So I've been playing Cryptic's Neverwinter, and got to say it's probably the most underrated game for the free pay play realm.
I was really surprised at how many people are playing this game.
One of my fears was the zen market. Was I going to have to battle "pay to win", the short answer is no. You can short cut with the zen market but most everything can be obtained with persistent grinding, even Zen through the astral diamond exchange. A lot of the top tier armor and weapons can be grinded out through getting tokens and in game currencies. The zen market really doesn't impact the game at all if one is going strictly free to play. That is a positive and allows me to feel a bit more confident in spending money on character items.
Another concern was respeccing. I had a free respec from a few years back and used it this year on my 8 year old Control wizard. This wizard has been apart of my Neverwinter joinery when the game first came out. Oddly he was never capped to 70 because I don't even know, such a long time ago. What was nice, unlike my original Champions character which was deleted, the "High Elf Prince" remained (don't spam me in game or you will get ignored). I respeceed and was like crap, I messed up lol, so they have a new thing or new to me thing that allows you have 1 additional character spec, so now you can choose both paths on one toon. This is really cool and it allows players a chance to either fix a bad spec or play the other roll. I forget the order, but I think I did the other spec first and was like, "I messed up", popped the respec and was able to redo both specs, happy face.
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Another cool thing and I think it is a fair thing, you can buy one respec token per character using another form currency I got from completing campaigns. There is a cool features that after you complete a map area, I got to claim additional rewards that allowed me to purchase a respec token from npc located in the left door of the castle in Protectors Enclave.
There is so much to write but trying to keep it short... Mounts are abundant and can be bought on the auction house, much like Champion's Online, Cryptic throws the kitchen sink in when it comes to character looks, mounts and companions. They've add so much "stuff" into Neverwinter it really is amazing.
Leveling, woah was it fast. I may have gotten a break being on a double xp weekend but I rolled a Warlock and it took 3 days to get to 70 using the standard quest campaigns and also spamming dailies. The main leveler was the illusionists Gambit, that seems to level the fastest and gave a decent amount of rough astral diamonds.
![]( "Image: https://forums.mmorpg.com/uploads/editor/r8/7sipp0z16atl.jpg")
Warlock with hi warlock companion.
Like I said there is to much to list, the improvements of this game are ten fold, and I have dubbed it the "the most underrated mmo of our time" . For what it does, it does well. It's free to play model is great, it is on par in being one of the best f2p models out there. Never felt content locked or gear deprived. For me, I like the smaller skill set, it really makes me think more about what powers I'm going to use, making sure the powers chosen have good synergy and making the most of the rotation.
The last thing, I've read " pew pew the arch install is crap pew pew kaw kaw" // I've been using it for the last year, it works fine. Unlike Glyph which antivirus pops up as a virus, Arch is clean and isn't impacting at all on system resources. It's simply straight to the point interface that allows me to login into Champions, STO, and Neverwinter with one login screen.
Like I said previously there is a batch of new systems that I've just don't got the will power to cover, my final score is 8/10 . One of those games that flies under the radar but has a ton of great content and story, o man the stories... another day![:)]( ":)")
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I was really surprised at how many people are playing this game.
One of my fears was the zen market. Was I going to have to battle "pay to win", the short answer is no. You can short cut with the zen market but most everything can be obtained with persistent grinding, even Zen through the astral diamond exchange. A lot of the top tier armor and weapons can be grinded out through getting tokens and in game currencies. The zen market really doesn't impact the game at all if one is going strictly free to play. That is a positive and allows me to feel a bit more confident in spending money on character items.
Another concern was respeccing. I had a free respec from a few years back and used it this year on my 8 year old Control wizard. This wizard has been apart of my Neverwinter joinery when the game first came out. Oddly he was never capped to 70 because I don't even know, such a long time ago. What was nice, unlike my original Champions character which was deleted, the "High Elf Prince" remained (don't spam me in game or you will get ignored). I respeceed and was like crap, I messed up lol, so they have a new thing or new to me thing that allows you have 1 additional character spec, so now you can choose both paths on one toon. This is really cool and it allows players a chance to either fix a bad spec or play the other roll. I forget the order, but I think I did the other spec first and was like, "I messed up", popped the respec and was able to redo both specs, happy face.
Another cool thing and I think it is a fair thing, you can buy one respec token per character using another form currency I got from completing campaigns. There is a cool features that after you complete a map area, I got to claim additional rewards that allowed me to purchase a respec token from npc located in the left door of the castle in Protectors Enclave.
There is so much to write but trying to keep it short... Mounts are abundant and can be bought on the auction house, much like Champion's Online, Cryptic throws the kitchen sink in when it comes to character looks, mounts and companions. They've add so much "stuff" into Neverwinter it really is amazing.
Leveling, woah was it fast. I may have gotten a break being on a double xp weekend but I rolled a Warlock and it took 3 days to get to 70 using the standard quest campaigns and also spamming dailies. The main leveler was the illusionists Gambit, that seems to level the fastest and gave a decent amount of rough astral diamonds.
Warlock with hi warlock companion.
Like I said there is to much to list, the improvements of this game are ten fold, and I have dubbed it the "the most underrated mmo of our time" . For what it does, it does well. It's free to play model is great, it is on par in being one of the best f2p models out there. Never felt content locked or gear deprived. For me, I like the smaller skill set, it really makes me think more about what powers I'm going to use, making sure the powers chosen have good synergy and making the most of the rotation.
The last thing, I've read " pew pew the arch install is crap pew pew kaw kaw" // I've been using it for the last year, it works fine. Unlike Glyph which antivirus pops up as a virus, Arch is clean and isn't impacting at all on system resources. It's simply straight to the point interface that allows me to login into Champions, STO, and Neverwinter with one login screen.
Like I said previously there is a batch of new systems that I've just don't got the will power to cover, my final score is 8/10 . One of those games that flies under the radar but has a ton of great content and story, o man the stories... another day
..