On April 30th Cryptic Studios released their new Dungeons and Dragons based MMORPG Neverwinter. One of the main mechanics that separates Neverwinter from the MMORPG pack is the inclusion of Cryptic’s foundry system. By using the foundry everyone that plays Neverwinter can become a content creator for Neverwinter. Think you can do a better job than Cryptic of making fun and engaging missions for their own game? Well now you can prove it, and I believe some of you can.
Last night I premiered our new web series, Nevewinter Foundry Focus. This show is all about the community and celebrating the content creators and the missions they have made. Each week we will take a look at a new foundry mission and do a quick playthrough of it. These sessions will take place on Dragon and anyone is welcome to join me. Every other week we will have a poll to decide which mission from the previous two weeks was the best. The creator the community selects as the winner will be awarded 1000 zen. They will also get the max astral diamond tip from me for their efforts at the end of the playthrough.
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This week we played through A Kidnapping in Blacklake. This foundry mission was created by @Winin. What starts off as a shady task to help a guardsman locate his missing wife who was kidnapped by the local Nashers quickly descends into mystery around undead forces in the sewers of Blacklake. Winin did a great job with the dialogue and created a compelling story that has a good sense of flow. It wouldn’t be D&D without some type of plot twist and that is present in this story.Winin also made use of custom items in the foundry to create “accolades” which are flavor text items that add background to his story. This mission was designed to take about 30 minutes for a solo player to run through. I brought a buddy for some extra dps. I also feel that Winin did an excellent job of populating his zones with npcs. This can be a very challenging prospect for professional game designers. Too many npcs and the mission becomes a grind. Too few npcs and the missions has no challenge.
On a scale of copper, silver, gold, and mithril I award A Kidnapping in Blacklake a Mithril Star. Winin did an excellent job and has set the bar high for his competitor next week. I have already started to receive suggestions for next week’s episode but if you want to have your creation or your favorite creator’s mission considered to be on the show please e-mail them to [email protected] or leave them in the comments below.
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Next week’s episode will air on Thursday at 9:30 pm EDT on MMORPG.com’s livestream channel. I’ll see you there for another action packed adventure!
Robert Lashley / Robert Lashley is a Staff Writer and Online host for MMORPG.com and RTSGuru.com. Rob's bald and when he isn't blinding people from the glare on his head talking in front of a camera you can chase him down on twitter @Grakulen
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