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This past weekend I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a beta key for the upcoming free-to-play MMORPG title, Neverwinter. The game, I can happily report, is very fun and enjoyable. In a world of an ever increasing number of free-to-play titles to try it was nice to see Cryptic Studios try some new things.

I liked their combat system they created for the game. It’s a fast-paced, real-time, action-oriented kind of combat. The combat is more on par with other action MMORPG titles such as Vindictus or Rusty Hearts. I  felt there was also a certain amount of strategy involved in when was appropriate times to use different types of skills.

The skill sets follow rules from 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons which breaks it down to At-Will Powers (skills you can use indefinitely), Encounter Powers (skills you can use after a small cooldown), and Daily Powers (skills that you can use only after filling up your action points). Knowing when and who to target is essential when getting into the harder fights.

Eat divine fire, bandit!

As of right now I felt the skill choices were limited as I only really had one path to follow. However, I will admit that I didn’t get a character past level 25 so I imagine there is more customization through your feats and Paragon paths that you can follow. Also, it is only in beta at the moment and the development team has plans to add in more classes and I would imagine refine the classes.

One of the other things, that maybe is necessarily a “fresh idea” was their use of Neverwinter itself and its place within the Forgotten Realms campaign setting of Dungeons and Dragons. While I’ve never actually played a game of Dungeons and Dragons (a deprived childhood that I am already aware of) I do know a little of the Forgotten Realms through reading of some of the books. It’s exciting to see the city of Neverwinter take shape and makes me want to read more or maybe play some of the video games surrounding the Forgotten Realms (i.e. Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2, Icewind Dale) just so I can study up on the lore.

The great city of Neverwinter! Or part of it anyway.

However, that brings me to another feature that Cryptic Studios is playing with. If anyone has been keeping up with news on Neverwinter then you probably already know what I’m talking about, but for those who don’t, two words for you: The Foundry. This feature the development team is trying to implement is to give the tools of level design to the players so that they can be able to create user content for the game.

This will allow players to create a never-ending supply of unique quests and campaigns to play through. In essence, I feel like this can drastically reduce the boring routine of grinding that many players find themselves doing within a MMORPG. Not only that, but I think it will bear some really interesting quests that may be well-driven into the lore of Forgotten Realms. Especially once the Foundry community gets to be experienced with it then that’s when players will be able to muster out some rather impressive works.

Unfortunately, the Foundry had a separate beta that I wasn’t apart of so I wasn’t able to check out how the level designing actually worked firsthand. Although, I did manage to pry myself away from the base game to play through a few user created quests. As to be expected, some were good and others were not, but with each quest it showed me what some of the capabilities were of this system was. In one quest I was in a simple bar fighting in an illegal tournament and in another I ran through a simple dungeon crawl.

The system also allows you to drop feedback. This particular quest wasn’t too bad.

My particular favorite (and seemingly the community’s as well: The Dweomerkeepers, Act I) was one where you heard word of a some ruins of a  temple Mystra and are sent to investigate. When there you attacked by creatures of the forest (which at the time was a nice change of pace to get out of the city) and evil drow Lolth followers. I liked this quest a lot because it was engaging to try and use your skills to decipher certain things with in the quest rather than use them purely to gain materials for crafting (which wasn’t available within this beta weekend) and because it seemed to be so well-versed within the lore.

With more A+ quality, such as what was seen, then I’m sure players will never get bored of finding new stuff to do within the world of Neverwinter. I was very pleased with my experience of the game and am gracious I was able to take part. Now all I need to do is find some way to stop my withdrawals as I await the next beta weekend. . .

End of the beta weekend party!