Neverwinter

The Goblin Feast Last night’s Monday Night Foundries were a mixed bag of awful and awesome, but more than that, I think we finally distilled the essence of what makes a successful Foundry – and what makes a good one. These aren’t necessarily going to be found on the same Foundry. I also gave Kasul a first peak at the Foundry mission I’m writing. It probably won’t be either good OR successful, but you need to learn to walk before you can learn to run … and you need to learn to crawl before you get to walking or running. I’m still at the “Legs? What are they good for?” stage. Trying to wring a story out of the Foundry tools gives me a better appreciation for those that manage anything at all. And for those that do it well….. ...

Kasul gets ready for his exam as Nina looks on Since Kasul and I hit max level and got geared up, our weekly group nights are no longer about quests and dungeons and stuff. It’s all about the Foundry, running the boundless stories players create. Sometimes they have well-designed locales and the writing is spot-on funny and clever. Usually… not. Last night’s adventures included one of the strangest stories we’ve ever played – “The Frosty Proctologist”. This titular doctor has more fingers than is comfortable (er, “confortable” according to a lesser adventure we played). He’s set up shop in an inn that contains, along with the usual assortment of characters, an infestation of orcs, sex-crazed halflings, and a demonic episode of Iron Chef: Faerun. ...

Boared Stiff. When I found out “Top (some number) (some thing)” articles were called “listicles” (for List Articles), my life was changed. I’d always had these feelings I couldn’t explain, where I’d think of some provocative list of things and then put any old things in as the list, because getting people to click on the link and come to the article – the LISTICLE – would be mission accomplished. Article could be blank. ...

Trapped in a world without color I don’t actually talk, or type, like that texty speak. I don’t know what came over me. Well, I kinda know. There was a bunch of bloggish commentary a few months back on the kind of random ranting bloggers do. You know, bloggers don’t have any deeper insight than anyone else on anything, by and large, but we do have our blogs. It makes us feel more important, gives us a louder voice. But everyone shouts on the internet. It gets tiring. I realized that I really don’t have anything to say about the current state of MMOs. I’ve stopped trying to follow the crowd to every new game; Sim City 5 cured me of that. Wow, way to buy into the hype, right? ...

Garrundar the Vile and friends All I really ever want from a Dungeons & Dragons game are dungeons and dragons. So many games emphasize the former over the latter, hiding those dragons away for a very long time. I think there’s something primal in all humans that wants to battle a dragon, some monster that is such an ancient enemy that it has embedded itself into our very DNA. Jack Vance wrote a story about meeting our ancient enemy, the dragons, on some distant world. Turned out they feared THEIR ancient enemy – humans – just as much. Epic battles ensued. ...

The Scarlet Library? Each week, when Kasul and I meet for Neverwinter, we never know quite what we’re going to be doing. Grinding quests to max level? Not really our thing. We’ve got our whole crafting operation to worry about, the endless skirmishes, the occasional dungeon – our only problem, really, is having enough time to do it all. Our free companions had reached their max level – 15 – and were not up to their jobs any more. Which was really unfortunate, because my companion was a cleric, and healing is a nice thing to have. Kasul was rocking a control wizard companion. Both needed replacing. Kasul got Dogsupial, a skeletal dog dropped from the recent demonic invasion of the city of Neverwinter. I spent my astral diamonds on Flambert, an apprentice phoenix obtained from Nightmare/Nachtmahr lockbox. We spent an off-night last week leveling up the new companions so they’d be ready for our regular adventures. ...

Lolth commands you to rate this highly We continued our Neverwinter grouping experiment Monday with another Foundry episode, “Visitors from the Underdark”. The Foundry adventures are, we figured, our best chance of finding duo content. In “Visitors”, Lord Ebonrend and his family have gone mysteriously missing; our job – to find him and arrest him. If I remember right, he was thought to have gone dark in order to instigate a plot to rule Neverwinter. In Neverwinter, not checking in with the government often enough marks you as a traitor. We get to his mansion and find the place magically sealed up, but with an animated suit of armor to help us dispel (de-spell?) the shields. ...

Nina and Kasul at the Job Board This is a Neverwinter experiment, and it could be one that has never before been attempted. We don’t even know if the game supports this style of play, but what if… what if two or more characters always grouped, and never soloed, through the PvE content of the game? Most of the content in the game is designed to be completed either solo, or solo with a companion. Two characters (and, eventually, two characters and their companions) would necessarily make that sort of content even more trivial. But two characters aren’t enough to do the actual group content. Even if it were possible to run the dungeons and skirmishes as a duo, leveling up entirely by repeating the same dungeons and skirmishes until the next were unlocked would be a pretty dull way of playing the game. ...

Tipa at 26 I’ve played Neverwinter for a couple of weeks, now, casually – and I still don’t feel I understand the game. It’s not that I don’t know how to play the game; there’s no big trick to that, it isn’t vastly different from the MMO norm. You see mobs, you use abilities against mobs, you collect loot and gain experience. Stripped of all its flair, it scratches the solo dungeon crawl itch, quite well. The battles – at least for my rogue – are somewhat tactical. I like that. But, the “molo” play-style – soloing with a mercenary – is nearly identical to play in both of the EverQuests. So that’s not it. ...

Tipa, Trickster Rogue With the Neverwinter Gateway, Cryptic has improved upon World of Warcraft’s Armory. Like the Armory, you can check out a player’s gear and stats, but then it takes it another step further. Correct me if I’m wrong, but does WoW’s Armory allow you to do crafting from your web browser? Gateway does. Can Play the auction house? EverQuest II did something like this years ago, but they charged money to access the service, and as a result, almost nobody used it. SOE eventually made it free, but nobody has even thought about it for years and I wonder if it even still exists. ...