Posted on March 12, 2013, in Episodes, Sidequest and tagged action MMO, chaosd1, D&D, DDO, dungeons and dragons, fantasy MMO, first impressions, mmo, mmo grinder, neverwinter, reticle combat. Bookmark the permalink. 45 Comments.
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MMO Grinder 
I actually played this weekend the Beta of the Game and it was addicting. I am actually not one to be into Action-RPGs (I had serious problems getting into DDO than I tried it) but something about dancing around the Enemys, using your Skills.. after I got semi-used to how the Keys worked, it was really, really addicting.
The Quest were also nice. The Voicework was pretty decent.. What I didn’t liked was that as a cleric, if you heal random players on the Map, you would draw their mobs to you >.>
..and the aggro.mobs-respawn it insane on the Tower Map. Soloing that map, don’t do that *shakes head* Being surrounded suddenly by 12-15 mobs, yeah, that was my second and third Death.. (my first one was embarrassing, I fell in the Deathrats-Dungeon into the Poisoned-Pool ^^”)
I also hope they the german localization will be better than it was in beta. Ingame was a horrible denglish-mash. Skills, part of the text was in english, and than some words like “heal” were in german and urgh..
Still, the Game was so much fun, specially with over players, though yeah, loving that one can solo Dungeons too.
The companions were cute too. At least the Dog. I really wondered why the other Companions were all human. I know the Tank-Companion might have been better, but hello, sweet little doggie ^^”
I hope the MMO will soon be released. I haven’t played any seriously in over a year and I can easily imagine spending some time in this one.
As posted on Blisterd Thumbs’ post of this article:
I’m honestly really liking the look of this game. I’m a BIG fan of casual RPG games like Kingdom Hearts and Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance. Yes, the lack of customization is a bit disheartening, but that’s a very minor nit pick compared to how greatly this game appeals to me. At least it’s better then only the choice of 3 pre-made characters like BG:DA.
Hey Jon, dropped you an e-mail back on Friday. Did it end up in your spam folder or have you just been busy?
TERA was kind of draining me, and I was very busy this week. I did receive it, but I’ll be replying asap.
I understand, man. Take your time.
I feel dumb for not asking this above, in my 2 other “wall of text” comments, but speaking of Sidequests that you’ve streamed…
Is there some reason why some of the other stream videos seem to have been removed from the Twitch channel? Warframe, in-particular, since I was looking to show that to somone else earlier.
I went to look and I’m just as surprised as you to find them missing. Normally they don’t delete for a while, and I can specifically save them. I guess I thought they would be there longer. I’m sure I could stream Warframe again sometime.
This game… I don’t know. I wish it had a bit more personality to its look. It looks like a lot of things out there.
I feel really bad for videogame DnD adaptations, I’ve really wanted to get into one that has come out recently, but they’re constantly overshadowed by something else, or not as good to newcomers as something else, (coughwowcough). I’ve never been able to get a decent real life group going for any real length of time, and the books have been a bit weird for me to get into. I inherited some 3.5 edition books and I’ve always been interested in DnD. Maybe an MMO isn’t where I should be looking though, not yet.
Any recommendations for other computer DnD games?
Planescape Torment
Baldur’s Gate 1/2 + All Relevant Expansions (Baldur’s Gate 1: Enhanced Edition is nice)
Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2
KOTOR 1 & 2…not strictly DnD but uses D20 rule set
Temple of Elemental Evil (play this after the others as its a bit buggy also be sure to install the Circle of Eight Mod to fix most of those)
I know there’s more but can’t remember em
It doesn’t use any D&D rules system, but I had a blast with the Baldur’s Gate: Dark Alliance series, which kind of play in the style of Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, so I’ll add that to the pile.
Indeed it gets a bad rep for some reason but me and my brother wore that disk out when we were younger…Champions of Norrath is cool too. I really do reccomened starting with the games I mentioned though since their closer in “feel” to PnP which Is what I think Furama was looking for
I think it was the Name. If one has played BG1 or 2 for the PC, and than get the console Game, it’s a bit like a slap to the Face. With a Rock inside a Glove, or so.
Though I did enjoy the DA after a while (specially after the Guy who I borrowed it from disappeared because he was always hindering me playing “No , you shouldn’t play the Elf, it’s to complicated, blah bla” Seriously, why did he let me borrow DA and LotR2 if he didn’t let me play like I wanted???)
..though I hated the Beholder-Section *sigh*
I would also put Icewind Dale 2 and maybe 1 (plus Heart of Winter) on the List.
Yes, than it came out it was more of an Grindfest and kill all the Monster with an Croup of Heroes who were all blank from your own Creation, both Games have by now Mods out, that actually allow you to play like in BG 1 & 2.
BG 1 & 2 have the first Character being your Character that the Player can create and after that he can choose companions who can join him/her.
http://www.gibberlings3.net/
The Mod of IWD 2 is out for a long time and very good. It actually allowed me to complete the Game, because otherwise it had been awfully boring for me. I think IWD 1 is in the work right now..
Oh dang can’t believe I missed those ones especially since I’m in the process of making a let’s play for IWD1+HoW
Everyone seems to point to Neverwinter Nights when it comes to DnD videogames. i never played it, but you can get a boxset here:
http://www.amazon.com/Dungeons-Dragons-Neverwinter-Complete-Collection-Pc/dp/B005JQ05RS
Baldur’s Gate is another one that everyone references. And yet, I’ve never played that, too:
http://www.baldursgate.com/
Your best bet for something like this is Good Old Games or something similar if you don’t mind only having digital copies
http://www.gog.com/
I played Neverwinter this last weekend and I found the game quite enjoyable. I found the wizard to be the most fun of all and honestly I am quite sure they will have to be nerfed sooner or later because hot damn that class is just way overpowered. When the PvP is turned on they will probably be first on the chopping block and I kept getting a laugh out of the people saying how squishy and weak the wizards were. I found the Guardian Fighter to be ultra squishy, but eh, maybe that’s just nearly 16 years of MMO gaming experience behind me.
As far as the Foundry goes, I know what is capable, having played with it in STO, but the ones they had showcased for beta were limited and exceptionally linear with little in the way of extra tricks or anything more than a linear progression. I don’t know if that’s what was available or what. The top rated Foundry mission that I played was mostly just a beat em up with a bunch of click the glowie points, so I don’t consider that to be a good example of the Foundry, so not sure if that one was just trolled up by friends (an issue the Foundry sometimes has in STO and the Mission Architect was flooded with in CoH) or if Cryptic picked simple ones for the beta weekend because of the developer concept that players can’t think well because they have thick monkey skulls or something.
Of course, considering WalktheDog proves that point well, I can see why developers think that of players regularly.
The Foundry was actually what put me over the top when it came to me deciding whether or not to give STO a try. And I know EXACTLY what you mean with your comments there.
As for the “top rated” Foundry missions, most of them at any given time ARE indeed the “go here, click some mans to kill, end mission” types SPECIFICALLY because they’re billed as “get your daily user-made missions done in under 10 minutes for free dilithium”. That kind of thing ticked actual mission-makers off something fierce, last time I browsed through forum discussions.
And indeed, the BIGGEST problem with the STO Foundry was that you really couldn’t design missions that were not linear. You could TRY, you could pull out any number of tricks to game the system, and give the player some kind of illusion of choice, but you couldn’t really have any kind of decision they make have any real lasting value. For instance, the moment you made any kind of map transition, nothing you did in the previous map was allowed to carry over to the next. At least, that’s the way it was when I gave up on trying to work with their Foundry about half a year ago.
And that’s why I don’t think that the Neverwinter foundry will be able to really capture the whole “spirit” of D&D. When I think D&D, I think that a good adventure creator would be able to allow for a myriad of ways for someone to complete a task, depending on their skillset. I just can’t imagine the Neverwinter Foundry allowing people to create something that robust and/or complex, after the time I’ve spent with the STO Foundry. But maybe they’ll prove me wrong.
The Foundry is a neat concept for something that can be done in an MMO of all things. We’ve had such things for RTS games and the like for ages but for an MMO it sounds like it could be both really amazing and easily exploitable. If it allowed for full featured quest design that’d be amazing, and fit right in the theme of a D&D game. Although if it’s as limited as you describe it could really frustrate a lot of people that want to play this *JUST* to make dungeon campaigns as you can be sure there are a number of them.
As a real quick example for the STO Foundry (at least, circa 6 months ago)…
There was an official Cryptic mission line for a Deep Space 9 story that came out, and in several of those missions, they added small divergences that let you make different choices or accomplish different tasks depending on if you were Science, Engineering, or Tactical. But nothing that actually seriously changed how a mission was approached.
The Foundry? Didn’t even let you do that.
Now, extend that idea to D&D, and compare it to some of the old PC games, where you’d get whole different ways to deal with quests depending on your class and skill sets (and sometimes alignment). Neverwinter would have to give us some SERIOUS control over custom-made mission progression to get me interested.
I was invited to the Neverwinter beta and…I had zero interest in trying it. I watched your 2 streams of it, and my curiosity was satisfied with that.
After this and DDO…I just don’t get why they keep trying to make Dungeons and Dragons into a MMORPG format. At least, not the typical “grind, quest, upgrade equips, ???, profit” style of MMO.
I never played too much of the pen-and-paper D&D (but loved looking thru the TONS of rulebooks and source materials), and I would say that the bulk of my D&D experience was with the old PC games, where Neverwinter Nights 2 (+ all extra campaigns) is still one of my most favorite games ever. And I just don’t get why the push for the “usual” online game format. To me, D&D is about 2 things: experimenting with all kinds of character builds, and homebrewing/how individuals run campaigns.
Neverwinter Nights 2, for instance, scratched both those itches for me. Especially Storm of Zehir, which let you loose 6 custom-made murder-hobos…err..adventurers into an open-world campaign, and allowing users to make and share their own adventures, mods, and so on. Sure, new MMO Neverwinter will have a Foundry, but if it’s anything like the STO Foundry, it means being able to work with less resources than what the developers get to play with, and not just “imagine it, then put it into your adventure” levels of creativity.
And of course, with it being an MMORPG like all the others out there now, there will be no “let’s experiment with character builds!” in the community. It’ll be the same old same old of “there’s an optimal build for race/class, deviate from it, and no endgame for you” nonsense that’s in every other game’s community out there now.
The new game itself looks like a fairly competent action-MMO, but it just doesn’t scream “I’m a D&D game, play me!” to me. It says to me “hey, you get to do the same repetitive tasks that they make fun of in all the other PC D&D games”. Also, you’ll have to excuse me for being one of the “4th Edition, eww”, people. I’m ashamed of myself, too.
Honestly I constantly play odd builds in DDO there’s a few people who are like OMG you are the noobz but in general as long as your not a piker you get along fine. As for 4e my group loves it but it’s no where near perfect and were looking into both Pathfinder and DnD Next to find whats missing.
As for NWO I’m not sold on it at all the foundry has just gotten me intrigued. Just hoping the game itself doesn’t suck to bad…either way I may solely “play” the foundry as my “Solo” MMO since 99% of the time I only play DDO with friends.
Now your are right in that it’s unlikely they will EVER reach the awesomeness that is the cRPGs like Baldur’s Gate or NWN…tis a limitation of the genre (MMO I mean) and which Is why I wish developers would get off of this kick of insisting on making MMOs (KOTOR3 > SWTOR for example)
Chaos did you mess around with the foundry at all?
I SOOO wanted to play around with the Foundry and had a ton of ideas for it, but it was restricted to certain players in the Beta apparently, so I was a bit disappointed by that. Though, if you’re interested in what you can do with the tools provided, check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pn7iU4EwTc
Thats the video that got me interested, I love that it allows for multiple levels of dedication/skill at the whim of the user…if the foundry isn’t to limited for a F2P user that could become a game in of itself
WOW so this guy chaos is a litlte bitch!
I am cacalips, the guy that commented balanced based on FACTS that every one agrees on and can be found in all the other mmorpg sites. He removed my comments to protect his FAIL and biased review.
In addition, I commented here to point out a smart comment that in Never winter, the CEO said: mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/634/feature/7129/Get-Everything-You-Want-By-Playing.html
and I said: ‘That is false that the ceo says ‘we wil launch a F2P game without tiers like STO, and we think no one has done that before”. and I note that he is being published by PWE that has nothing but tierless games, and STO is his best game so why the chane here?
Chaos is so baby pants pissy bitch boy, he did not allow that comment in. What a troll. All he wants is super promo on this game obviously. So much for balanced reviews.
Any ways Chaos, you cant stop all the accounts I have here on Disqus, also, nice try banning my youtube AND LYING ABOUT tHE EXCUSE to do it like a little baby bitch. No wonder you look like a baby face on a 30 year old man. Just a bitch
Hello, internet. Coming here from some incoherent article written by this guy above me? I kept this comment around because this is exactly the kind of comment that was plaguing my site for the past few days. It’s pretty clear the reason I did this, but I let this one comment through so he could continue to live in this delusional little world he’s created for himself.
Here, since I let your one comment though, and I then say that I really fail to see what that article has to do with anything ever. Also you’re using quotations wrong because those words don’t appear in that order anywhere in it. Hell, the word “tiers” doesn’t appear in the entire article. This is your problem, man. You read an article, misunderstand the information, translate it to what you believe it said, and then get mad at the person who never said it. This is what you did all over this site. Repeatedly. Not just on the TERA page. I know you’re French, but that’s no excuse for this. Julien’s never had this problem. Are you just looking for excuses to be angry?
Also, fun fact: This site doesn’t use Disqus, and controlling comments is easy as hell. If you would just… I don’t know… behave yourself, act civil and not reply to every comment with some psychotic self-crusade to disprove something you just don’t agree with, we wouldn’t have this problem. Simple as that.
Site commenters Furrama and Zellmer85 have disagreed with me in the past, and in some cases fairly often, but it’s how they conduct themselves that changes why I let their comments through. They’ve not once become disruptive. They’ve not gone on some massive “REPLY TO ALL THE THINGS” tirade because someone agreed with what I said. You act like I ban any sort of dissension. It’s not that I don’t want people to disagree with me. I just don’t want comments from you. You’re the first to reach this point. Congrats, man!
Also “banning your youtube”? I blocked you from my channel. That’s two separate things… and only after you tried to pretend you were someone else. How stupid do you think I am? It’s just when someone tells me that they’re never coming back to my page, I like to give them that extra push of encouragement.
Everything you are doing is only serving to illustrate just how pathetic you really are, and that your crusade against me will only be manned by you. Enjoy your life of eternal perpetual loneliness.
Yeah C-Lips if he banned everyone who disagreed or corrected him I would have banned the second I started commenting on his DDO review where I corrected a few mistakes he made (including a comment about Soloing I misheard)…please go get a life.
You know you’ve really made it when you’ve finally got your own dedicated trolls….Anyway, thank you for keeping people like this at bay so the rest of us civilized folk can post without the harassment.
^this 100%
Jon gained his own little Douchey Mcnitpick, awwwww. It’s like having an MMO pet in real life.
Also…..turdlips….LOLZ….ok, I’m done.
Anyway, The Foundry sounds like it could be alot of fun. And would go a long way to expanding the player base, if done right. I may need to look more into this now.
Considering how the nickname he was using basically means feces lips ( caca: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/caca ) is it really any wonder what sort of things came out of his mouth?
Hmmm. This must be the Chunkybutter I heard about.
Hey man. Been awhile since I last saw you in Barrens Chat.
Well I guess now I’m being a little disruptive. Now I feel bad.
Don’t sweat it. I’m sure there are a ton of people who wanted to get in one final kick.
Current DDO Lover here so opinions are a bit biased when looking at a rival MMO but I am very intrigued the lack of customization is really the only thing keeping me from switching sure their using 4e but I’m surprised they didn’t implement Hybrids.
Oh well beyond that I’m loving the active battle system ever since I played DDO and Kingdom Hearts I’ve loved WELL DONE active battle systems (FF13 great example of a BAD active battle system)
The foundry is the biggest reason I’ve started looking into NWO my god if I can get into this game I will be spending WAY too much time building quests. Also it will be awesome to see what other people make.
Another thing that irks me is that UI it looks like at most you have 5 abilities sounds like it would get really repetitive after a while, hoping there’s at least a basic attack that doesn’t have a cooldown like DDO.
The ability to have cosmetic equipment is another plus…I’ve been begging the DDO devs to bring a similar system over from LOTRO but their all touchy about doing anything similar to their sister game.
Does anyone know if NWO has a crafting system it’s another thing that DDO is sorely missing (honestly if DDO had a competent crafting system and more in depth visual customization I wouldn’t be looking at other MMOs)
So yeah my opinions gone from automatic dismissal to mildly interested…depends on how it actually plays…here’s hoping I get into the beta, it gets released soon or Turbine fixes mentioned issues.
There was items dropping that were collectible for a crafting system, but it wasn’t implemented in that beta. It seemed pretty standard, though. You’d find items scattered throughout the dungeon that would require a certain class’s skill set, like Wizards had “Arcana” Rogues had “Thievery” and Guardians had “Dungeoneering”. You could also purchase one time use “kits” that would allow you to loot something outside your skill set at a 65% chance. This was apparently a major change from how it was handled during the previous beta weekend, so I didn’t bother to report on it, since that was obviously still being tooled around with.
I’m hoping this one from Cryptic might finally fill the little hole in my heart left by City of Heroes. I wasn’t too big of a fan of Champions Online and couldn’t into DDO either, so I’m trying not to get too excited for this. On the other hand, now I can get together with the rest of the girls in my Friday night 4th Ed. gaming group and make our characters!
So, Cryptic are finally getting ready to release this, eh? I wonder if that’ll mean for Star Trek Online what Star Trek Online’s release meant for Champions Online. On the plus side, I know Christopher Bruce – art lead of City of Heroes for a time and really awesome animator – is working at Cryptic on Neverwinter. Every bit of communication I’ve had with the guy has been incredibly positive, so I’m actually interested in this, despite caring little for D&D and Fantasy in General.
Whaaa…? This means there’s two multiplayer games called Neverwinter. There’s one on Facebook that has nothing to do with Neverwinter Nights. I’d always assumed that was the one people kept talking about.
Aaaand that’s bad, because Neverwinter Nights is an all-time-favorite & I shrugged it off by mistake.
Is that background music from the original game or is the MMO actually using the old music?
Hope you do a full episode latter this year, much latter, after it’s picked up its feet. I think I’ll try it around then. I hope it’s story-heavy like the original game.
That’s the music I’ve been using in every Sidequest video since ever. “Five Armies” by KevinMacLeod. It’s a royalty-free track so I wouldn’t be shocked if you’ve heard it in other places. (The only exception I’ve made was when the developer and at the time publisher of City of Steam gave me permission to use the title track and I REALLY wanted to showcase it. Yet YouTube STILL pulled ads on it for copyright… come to think of it, why have I not contested that one?!)
Guess I’m not hard to confuse when it comes to background music. At 2:00 I was thinking “menu theme from NN”. & then I’m thinking…”BGM for Dungeon Siege.” It REALLY does sound like it should be in an RPG. Well, it’s possible I might have heard it in a Korean or Chinese MMO….Some people can’t tell the difference between “royalty free” & “public domain.”
This seriously looks like a lot of fun, though very samey very fast. I’ll keep tabs on this game when it gets released.
Do you know offhand how the licensing worked out on this? I got an email invitation a few weeks back and was like “Hey an update to D&D…done by the STO guys?”
Also, did they have the usual PWE gold for cash shop currency market up and running/planned yet?
Not sure about the first question as I haven’t been following this game that much until recently, but as for the second, in this beta you could earn “Astral Diamonds” which is pretty much the exact same model as the system in STO.
That was quick. Be interesting to see how this one pans out but personally, after my last dealings with PWE in Rusty Hearts I’d never want to touch anything they have some kind of involvement in. Saw a bit of your streams of it and those potions were nuts healing massive amounts of health, I have to wonder if that’s just a beta connivence.
I am curious after your TERA review, what sort of MMOs or MMOish games do you prefer. Considering how many beat-em-up types you’ve done and comments on them is it that or something else?
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