never tries to look or play like DDO once you turn your back on the beach). There are claims that LOTRO is going to skill trees, so I expect that more games will look more like NVO’s classes of clones.

Gold rant: more trivia from a D&D fan. I’m not kidding about the lion seals though, you need a ton of them and I have to make an effort to keep killing the local baddies just to get one seal per area. You need about three times the number of areas to get any one thing through lion seals, meaning either an horrendous grind or pay2win.

Fee based payment: this is more an impression than a rigidly proveable assertion. Its just that just about any option seems to have a zen cost to it, and I’m not certain I will ever find out what services I will need and what I won’t and what the total cost will be. It’s a slimy tactic in all the other industries I’ve seen it in and a slimy tactic here.

I also have stayed away from the skinner box/Koboldklicker hijinks (except for the hourly prayers, they just seem too easy). I had thought that there were more a beta/new player training thing, but apparantly that is how you rake in the astral diamonds (the more important non-cash currency in this game). Another slimy tactic, this one is borrowed from zynga.