Preview of Neverwinter From Cryptic and PWE

ahrezmendi wrote:

Questing so far (I'm up to 7) is pretty standard MMO fare. Collect X of these, clear this dungeon and talk with the dude at the end, kill Y of these, deliver message to some lady down in another town. It's the combat that keeps me coming back, as a Rogue it's really fast paced and rewarding. Boss fights in particular are awesome, where I can execute my full combo chain after Dodging away from an attack and remove half the boss' health. I don't expect my Guardian will be quite as exciting, but I love me some good old fashion tanking at times.

It might not be frenetic like the rogue, but I've been enjoying my Gd alot. Managing the timing of my skills, placement and guard meter have been really satisfying.

ahrezmendi wrote:

Score, well my account name is "Ahrezmendi" (or [email protected]), and my two characters so far are Lysandra and Jorah. Is there a GWJ guild?

DeThroned wrote:
doogiemac wrote:

Is there a post somewhere with server and guild info, etc?

Server is Dragon
Grievance is the guild. www.grievanceguild.com

Let's see how big we can make this quote!

Grievance has been a very friendly guild with a lot of helpful people. I wish i could tell more about who on there was from GWJ, but I'm sure i'll get to know that as time goes by. It certainly seems like it's very much a push to 60 to be able to run with the more active individuals, but that's likely the case for most MMO's. It's been a great guild experience so far.

Dave

DaveGraybeal wrote:

Grievance has been a very friendly guild with a lot of helpful people. I wish i could tell more about who on there was from GWJ, but I'm sure i'll get to know that as time goes by. It certainly seems like it's very much a push to 60 to be able to run with the more active individuals, but that's likely the case for most MMO's. It's been a great guild experience so far.

Dave

In the Social screen, you can add notes to friends. Can you do the same in the Guild screen? If so - you could just make a note of who's from GWJ.

Good Question Namikaze, I'll have to check that when I get online tonight.

Dave

That's a good idea. If you're in Grievance, add GWJ to your Guild Member Comments field.

There's a lot of us from GWJ in Grievance. I've had the pleasure of speaking to a couple of you on TeamSpeak which was really cool. I can vouch for them that they are an extremely welcoming bunch. You will find a lot of us at 60 already but it doesn't mean that there isn't a lot going on with them on all levels. I think 2 nights ago they were putting together a 20-29 pvp match. The hardcore people who are 60 are definitely a bit more vocal in the TS lobby

Ya, i'm still working my way up. I'm 31 I believe now. Kalnog is my name in game and TS by the way. The leveling in the game is pretty fun, but it's the dungeons and skirmishes that I'm enjoying the most. Now because of my level though I've been working on catching up to the 60's to start working on the T1 and T2's. I have been trying to make a point to enjoy the dungeon and skirmish at least once a day to get the daily AD credits. I'll likely be on for quite a while tonight so if anyone is in the 30's and feels like doing some runs I'd be more than happy to join.

Dave

On a side note, I've been working on Leadership as my first profession. My Mercenaries are really getting to know the Area since they've been exploring it all day The gateway is amazing for keeping up with the timers. Makes leveling your professions something that doesn't take away from play time.

Dave

For anybody considering the various Founder Packs, here is a cost breakdown of each. I may go with the Guardian one now, sounds like the best deal. I would like to have the armor glow, but I don't $200 want to have it.

I'll join up with Grievance and add a note to my member profile, once their database is back up. Thanks for the link.

What is this gateway y'all are talking about for crafting?

Sweet! Thank you! Now to make sure I keep doing my work as well....

Rainsmercy wrote:

Sweet! Thank you! Now to make sure I keep doing my work as well....

Shouldn't be too hard. I've only been able to log in maybe 2 out of the last 5 days. I try to keep it running on a tab in the background while I'm at work but I keep getting either random errors or it's down for maintenance.

DaveGraybeal wrote:

On a side note, I've been working on Leadership as my first profession. My Mercenaries are really getting to know the Area since they've been exploring it all day

Dave

LOL, yes, I believe the area has been quite thoroughly explored. It's easily the best leveling task I've found so far (while I'm awake that is). But I would also hire mercenaries almost every night, you use them all up quickly because it takes 4 mercs to make a single guard.

I'm newer to GWJ so maybe this is something that's already common knowledge. What are the screen names that the guys on the conference call use for the forums? I'm wondering if those that are playing NW are also in Grievance or not.

I don't remember seeing anyone from the CC post in this thread, so I found it odd when they were talking about the game. Glad they like it though.

Tagging this thread, as I just started the game. It's certainly fun so far.

Dumb question: How do I join a guild? Pulling up the guild tab it only tells me I cannot create one since I'm not in a party, but I see nothing about joining one. What do?

If you want to join Grievance, the one everybody else is in, then you need to post in their forums first. Make an account then head here and post, the guild leader should take everything from there.

I just started a character (Felix McPuch) this afternoon, so far this game is good fun.

If anybody is on the fence about buying a Founder's Pack, I ponied up for the $60 pack and it's proven to be well worth it. The bonus weapon is OP for the first ~10 levels, so if you want challenge at that point you may want to not use it. The companion is great, free mount is always good, plus other bonus starting gear makes the early levels go a bit faster. 3rd character slot too, can't argue with that. I haven't used Astral Diamonds yet for anything, but I hear they're critically important, so starting out with 600k of them should prove useful.

I don't think I can recommend the $200 pack unless if you're really serious about the game, or a hardcore Forgotten Realms fan. The only things you get for your extra $140 are a bonus armor glow effect, a new Drow race to use (hence FR fans), a mech spider mount instead of a horse, a panther companion instead of a wolf (again, FR fans), and 2 more character slots (worth ~$10).

I now have both my rogue and cleric up to 9, and while I'm really enjoying the rogue I can see the cleric being my party character. So much utility there, plus great healing and good CC.

Well, I'm sure anyone here knows about the current game situation, but if not, here's a http://www.reddit.com/r/Neverwinter/comments/1ennb6/can_we_make_some_sort_of_official_thread_for_the/ link pretty thoroughly describing what's going on. An Auction House exploit which has allowed people to farm literally _billions_ of Astral Diamonds- and has supposedly been known about since Closed Beta- finally came to a head today. The game has been offline for the last seven hours and rollbacks are being discussed (as you'd expect) for those whose accounts have engaged in, or been exposed to, the exploit.

The developers have stated clearly that this will not cause the entire game to be reset, with all characters being wiped. If this sort of thing, which could charitably be called a train wreck, interests you (whether or not you like the game), keep an eye out for what happens as this situation develops. And for the folks who record the podcast here, I'd love to hear a discussion of this once the "facts" are better known.

Interesting. I know that exploits are commonly found in games, but I for one think it's good that the developers decided to jerk the rug out from under these guys. Am I upset about the lack of communication before the servers went down? Sure. Could it have happened at a better time? Maybe not. If the developers needed to get some last-minute data or whatnot, then they might have needed the servers to be up until the last possible second. Either way, no big loss. Anyone that's ever played an MMO knows that ultimately these few hours without the game will result in a better experience for everyone.

I just can't believe that a game this well produced (seemingly) doesn't have one black hat guy who's job is to try to break the game in alpha testing. Negative currency numbers is something that should have been addressed far earlier.

Lysias wrote:

I just can't believe that a game this well produced (seemingly) doesn't have one black hat guy who's job is to try to break the game in alpha testing. Negative currency numbers is something that should have been addressed far earlier.

You would not believe, and I mean that literally, what gets found during testing that producers will tag as "known shippable". It would not shock me at all if Cryptic already knew about this but decided to launch with it.

What I find odd is that this happens at the same time as a Diablo 3 AH exploit. Are the planets in alignment? Did both companies use some common library for their AH code? Coincidence is also possible I suppose.

ahrezmendi wrote:
Lysias wrote:

I just can't believe that a game this well produced (seemingly) doesn't have one black hat guy who's job is to try to break the game in alpha testing. Negative currency numbers is something that should have been addressed far earlier.

You would not believe, and I mean that literally, what gets found during testing that producers will tag as "known shippable". It would not shock me at all if Cryptic already knew about this but decided to launch with it.

But how hard is it to restrain the possible numbers on an auction listing to be greater than zero? I've only ever programmed in basic, but this seems like a super simple fix to me.

Note: I mean simple to fix prior to launch. Of course this is a mess after launch and trying to revert those who abused it.

It's not about how complex the issue is to fix. It's not even about how bad the bug is. It's about production timelines and costs, so if a bug isn't found and fixed during the "bug fixing period" then it very likely will make it to release.

Much better combat than any of the other MMOs I've tried. Unfortunately the more action-y gameplay means not having local servers is more of an issue - my latency has been hovering between "annoying" and "unplayable". :/

They've announced that they're going to rollback to early Sunday morning.

I'm really enjoying the game, but all of the bugs affecting the economy are disheartening. Guild Wars 2's economy is still heavily inflated due to bugs from its first few months of release. I hope the Neverwinter team can lock these issues down quickly.