We dove deep into the nooks and crannies of Neverwinter yesterday, and tried out three of the game's five classes in the process. We've got lots to talk about starting with a general overview of what we think of Neverwinter. See what our thoughts are before joining the conversation in the comments.

If you’re like me, you’ll want to grab one of those pre-fabricated characters and then set into customizing to your heart’s content. The Neverwinter character customization feature is quite simply the most robust that I have ever seen in any MMO. Cryptic has included such little-seen choices including hand size, finger/arm length, heels/no heels, neck length and much, much more. I could have spent an hour getting my half-elf precisely to my liking but in the interest of time and wanting to be sure that I was ready when the tour began, I forewent much of the astonishing variety of options.

Read more of Suzie Ford's Neverwinter: The Jewel of the North Shines.

 I loved your article. Cant wait for my chance to see Neverwinter.

However, Bills "article" seems to be missing something...oh yes, an article.  Guessing his just wasnt ready yet.

Originally posted by SBFord

We dove deep into the nooks and crannies of Neverwinter yesterday, and tried out three of the game's five classes in the process. We've got lots to talk about starting with a general overview of what we think of Neverwinter. See what our thoughts are before joining the conversation in the comments.

If you’re like me, you’ll want to grab one of those pre-fabricated characters and then set into customizing to your heart’s content. The Neverwinter character customization feature is quite simply the most robust that I have ever seen in any MMO. Cryptic has included such little-seen choices including hand size, finger/arm length, heels/no heels, neck length and much, much more. I could have spent an hour getting my half-elf precisely to my liking but in the interest of time and wanting to be sure that I was ready when the tour began, I forewent much of the astonishing variety of options.

Read more of Suzie Ford's Neverwinter: The Jewel of the North Shines.

Ohh Suzie or Bill one question concerning Character Customization.  According to some people I know who played RaiderZ (same parent company afterall) their character Customization was just as robust but at release they heavily restricted this to the F2P crowd.  Any indication this will follow the same sitiuation as RaiderZ?

Problem right there Suzie, you used a D3 headset and from my experiences, anything D3, or blizzard lately for that matter <.<, is garbage. J/K and no offence to the millions of fans :)

I enjoyed the footage and watched the whole thing. I thought the game looked fun and made a nice list of features I liked on my guilds website. It was a good read and keep the information coming it is much appreciated.

customization is great and I'm glad that the character creation has so many options but personally trade custom hand size etc for more major choices-  there are far more than six races and 3 classes wandering the realms.

I've read all the most recent books based in neverwinter and it makes sense in the setting that there would be a lot going on just within the town, but the description of instancing in town sounds painfully similar to DDO.  Is that a fair comparision or am I wrong?  Also loved how you respectfully disagree with our nonsense, I get it, but I did laugh at that.  I'll just say that for me, the heavily instanced games can lose the 'feel' I want from MMOs, wether they technically meet the definition or not doesn't matter.

Originally posted by BillMurphy
Nope, no indication of this, and Zeke mentioned that while we'll know more about monetization soon (perhaps even right here on this site, hint hint).  I'd not be surprised if special visual flare stuff was in the shop later on though.  That said, you'll get some killer looking armor and weapons by level 16 if our tour is any indication.  But for basic character looks, it seems wide open right from the start.

I'd expect it to be similar to CO when it comes to monetisation and customisation. A robust character customisation system for everyone with flavor packs in the shop later on, perhaps even unique races.

The basics should be more than enough to satisfy everyone coming from a non-Cryptic MMO to Neverwinter :)

It sounds a lot like the other Cryptic games to me. Heavily instanced like , STO or DDO.

I personally didn't hate those games, but I would hardly call any of the Cryptic games ever " THE game to play" of any year they came out.

Hopefully I can and will be pleasantly suprised... but..  well...

Remember you can't spell Cryptic without Cry.

Good Article, and good looking game.

A bit off topic, but I don't like Steelseries.  I got a WoW mouse when they first came out, and I loved it.  However, after about a year and half, the thing just stopped working.  Luckily, I kept my Logitech MX510 mouse from years and years ago.  That thing still works, but I switched to a Razer Naga.

Great read Suzie!

I watched the 2 hour live stream yesterday and was LMAO as Bill is trying to tell Suzie not to go touch somthing and she is off getting killed . We all have had that party member!!

Very excited for this game.

Originally posted by sibs4455
Bill, when you mention the 'great looking armour' does that mean it will be the same armour for each class so everyone looks the same, or will we be able to customize it?.

Lots of different types, for different classes, and the ability to trasnmute and change the look of an item to keep its stats if you like a different look.

"Heavily Instanced..." /sigh

So...I was very excited about the gaming and willing to give it a shot.  But now its officially obvious it's another instance game.  If you call the people saying mmo's need to NOT be heavily instanced 'nonsense' i simply suggest you remember back to whatever your first open world gaming experience was.  For me it was WOW and though i've thankfully moved on from that game I still remember fondly the first time as an elf i arrived to the first little village and marveled (and freaked a little bit) as walking up behind me was the giant treants. 

Discovering towns and small cities as you went, feeling like you were a part of a living world.  This is the experience that an MMO brings above all else.  It's i think what made wow so popular.  And not doing that is most definately the reason so many mmo's fail. 

I know even you believe this to be true.  You said it yourself in your own post, that you loved how the city of Neverwinter felt alive.  The people moved around and live out their lives and you move through that.  Would you rather every shop in the city you enter be an instance portal to the actual shop interior?  I'd doubt it.  You want to feel like that shop owner is there, working away the day and you can interact with him/her/it as you go. 

To me, as polished as it is..this game is just another missed opprotunity.  Give me a true d&d game with 3.0-3.5 'feeling' system, a fairly open FORGOTTEN REALMS, (not one forgotten realms city) world where i can set off to icewind dale (or where ever) if i wish, and i would GLADLY give a sub fee and box fee to play.

Instancing.  I hate it, but if you look at City of Heroes, it had a hybrid model.  While there were several large zones, most actual gameplay past level 10 (and before later expansions, most of 1-10 was done instanced as well) was in instances.   You could theoretically XP outdoors, but people simply chose not to.  It lacked controlled environment of a mission, rewards were less, etc.  In a mission you kept moving.  People simply preferred that.

Despite this, the game flourished.  Part of that is due to the commitment of the devs to keep adding stuff to the game.  However, it did show that such a model could 'work'.  Yes, it's shut down now, but even at it's closing it had more players than many mmos that are in a zombie state.

So this could work, it just depends on how fun it is, and if a community develops like an MMO community, or more like an action rpg community.  One thing working against it is being F2P and possible lack of gameplay outside of combat.

I'm really starting to think open world content is highly overrated.

I've been trying to do some MMO soul searching - going back over a decade to my earliest days in Ultima Online and then go through the list, my own personal history, from UO to E&B to SWG to WoW and everything else in between and after - WAR, TR, EvE, FFXI, EQ2, AoC, EQ, RIFT, GW, GW2, STO, TSW, TERA, PS2, VG...

The most fun I have ever had playing in this genre has been in small and medium sized group content, PvE and/or PvP, the vast majority of those experiences being in instances. Dungeons, raids, small-group open world events/encounters, battlegrounds, arena-style combat...

Then I try and think about the least fun and most tedius/terrible of my MMO experiences, and most of them involve solo play, and open world play. Waiting for spawns, fighting for spawns, being griefed/ganked, fighting for resource tags, grinding mobs, grinding quests, zerging from A to B, camping...

So if that's true - then why am I not happy with today's MMO genre?

The real answer I've discovered is community.

Most all the friends I played with a moved from game to game and such don't play anymore or I've lost contact with.

Modern MMOs don't encourage forming bonds and having to rely on each other.

Modern MMOs have too much solo content - it's hard for me to even have the patience to grind through it to get to the party play.

Modern MMOs have far too much reliance on seperating players too. No you can't run that instance with us, you are too high/low.

Maybe NW is going to solve some of these problems for me... hmmm.... tempting.

Except for the damn Companions. I hate companions/pets.

Originally posted by Icewhite
Sorry Spock, bad juxtaposition there,

Guess I was more responding to adam_nox as well as providing an analysis as to why NW as a heavily instances, party and trinity based game with player created content could actually work out well.

I agree with him that it's all about what kind of community forms.

Enough really solid DMs pumping out great Foundry content on a regular basis, could be massively awesome.

I will probably pick a copy of this game up just to see that aspect of it.