Aasimar Unlocked

This week I finally unlocked the last of the Redeemed Citadel rewards on my main, which means that I now have access to the Aasimar race. Too bad I like all my existing characters as they are and see little incentive to roll yet another alt until they release another class.

Some of the gear rewards from the milestones were also pretty good - for example I hadn't upgraded my neck and belt since Ravenloft. Sadly the main and off-hand remain un-upgradeable for me though as doing so requires drops from the higher-level Avernus hunts, something I just can't be bothered with at this point.

Generosity

Bhagpuss drew my attention to what seems like an insanely generous offer going on in Lord of the Rings Online right now... basically free players can log in and get all the quest content from the base game for free, to keep forever, when previously it all had to be paid for. Even though I only played that game for a month, I'm almost tempted to re-download it just for that. (The "almost" is mostly due to me remembering that the installation process was a major pain the last time around.)

I've noticed that quite a few free-to-play MMORPGs seem to have become a lot more generous all of a sudden. Is it because they are flying high on all those profits from people staying home and playing video games more than usual, or are they just trying to lure in as many players as possible so that they'll give their game another chance while the going is good?

It feels like Neverwinter, too, has been giving out new free goodies pretty much every other week recently, and they also had a charity deal on last month that allowed players to buy the Dragonborn race pack (which usually costs something ridiculous like sixty dollars) for only ten bucks, and with 100% of the money going to charity (plus a similar deal for STO). They ended up raising more than 130,000 dollars, which seems pretty sweet.

Initially they said they were only giving out a limited number of keys and I missed out as the PC ones were gone very quickly, but later they "restocked" and I got to grab one myself too. It's not even like I was planning to make another alt or anything, but it was just too sweet an offer to pass up.

Uprising

While I'm only just trying to come to grips with the havoc wrought by Undermountain, Cryptic already announced the next module coming in August, called Uprising.

It will introduce the first new race in a while, the Gith. I have to admit that I'd never heard of them before this, and my first impression is that they look like the love children of orcs and elves. Also, apparently we'll be going to space?! I'm not familiar with that part of D&D lore at all, but it sounds wacky.

To me though, the most intriguing change mentioned in the announcement post was "recrafted early game zones and stories". I've never found Neverwinter's levelling particularly engaging, but it's serviceable, and to be honest I'm not sure what they could do to make it better, the game being what it is. Makes me glad to be levelling a new character right now though - that means that the current content will still be fresh on my mind when it comes to comparing old and new.

Class and Race Quests

One of Neverwinter's lesser advertised features is that it has distinct quest lines for different classes and races. They are nothing amazing and you only get one about once every ten levels, but they still add some nice flavour and provide you with some new content every time you roll an alt of a different class or race. That's why I made my control wizard a drow, so I would get both a new class and a new race in one go.

When you're high enough level for a new one of these quests, you get a letter from the quest giver in the mail and have to go find them. Since this isn't an actual quest by itself, it's kind of refreshing to have to go and look for the right NPC without having a sparkly path to follow. Even though my control wizard has mostly been levelling through invoking (once again), I've made an effort to at least go out and do each new race and class quest as I get it.

Sadly Cryptic doesn't seem to have much interest in adding to or even maintaining this feature. My pet tank explained to me that there was neither a race nor a class quest waiting for his dragonborn paladin (the newest class and race in the game). And on my wizard I ran into a dead end in Rothé Valley, where my race quest told me to go into a farmhouse, but the entrance is currently bugged so you can't enter. Apparently this was reported on the forums two months ago already, but nothing has been done to fix it.

Dragonborn Legend Pack

Just like I was late commenting on the Tyranny of Dragons trailer, I'm also a week late with commenting on the release of the Dragonborn Legend pack that is meant to go with the new module. Telwyn from GamingSF pretty much summed up my thoughts exactly, namely that this pack offers very poor value compared to previous releases that included both account-wide mounts and companions for considerably less money.

Commenters in the Reddit thread mostly seem to agree with this sentiment, though at least one person piped up to defend the pack, saying that it still offers good value for money compared to the (imaginary) option of buying all the items separately. The problem is that most people wouldn't care to buy everything in the pack separately anyway, and the Dragonborn race alone makes it hard to justify the price of nearly a hundred euros.

A self-identified Cryptic employee also chimed in defending the decision, arguing that they needed to offer expensive things to give the big spenders in the game the option to actually give them as much money as possible. (Quote: "For every 100 people that refuse to pay for it or threaten to quit the game, there's 2 or 3 who'd happily fork over twice as much.")

I guess we'll see whether it works out for them of it future releases will try to offer a better value-for-money ratio again.