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[Column] Neverwinter: A Bump in the Road to Icewind Dale
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
When Bill, our Editor in Chief at MMORPG.com, asked me if I would mind taking a look at Module 3: Curse of Icewind Dale I told him absolutely. It had been a while since I had played, I’m still logging in daily to pray for those tokens though, but I had been looking forward to this content update and I would dive back in and take a look. When I tried to do that though I hit a little bump in the road.
Read more of Rob Lashley's Neverwinter: A Bump in the Road to Icewind.
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Comments
Perfectly acceptable to gate content. Look at it like this:
You haven't played in a while you need to progress more to access the content freshly released.
No one bitches that your character you left in WoW in unable to jump right in and do the latest WoW raid and you've not played since the expansion was released, let alone 3-4 raid cycles ago. Gated content regardless of the business model used for a company is something that reinforces progression and progression is always a good thing in an MMO. It gives something for current players to strive for and it gives incentive for past players to stick around or miss out on potential content. I'm sorry you felt like you've been screwed but every single game does this for everyone whose left their game for any length of time. You want to access the new content then you need to stick around and do the old content. Simple enough if you ask me.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
The game sucks anyway. Its full of glitchers, shortcutters, and the kind of people that would sell their own grandmother for a perfect enchantment, and then brag about it on zone chat. Its one of the most cretinous communities i have ever come across in any MMO.
Its the only game i know, where if they fixed all the bugs and glitches possible, the playerbase would actually decrease.
My guild is full of honest players and I'm sure the majority of players are.
Yea most are and most are really nice and helpful. I wish my guild wouldn't of quit because I actually enjoyed the game. I also wish they'd done something to reward Foundry missions, one of the truly remarkable and enjoyable things I loved about the game.
Sandbox means open world, non-linear gaming PERIOD!
Subscription Gaming, especially MMO gaming is a Cash grab bigger then the most P2W cash shop!
Bring Back Exploration and lengthy progression times. RPG's have always been about the Journey not the destination!!!
Agree with the above completely.
There are so many complaints about "instant gratification", and meaningless content, it's amusing when people complain when it isn't.
Play the game, you'll get to the new content, once your character has progressed sufficiently through the rest of the game. It give you a goal, and in this case, one that's not all that hard to reach.
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
"logging in daily to pray for those tokens"
Yeah, that's 90% of why I log in first thing in the morning before work. I'm one week away from that angel. Hooray!
Damn congrats, i stopped doing that a few months ago and wish i kept it up.
You, sir, are a bad dude. I wish I had been as consistent - would love to have that angel, but I'm probably a couple months away.
Too many games to play....
Hell hath no fury like an MMORPG player scorned.
Are you worthy of travelling to the dale? Did you fight back the Fey or destroy the illusions of the Red Wizards? No? Well, go back and prove yourself, then we will see you there.
Did you ever stop to think maybe the mobs in the Dale require you to be a bit more prepared? They are definitely made of tougher stuff than the previous modules. Some of us didn't stop playing.. some of us don't just log in to pray. You are saying because you have to catch up, it's a bad thing.. give me a break. If there is no progression in a game, no goals to strive for, then why play it?
I think what this comes down to is that you had limited time to do a review, and couldn't just skip through and test the content. Instead, you thought you would write how unfair you thought it was. Poor form.
In the spirit of DnD though shouldn't they let you travel anywhere you want? I'm presuming Icewind Dale is a whole adventure zone and not just some dungeons. Why not let me go there and see how tough it is for myself? Why arbitrarily gate me from the content?
Even WoW let's me go to lvl 60 zones at lvl 1 and get my ass kicked.
Except in WoW the green trash drops and quest rewards in the new expansions have a higher Item Level (Gear Score) than your raid gear you spent weeks/months getting in the old end game content which makes the need to do the old stuff 1st in WoW unneeded.
The new trash in NW doesn't have a higher GS than the old epics. If you're speaking about WoW, that may be, no idea.
Regarding gating it: The only thing that i think they could have done differently would be the boons. Getting the third boon if you never touched Sharandar or the Dread Ring takes quite a while. Level 60 and 10k GS is nothing. The fighter classes get GS handed for breakfast, CW has to earn it (seriously, when i had better equip than my friend who plays GF, he had like 4k more), not sure about ther other classes.
But even with T1 sets you should be able to get 10k. If you picked random epics without set bonus maybe not. T1 sets are relatively cheap if you play regularly, and you can get several the parts from the easy dungeons, too. There are also some relatively cheap T2 sets.
If you regularly do dungeons you'll get seals (unicorn or drake), if you do Gauntlgrym you can buy things with Grym coins. And even if you mostly do only the 4 PVP matches for the daily quest, you'll get lots of glory. If you have a nice guild or enough friends, you do not even have to wait for dungeon delve anymore, as you get one chest key per day. Additional keys for T2 dungeons cost 5000 astral diamonds - you should almost always make more than that by sellign the items from the chest (and salvagn the character bound stuff).
A way bigger issue is the bugs, and even more so, the lag. They should invest into better servers and optimize the game more. They surely make enough money, especially right now where players are craving for ZEN.
I'll wait to the day's end when the moon is high
And then I'll rise with the tide with a lust for life, I'll
Amass an army, and we'll harness a horde
And then we'll limp across the land until we stand at the shore
Considering this isn't a tabletop roleplaying forum I'm going to keep my mouth shut for the most part.
Still, 4th edition is not a fiasco and up until possibly 5th edition (and potentially afterwards) easily had the most internally consistent and logical ruleset.
Yeah you got me beat. I'm only at 326. Got about another month to go.
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The problem is how it was gated exactly. In the case of NWN, and WoW, it's about gearscore. If all you need to do is beat all bosses in older dungeons at least ONCE then I won't have a problem with it, but that's not the case.
Heh they forgot about the spirit of DnD long ago.....Can't say I am surprised about this, I had such hopes for this game
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
BINGO !!!
That is why it is Gearscore locked.
Who cares if mobs are stronger? Maybe some of us have more skill or just want to run around and see how hard the mobs will beat us.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.
This looks more like "I need to find a reason" than it does" this is my reason".
The way I look at it is, they made a free to play game, they've released just about all content additions for free, the catch is that you have to work your way to it in the game. If you actually like the game that shouldn't be a problem in my eyes.
There's no reason to open it up if those who are actually into the game don't feel they need to.
For every minute you are angry , you lose 60 seconds of happiness."-Emerson
Wait what?
You just took a dump on the whole F2P game model.
The game is suppose to embody DnD and frankly does a very poor job of it, and forgets some very important things about it. I wont go into this as my opinion on this I have made clear in more relevant threads.
I have a few 60 from when I played and the guild I created is still there. The way they gate some of this stuff is hilarious especially considering leveling and doing the main quest is not hard in the game.
Getting the gearscore or getting to 60 isn't a challenge, getting a group that wont glitch, cheat and generally use cheesy tactics in the raids is though.
Tell me is the reason for a gearscore?
Why would you care if others are doing something with lesser gear than yours and even less if they are having success or not?
I am okay with a level requirement and even ok if they had put a "gearscore suggested" warning on content so people had an inkling but making it a "requirement"....
Shadowstep the Assassin walks up to the bar and orders a dirty kobold as he sits down next to Eversharp the Blade his famous fighter friend and says, " Well met old friend, how has lady luck treated you lately?"
"Why if it isn't Shadow my old sneak of a companion! Things could be better, lady luck has been flighty lately..... Where have you been?" replies Eversharp.
Shadow looks around casually and lowers his voice, "I have been searching around for some old ruins and have finally found them, naturally I thought of my old friends and wanted to ask you to join me in the looting?"
"Alas I cannot!" cries Eversharp. He looks Shadowstep in the eyes and says," misfortune has taken my +16 armor of invincibility away from me along with my boots of quickness and my bracers of speed....even my blade of super duper awesomeness is gone......" He looks away and mumbles, " without those all my experience and skill is for naught and I would only be a burden"........
Shadow reaches over and.........
....And so our intrepid heroes stayed at the tavern and got nice and inebriated instead of have a good rousing adventure.....
Ideas of what should be being subjective YMMV ofc.
Brenics ~ Just to point out I do believe Chris Roberts is going down as the man who cheated backers and took down crowdfunding for gaming.