Episode 3 – Neverwinter
In episode 3 of the continuing Dorkadia podcast series we sit down and chat about the upcoming Neverwinter MMORPG (coming out 4/30/2013) and our thoughts on the direction of the microtransaction market. Is free to play a model that can be sustained in modern gaming? Can Neverwinter survive its own community? Will I ever stop asking questions? The answer to some or none of these questions may or may not be in this edition of the podcast.
Please comment here or email us at podcast@dorkadia.com with any thoughts or suggestions for our podcast. We would really love to hear what you think so we can make this better for you.
Download the MP3 file here: Episode 3 – Neverwinter
These podcasts are rapidly becoming the highlight of my Friday. Neverwinter interests me, but I have some concerns:
-The Foundry is not a feature new to Neverwinter. You can find it in Star Trek Online and the now-defunct City of Heroes/Villains, and while it does/did add to the experience in those games, it didn’t really propel either to revolutionary status. From what I’ve seen of it in STO’s version, that has a great deal to do with the toolset’s limitations – while you do have control over quest text, dialogue boxes, and the like, the missions themselves don’t really break out of a sort of generic cookie-cutter experience. If they’re expanding the power of player-available development tools, fantastic! But if you’re expecting something like the original NWN’s mod tools, previous iterations of the Foundry have fallen woefully short of that suite’s capabilities.
– Innovative combat, though this is a general gripe I have with new MMOs on the horizon. Neverwinter’s admittedly working with a lot of restrictions given how faithful it wants to be to its tabletop roots, but it would be really nice to see a game come out where combat didn’t inevitably boil down to chipping away at the enemy’s health while he chips away at yours. Providing a varied set of chisels that have different methods of chipping is a legitimate band-aid for the problem, but there’s still an underlying sameness to combat in MMORPGs released in the past decade (even GW2’s positional mechanics aren’t sufficient to really make it /feel/ different to me). Honestly, at this point I’m holding out for a game that incorporates the dodge/parry/riposte feel of a Witcher 2 or Dark/Demons’ Souls into a multiplayer setting. And isn’t Tera. Because no.
Pingback: Reaching the next level in Neverwinter. | DorkadiaDorkadia