A Sad Decline

Hearing about Neverwinter Classic got me to re-read some of my old posts on this blog and made me all nostalgic. Damn, I really loved this game for a while, playing it on and off for about eight years.

I decided to have a look at Steam Charts to get an idea of how Neverwinter is doing nowadays, and it was honestly quite sad to look at, especially when comparing its numbers (green line in the screenshot below) against those of its sibling Star Trek Online (blue line), which is also based on a large IP and developed by the same studio.

STO shows only the gentlest decline over time, maintaining a remarkably stable population for more than ten years. By comparison, Neverwinter started out huge and held on to almost half its launch base for a full year, but then you see the first permanent decline around April 2015, when the Elemental Evil module raised the level cap and made an incredible mess of things (there's a reason it was on my own list of least favourite mods).

However, the devs eventually managed to stop the bleed from that and things remained relatively stable for the next three years, with the game even seeing a new peak of active users in July 2018, after the launch of the excellent Ravenloft module (also in my own top 5).

But then! Another permanent drop after April 2019 when Undermountain drastically revamped all classes (again, I agree with this vibe and it was another one of my least faves). The game recovered a bit of population during the Covid bump, but then experienced another permanent population drop at the end of 2021, when unwelcome changes to the enchantment system ended up driving me away as well.

I mostly take two things away from that:

1. As far as Neverwinter goes, I'm no contrarian and it's actually surprising how much my personal opinions seem to align with the masses.

2. It's very much possible to drive an initially successful MMO into the ground with repeated terrible decisions.

Neverwinter Classic?

By chance, I came across a reddit post today that proclaimed that the Neverwinter devs (are they even still at Cryptic?) are considering the notion of a Neverwinter Classic. Within less than 24 hours, it became the 9th most upvoted post of all time on the game's subreddit - we'll see how much further it goes.

Someone also posted a link to the survey itself - I don't know if it's legit, but I'm inclined to believe that it is. I filled it out either way, and if you're a former or current player of Neverwinter, I suggest you do too. It hit kind of hard to realise that I already fell into the "stopped playing more than 3 years ago" group.

I'm not sure a Neverwinter Classic would bring me back to the game for good, but I would definitely want to check it out, even if I'm not hopeful that the devs would be able to pull it off. I would love to go through the old levelling experience again, as well as be reminded of a time when enchantments and runestones were the only annoyingly obvious pay-to-win mechanic to worry about.

Enchantment Changes Explained

I finally sat down to try and sort out my enchantments as per the last post and it was one horrifying realisation after another. Basically Cryptic massively raised the floor in terms of financial investment to even equip enchantments, and is low-key scamming more casual players in the conversion process.

The first point is evidenced by the fact that no enchantments lower than rank ten can even be converted. If you were wearing less than that, you can just grind the old stuff into a few refinement points - which are as good as worthless - and leave your new enchantment slots empty. I don't know how much power this actually causes you to lose, but even if it's not that much, it feels terrible. Imagine if they did this with gear - making you vendor your old kit and then forcing you to fight naked until you're willing to pay up.

The second point is rooted in the fact that the only hint the game gives you about how to get new enchantments is to see the antiquities scholar in Protector's Enclave to trade old for new. You trade in old enchantments for "medallions" and then can use this currency to buy new ones. The cheapest thing you can buy is a new rank one enchantment for 30 medallions. At one point after the trade-in I had 17 medallions left. There is also an option to buy one medallion for 40k astral diamonds. So I bought 13 of them for 13x40k = 520k AD, so I could buy one more rank one. Later I found out that I shouldn't have bothered with this trade-in at all, as Bradda the Sage just outright sells the new rank ones for 100k AD in her shop, but of course nothing in the game tells you that! I only found out through an off-hand comment in a forum post.

But even if I hadn't fallen for this nonsense, 100k AD as the bare minimum to fill even one of your enchantment slots is way too high, even if it's something that you can grind out in a day at max level. That's not to even mention the new astronomical costs of upgrading just to rank two (of five). After the conversion, my item level isn't even high enough to do the new module (according to the game's recommendation anyway). The message I'm getting here is to pay up or not play. Which is a shame because I've never minded giving Cryptic some money for things, but I've always refused to outright pay for power, and I won't do so now either.

Dragonbone Vale & Enchantment Changes

You can probably tell from my lack of posting on here that I have once again entered a phase of not being all that interested in Neverwinter, to the point that I wouldn't even have noticed that they dropped a new module called "Dragonbone Vale" this week if a couple of guildies hadn't mentioned it and the character selection screen changed backgrounds. There wasn't even any kind of countdown or announcement on the launcher...

I haven't looked at it yet however, as another change introduced with this module is a complete revamp of the enchantment system that's been in the game since launch. Again, there is no real information about this in the game itself, and I'm once again finding myself frustrated with the amount of busywork Cryptic is throwing at players seemingly for the sake of it. At least in other MMOs I play, these kinds of conversions are mostly done automatically, but in Neverwinter I'm always supposed to manually sort through dozens of now outdated items or currencies and trade them in for their new equivalents at a vendor. I just don't have the will or energy to deal with this kind of nonsense at the moment.

Extreme Generosity

I've mentioned before that Neverwinter has become a lot more generous with its freebies recently, but they keep topping themselves!

Since the last week of July an event called "20 Weeks of Gifts" has been active, which lets you claim a reward from the promo vendor every week. To get this, hit L after logging in, click "claim valuables" and then go to the "promo" tab. Alternatively, you can get to the same window by visiting the Rewards Claim Agent NPC in Prospector's Enclave, who is marked as the third most northern point of interest on the map there.

I didn't previously feel the need to shout about these because while things like a free stone of health are nice, they're not exactly game-changers. These last two weeks they really ramped things up though! Last week we got a choice pack for a legendary account-wide companion, and this week we're getting the same but for a mount. I chose the Black Ice Warhorse, a classic that I've had an eye on for a looong time, but I just never felt like spending the money. I never thought I'd just get it for free eventually!

So even if you haven't been playing lately, I think this is the kind of freebie that's worth logging in for. I'd also keep an eye out for the remaining weeks of the event, because so far the rewards have only gotten better and there's still a lot of weeks to go that could hold nice surprises...

Echoes of Prophecy

So Neverwinter released a new "battlepass campaign" in the spirit of the Redeemed Citadel. Only this time, the "server event" aspect of it appears to have been removed, there is no leaderboard, and the "premium pass" doesn't grant a permanent unlock for the campaign either; it just gives you extra rewards and four additional months to do the content.

Instead of endlessly grinding devils and demons, this campaign mainly asks you to focus on re-running existing legacy campaign content and dungeon queues.

My first thought upon reading this was that it didn't sound great. I don't entirely mind the idea of a fresh incentive to repeat old content, as that could actually make for an interesting addition for alts that "need" to do these campaigns at some point anyway... but the time-limited nature of it and the paid pass not giving you permanent access anymore were somewhat off-putting to me.

However, then I found out that this time around, progress is also account-wide, and at least for this milestone, a lot less grindy than Redeemed Citadel ever was. Having just done the intro quests on four characters, I'm already halfway through the milestone.

I guess I'll do it then, though progress being this fast actually makes it a bit of a non-event again, as I might well end up completing the entire milestone by the end of today. Cryptic's new ideas about what kind of "content" is supposed to keep players busy for months on end remain somewhat disappointing.

Jewel of the North Cinematic

The other day I was surprised on logging in to find that Cryptic had added a cinematic trailer for Jewel of the North, which plays the first time you log in after the most recent patch.

The only other module I remember having a cinematic trailer was Ravenloft, and that's one of D&D's most well-known IPs. I'm not sure what exactly qualified this mod for the extra marketing budget.

The trailer isn't the greatest thing ever, but I do kind of like it. It's just sad that the way it wants to evoke the connection to the tabletop game and going on badass adventures with a party of friends doesn't really map to anything you can actually do in the game.

Backwards

Not only did Cryptic remove a bunch of zones with Jewel of the North, but there are other ways in which it feels like the game has oddly regressed.

For example the Ebon Downs storyline is back to concluding with the Throne of Idris dungeon - an instance that was in the game at launch, got removed with Elemental Evil, and then just became accessible again occasionally during the Tales of Old event. It feels pretty retro to just get sent back in there at the end of the zone for a quest... with the main difference that it can now be soloed.

Also, I remember I used to think it was pretty neat how Tyranny of Dragons expanded various levelling zones, added dragon heroics to them, and introduced players to the concept of progressing a campaign while levelling. This first half of the campaign has now been removed, and the zones that remain and that used to have dragon encounters in them have been shrunk back to their previous size.

This is such a strange module.

Things to Do in Mod 21

I was wondering what there was going to be to do for existing players in Jewel of the North if it was all focused on revamping the way levelling works. The answer is: not much. As mentioned in my previous post, if you never completed the levelling zones that remain in the game, now is a good time to go back and do them. Even if you already did them, there are a couple of new tutorial quests that you'll have to go through to earn the new rewards, but that's it.

That said, I reckon this is a great time to give the game another shot if you haven't played in a while. Just do whatever new quests Sergeant Knox has for you and the rewards will start rolling in in no time. The new catch-up gear will bring you close to on par with what used to be top level gear only a module or two ago. It's kind of impressive how far the game has come in terms of generosity there, because I still remember how stingy it used to be with simple quality-of-life things like mounts and bags. Now you have a blue quality mount and companion before hitting level ten and get a 42-slot bag just for completing Vellosk.

Campaigns and Adventures

A few years ago I gently poked fun at Cryptic for wanting to fit all the game's zone quests into their "campaign" endgame model. Considering what an awkward fit that was, I like how they've split content into campaigns and "adventures" with mod 21. A campaign is still what it always was: a grind to repeat content like dailies or heroic encounters in order to fill a bar and earn things like boons and access to higher-level group content.

An adventure on the other hand is simply a series of story quests - whether inside a single zone or delivered via loosely connected solo instances - that you're only expected to complete once, and at the end you get some more mundane (but in the new system also quite high-level) rewards such as increasing amounts of AD, gear, plus conveniences like mounts or bags.

All the old levelling zones that were kept are now adventures, as is Acquisitions Incorporated, which was always terrible as a campaign, seeing how it was basically a collection of story quests that the campaign framework required you to grind over and over again. The Underdark story (which was always completely disconnected from the campaign with the same name) has also been reclassified as an adventure, and the associated campaign to grind heroic encounters has been completely removed. This does make things more consistent.

The only downside from my point of view is that since they upped the rewards for adventures so drastically, they kind of feel mandatory to do on all characters now. I used to skip a lot of the old zones while levelling up my alts just to keep things varied, meaning that I'm now looking at potentially re-running zones like Neverdeath Graveyard, Vellosk etc. on half a dozen max-level alts just because the new rewards are too good to pass up.