Neverwinter Turns Eight

You wouldn't be able to tell from the below image because nobody bothered to update the decorations in the stronghold, so they still have the number seven on them.

Also, the random text on this screenshot is there because for some reason my in-game screenshot functionality stopped working, so I had to use an external programme which doesn't automatically hide certain pieces of text. Such is life with Cryptic - they mean well and some of their content is very fun, but everything's always a bit of a mess.

In the Protector's Garden they took away the number on the floor and just replaced it with a lion logo. I also didn't see any numbered banners there - I guess that should future-proof the celebrations against forgetful developers at least.

I had misunderstood part of the post about the levelling revamp by the way and it's not live yet. In fact we don't have a date yet, but it's probably going to be in a few weeks.

Happy Seventh!

Last year my enthusiasm for Protector's Jubilee was slightly subdued, due to a mix of bugs and feeling like the game changes made in Undermountain had really pushed me away. Fortunately I'm in a much better place this year, as my casual play over the last three months has managed to rekindle my affection for the game (even if I've only fully "revived" three of my old characters so far).

I noted with some amusement that Cryptic gave up on adding more numbers to the floor in the Protector's Garden (you can see them in the bottom screenshot in this post). It seems they ran out of space and therefore decided to simply start over with the number seven.

My husband also noted that they forgot to update the banners in the Protector's Speech skirmish as they still show the number six instead of seven at the time of writing. Never change, Cryptic.

As usual for Neverwinter's birthday celebrations, there are lots of freebies to be had - just remember to claim them from the claims vendor every day (which can be accessed from anywhere by pressing L and then the big claim button). They seem to have gotten rid of the "free" section on the Zen market at some point where gifts were handed out in past years.

Getting Reacquainted

Luckily for me, Cryptic managed to fix the bug with the anniversary quests two days into the event after all. After spending a little time fiddling about with the character panel on my cleric, I jumped into a quick Protector's Speech skirmish to try out some of my new abilities.

I didn't know it was possible to feel this lost in a game that you've played for more than five years and have only been away from for six months. Is this Neverwinter's NGE? I think at this point it doesn't even matter whether the changes are good or bad, there are just too many of them. With my cleric's base functionality completely changed and numerous abilities removed or revamped, it feels like I'm playing a completely different game, one in which I just happen to have characters that look like the ones I used to play.

There has been a token effort to explain the class changes in game, but frankly, a few paragraphs of text can't make up for years of muscle memory. It breaks my heart to think back to a year ago, when I was proud to have hit 70 (then max level) on all eight classes and foresaw myself playing the game for years to come.

As it pains me to just abandon all that even in the face of my current frustration, I resorted to that last bastion of hope for confused returning players: rolling up a new character. I didn't really want a second cleric, but at the moment going down that path seems to be my only chance of figuring out WTF is going on with the class. Let's not even think of alts for now.

At least redoing the newbie experience felt less irksome than usual as it's actually been a while now since I last went through it. One interesting change I noticed is that they got rid of all the level-up prompts telling you what you just earned, I guess at least partially because there is less to earn (e.g. no more power points, you just get certain powers at fixed levels).

Confused Birthday

It's Protector's Jubilee again, and this year I'm not even on holiday. Surely there's no better time to check the game out again than during its sixth birthday celebrations!

Unfortunately Cryptic has delivered a double-whammy in terms of making it hard to get back into the game: Now that I'm finally getting over my disappointment with mod 15, it's hard to pick things up again because they've literally changed everything: classes, powers, companions, boons etc.

After claiming my first freebie today, I thought I'd try to get back into the swing of things by doing something simple on my cleric: the anniversary quests. Turns out that Elminster wouldn't give me any though. I tried logging another character and for her they showed. Bug? I tried to check the forums but they wouldn't even load.

Still business as usual then.

(I'm genuinely sad though; I was really in the mood for those anniversary quests. Knowing how slow Cryptic is with fixing bugs, I don't expect to actually be able to participate in the event on my main now.)

Happy Fifth!

Yes, it really has been five years! I honestly continue to be impressed by how well this plucky little MMO has continued to do (based on realistic measurements of success, not WoW killer standards). I don't see a lot of talk about it in my little corner of the MMO blogosphere, but based on what limited player numbers we have to try to gauge its success, such as Steamcharts, it actually seems to be one of the more popular "second tier" MMOs, seemingly outperforming some competitors that seem to get a lot more buzz (again, in my little corner of the blogosphere), such as EVE, Rift or Secret World Legends.

In unhappier news, I managed to time my summer holiday in such a way that it will prevent me from actually participating in the Protector's Jubilee event (except for a quick check-in today) for the second year in a row. I'll never feel bad about going on holiday of course, but I do feel kind of bad about missing out all this free stuff and fun activities. I should really be better at this by now, considering I know exactly when this particular event will occur every year...

Happy Fourth!

Protector's Jubilee a.k.a. Neverwinter's anniversary has once again come and nearly gone, but I missed most of it this time around because I was away on holiday last week. Bad timining on my part to book a trip during Neverwinter's birthday week, I know!

Still, I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate the game on yet another successful year. People like to moan about the business model used for Cryptic's MMOs (myself included!), but it's clearly working for them - so much so that they recently managed to talk Wizards of the Coast into letting them make a Magic: the Gathering MMO too.

Considering that I'm always happy to keep coming back to my Neverwinter characters - even though I take breaks from the game too - the company is clearly doing something right.

Success!

Protector's Jubilee is over and I actually achieved all my goals!

Getting the horse for my control wizard was actually very easy as renown was available in spades. I had enough for the mount after only a couple of days, bought the associated outfit for good measure and still had plenty left over.

Getting the Protector's Garden key was trickier. A commenter actually asked me how one could get the required 15 figurines in only 8 days, and the advice I gave was at least partially wrong since I hadn't fully figured out the new system yet. Figurines didn't used to be rare because you'd get them for doing the event daily quests. This year this was changed however so that the quests only rewarded purple boxes... which would grant you a figurine the first time you opened one on any given day, but that appeared to be it.

The only reliable way we found to get extras was to have other people give you gifts through the protector's hospitality, since that had a random chance of dropping a figurine, and actually more than once per day. Fortunately my pet tank was grinding the event like crazy and showered my hunter ranger with all his gifts, plus a few guildies were nice enough to chip in as well. Thanks to their generosity I managed to hit 15 figurines on the last day and got my key.

Also, my hunter ranger - the character on whom I really wanted to take things slowly again - gained about 15 levels throughout the week. There's just no way not to level fast in this game.

Foreign Merchants

The new escort quest for the jubilee event is an excellent way of grinding both renown and the protector's bounty boxes. You only need one person to have the scroll with the quest to get him moving (which is a fairly common drop), everyone else can then tag along without having it and still get the rewards. After every combat the merchant and his horses will drop either a box or some renown for everyone present... which adds up to quite a number as he gets ambushed several times, walks through a bunch of existing mob groups and you can even pull some more on top of him to make him drop extras.

There are a couple of these merchants in different zones - I escorted one in Blacklake District today and there was a huge crowd following the merchant's every step, with the low-level mobs getting one-shotted before they'd even fully spawned. With my guildies I've mostly been farming the stronghold version though - it might have been luck of the draw, but that one seemed to drop a much higher number of bounty boxes for me.

It was probably the most bizarre kind of social content I've participated in so far, constantly running up and down the road as a group to escort more merchants. It was pretty fun and relaxing though.

Foreign merchants showering us with gifts... I think Cryptic is sending a clear pro-immigration message here!

Happy 3rd Birthday, Neverwinter!

Has this on-and-off relationship really been going on for three years already? Congratulations on holding my attention for that long, game!

We found our stronghold decked out in celebratory banners, with confetti raining from the sky absolutely everywhere. There's also a new repeatable escort quest in the stronghold just for the jubilee event, which follows all the bad tropes of an escort quest to a T... well, except for the one where your escortee attacks everything, cause the foreign merchant actually just cowers.

My favourite skirmish, the Protector's Speech, is also back! I just wish they'd actually give him a new speech every year. I have to be careful not to fall down the rabbit hole of grinding it over and over again just because it's easy, fun and rewarding, simply because I do need to get sleep at some point. I do think I would like to get the horse for my control wizard though.

I'm a bit torn on how much to involve my lowbie hunter ranger. On the one hand I want to get her a key to the Protector's Garden because all my other alts have it, on the other hand this risks throwing her levelling journey seriously off course, considering that a single run of the skirmish was enough to net me nearly two levels. I'll probably go ahead with it anyway.

Also, don't forget to claim your free goodie from the Zen store every day for the next week! If nothing else, Cryptic sure knows how to celebrate.

The Protector's Speech

I wrote about the Protector's Speech skirmish last year. I've been running it on all of my alts again this year, not because I particularly care about any of the rewards, but because it's fun.

Most runs are smooth and very quick. I don't know if Cryptic's matchmaking is actually that good or whether it's just luck, but almost every run I get into has at least one guy in amazing gear who smashes everything in seconds while everyone else can more or less tag along. It's even more pronounced this year since they didn't level the skirmish up to 70 but are instead scaling max-level players down to 60, which makes them seriously overpowered compared to the mobs.

I only had one run that didn't go so well, where my great weapon fighter in her paltry greens had to slowly solo most enemies because the rest of the group seemed to spend most of its time milling about it confusion on the other end of the map. We missed all the bonuses by a mile. When we left the instance, I noticed that two of the other group members were level 11 and 13 respectively, which explained a lot.

For fun, I recorded one of my runs with all sounds turned off except for the NPC voices, so you can actually listen and pay attention to Lord Neverember's speech. Enjoy!

Happy 2nd Birthday, Neverwinter!

Protector's Jubilee has come around again, and I can hardly believe that this game has been out for two years already. Time flies.

One thing you can't accuse Cryptic of is being stingy when they have something to celebrate, as they are quite generous with freebies. The only "catch" is that you have to pay attention to the Zen store - I know for a fact that I missed out on some celebratory gifts before simply because I didn't bother to check the store front every day.

Having learned that lesson however, I paid attention when the store icon lit up yesterday and made sure to check the "free" tab. I found a free set of Courtesan's Wear waiting there, which I claimed for my rogue. Today's gift got me really excited though, because it's a blue quality companion: the Neverember Guard. (I claimed him for my Great Weapon Fighter.) Thanks, Cryptic!

Don't forget to claim all your free goodies yourself!

Protector's Jubilee

Neverwinter currently celebrates its one-year anniversary with the Protector's Jubilee event. There is a skirmish associated with the event called "The Protector's Speech". Before running it for the first time with my pet tank, I joked that it was going to consist of us standing around for fifteen minutes just to listen to Lord Neverember talk. Of course this didn't turn out to be true; you actually have to repel a series of random attacks on Protector's Enclave. (It can't be very well protected with all these random baddies showing up at once...)

However, Lord Neverember does hold a speech throughout the whole thing, unperturbed by all the fighting behind him. It takes over ten minutes and is therefore probably the longest single piece of voice-acting I've encountered in an MMO yet. If you do the associated daily quest for the wizard Elminster, he quips that Lord Neverember tends to be quite long-winded. Too bad nobody is actually going to have much of a chance to listen...