Neverwinter Beta

I've put a lot more time into Neverwinter this weekend than I did in the previous beta event.  I think I got a good feel for the game and how their free-to-play model will be structured.  As far as I've seen, the core game is there to play without much restriction and there is of course a cash shop to keep some money coming in.  There are three tiers of "Founder's Packs" for sale, and the cash shop seems pretty tame - consumables, mounts, appearance stuff, character slots.  One thing that's really nice in Neverwinter's sibling, Star Trek Online, is the ability to exchange the cash shop currency (called "Zen") for "dilithium" with other players.  From what I gather, "astral diamonds" are Neverwinter's equivalent of dilithium.  I've heard that things like identify scrolls and other special items might be purchased with astral diamonds.  On the surface that might sound like they want to milk you for real money in some way to get astral diamonds to play the game right.  If it's anything like the dilithium system in STO, there's little to fear.  There should be plenty of opportunity to earn the currency without spending a dime.

Something I noticed yesterday when I hopped in NW - I was seeing chat from the fleet channels we use in STO!  So I was able to chat with my fleet in STO while I was testing NW.  Very cool stuff.

Neverwinter isn't TOO different from any other mmo, with one exception - The Foundry.  This is actually something that was developed for NW but was back-ported to STO since they use the same engine.  The Foundry lets players create their own quests/missions/campaigns then let the rest of the community run through and rate them.  I toyed with the Foundry a little in STO and it's pretty spiffy if you're the type that has time to do that sort of thing.  The control system is more or less the same as TERA or Guild Wars 2.  Instead of click-to-target then repeat a series of number key presses until the mob dies, you control the camera like a shooter and attack/dodge.  I had fun working through the quests and fighting my way to the boss of the first main quest line (which took me up to level 8 or so.)  The final encounter was fun and challenging.  At the end of the beta weekend I at least felt like I had played through a campaign with a goal and a story rather than just being sent out to kill wildlife over and over.  It's not going to completely pull me away from TERA, but it's definitely something I'll be playing on the side.