There, I've done it. I've gone and downloaded the fucking client. I had access to the Neverwinter beta weekends, but I never got around to actually joining them. Too much stuff going on with the guild on GW2 and, to be perfectly honest, I'm not a big fan of closed beta events.
You see, in a closed beta they let you create a character, play the game, do all the stuff you'd do after the actual release. And then it just ends! So they get you hooked, you want to keep on playing and the whole thing just gets shut down again until the next weekend event, which may be god knows when. What's worse, all your gear, the character you got attached to, everything you've achieved, earned and done gets wiped again. And that means you have to start over. Repeat stuff. Replay the same tutorial, the same first dungeon, the same introduction after every wipe. And by the time they finally go live, you've seen it all so many times, it's just not fun anymore.
I didn't watch a whole lot of gameplay footage or read any previews for similar reasons. I just didn't want to get all hyped up on something that's still weeks away. But now that I've been granted one of these for free, well...
Truth to be told, I'm almost feeling a little guilty about the Founder's Pack I'm getting, considering I'm not really interested in most of what's in there. Don't get me wrong - I'll gladly take all of this stuff for free, but there's no way in hell I would have paid that much for any of these items. The 5 days headstart, 2 million item shop monies and an exclusive title to flash at random noobs like a mighty epeen are nice to have. I'm really happy with all that stuff!
But a Menzoberranzan Renegade, a spider mount (yuck!) and a pet panther? Alright, the 'I'm too stupid to be inventive' army of Drizzts is inevitable, so maybe it isn't such a bad idea to limit some of that stuff with an artificial buy2play threshold. At least until all of that stuff will make its way to the cash shop for much less than the initial 199.99 - six or so months after release, if that.
Thing is, I don't wanna be a drow. And when it comes to ingame pets, I'm really more of a dog person. And I believe I have seen somebody riding a giant wolf in one of TotalBiscuit's videos, which looked that much more appealing to me than a premium spider.
Hey, it'll be great to have access to all of this stuff from the very beginning and I'm sure I'll enjoy my panther and my armored spider until I manage to find all the stuff I really want, so no complaints here. Still, it's fucking hilarious. Are you one of those guys who'd kill for a founder's pack, but you're not stupid enough to shell out such a huge amount of cash on a fucking F2P game? Are you tempted by the exclusive class, mount and pet? I bet you're hating my guts right now, considering I don't even intend on using any of that stuff. Ha!
Oh hey, mounts trailer!
And if you think that trailer was weird, check this out:
This is so wrong.
You might be tempted to say that Satan himself is the head PR guy. But it's probably just Satan's dim-witted cousin. I don't like this at all.
I know those trailers are supposed to be funny, a bit over the top and nothing dead-serious, but they're dividing their customer base into premium heroes and freeloading maggots before the whole thing has even launched. Be better than everyone around you! Be awesome! Don't pay up and you'll be stuck with a shitty horse! They're deliberately making the free horse look shit. Why the fuck would they do that? Yes, great, you can be awesome for money, but should free players feel punished for not wanting to spend cold, hard cash on a founder's pack?
I'm veeery sceptical about the whole thing, because Neverwinter's publisher, Perfect World Entertainment, has forever ruined another Cryptic game for me: Star Trek Online. Sure, before PWE took over, the F2P version of Star Trek was ridiculously... well, FREE! There was absolutely zero incentive to spend any money whatsoever and it's a miracle they managed to keep the thing running for so long. Great for me as a customer, of course - get all the good stuff for free and never pay for anything.
And look at that game now: Enemies drop 'lockboxes' with what feels like a 50% drop chance per kill - also known as ALL THE FUCKING TIME. These lockboxes have a <1% chance to contain ridiculously powerful goodies like exclusive starships. But as the name suggests, the lockboxes are locked. Duh. And the quickest and easiest way to fix that is, naturally, the cash shop.
"So just ignore them", you might argue. Well, every single time one of these boxes drop (as in, literally every 30 or so seconds), a need/greed roll window pops up. They actively interrupt gameplay up to a point where you spend more time passing on that shit than you do blowing up the Borg. And the fun doesn't stop there - whenever some random player lucks out on a lockbox and gets a rare ship out of it, EVERY SINGLE PLAYER ON THE WHOLE FUCKING SERVER GETS AN ONSCREEN MESSAGE! "Player XYZ has just found some fucking premium ship in a lockbox!"
It's like playing a fucking cash shop commercial. And remember when you could spend a tenner or so on that cool new ship you've been drooling over and then you were done with it? Well, if you want the newer cash shop ships, such as the beefy Odyssey Cruiser or the new Andorian Escorts and you want them with all their features and abilities, you don't have to purchase them once, not twice, but THREE GOD DAMN TIMES! And for that amount of money, you could almost afford a copy of Guild Wars 2.
This is the publisher behind Neverwinter. That's the kind of shit they're pulling off in their games. So why would things be any different in Neverwinter? Allow me to remind you: Pre-launch founder's packs for 199.99 USD and trailer videos, which make fun of you if you can't afford them. According to the forums, they've already offered $40 mounts in the cash shop during closed beta. Yay.
Another, albeit smaller concern of mine lies within the actual gameplay. The classes, and/or lack thereof, to be precise. So we get fighters, wizards, rogues and clerics and... that's it. Yes, yes, they're making two fighter "classes" with the sword&board style guardian fighter and the great weapon fighter, but come on now. How the fuck is this D&D? Where's my customization, my freedom, the possibility to switch from one fighting style to another instead of limiting myself the second I create a toon? Where are essential classes like rangers and paladins? What I've seen of the classes and their abilities so far, isn't very D&D at all. And their character roles have been reduced to a minimum outside of combat. Traps in their current state do no serious damage, groups just roflstomp through dungeons, there's no point in scouting, exploring, disarming, you just rampage through there, kill shit, be done.
Still, all bitching and concerns aside...
It looks so fucking good. Not just graphically, but the whole thing looks fun. I'm actually itching to roll my first toon and level him along with his companions (maybe take turns leveling a wolf and the panther? Hmm...), breeze through the content and then bitch about lack of proper endgame. Hehe!
And, crappy selection of classes or not, there are lots of possibilities for future content. Not only does the setting provide countless classes and kits, but also tons of additional races for future updates. I'm not honestly in high hopes of ever rolling a dual chain axe gnoll fighter in an MMO anytime in this life, but... you never know. :P
I really hope PWE won't fuck this up and ridiculously overprice everything and/or slam me in the face with stupid cash shop advertising every step of the way. I hope the game won't be too simplistic and too mass friendly for me to be enjoyable. I'm getting so sick of MMOs and the assholes I get to put up with on there, I'm really not sure the Forgotten Realms setting alone can really be enough to make me love this one. But, for what it counts, I'm genuinely excited about the upcoming headstart phase and I'll be sure to take a really close look.
-Cat
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