Looking at upcoming PC games for 2013, I’m only seeing three that I think I’ll buy when they come out: Bioshock Infinite, Elder Scrolls Online, and Neverwinter. GTA V is a possibility but I think I can wait for a Steam sale on that one. (Especially since GTA 4 sucked.)

Being a little bored of Guild Wars 2, Tera, and Rift, I went looking on MMORPG.com’s list of games sorted by rating for free-to-play MMOs I haven’t played yet. These reviews are first impressions having played less than an hour of each. Wizardry Online - Ridiculously old-school and very slow-moving. Supposed to be really hard, but in the beginning it’s just hard to have fun. The writers clearly aren’t native English-speakers.

I’ve signed up for three betas: Neverwinter, Elder Scrolls Online, and just now I signed up for Defiance, a sci-fi shooter MMO (or something like that) from Trion Worlds, the same people that did Rift, so I assume it won’t suck.

I finished Bioshock Infinite over the holiday weekend. I don’t often buy games as soon as they are released, because roughly 90% of the time they suck, and also 90% of the time they’re in a 75%-off Steam sale within a year. But like everyone else, I was blown away by the first Bioshock, so I knew there was a good chance this would be a great, culturally-significant game. Also, I knew there was going to be a twist in the story that I didn’t want spoiled by every jerkwad troll on the Internet.

Saw this on MMORPG.com: The Best MMOs of 2013… So Far. Darkfall: Unholy Wars. Haven’t seen it. Not going to look at it. Age of Wushu. Really? Seriously? It doesn’t even have invert mouse! The Secret World. Yes, but it should be in the top 3. Star Wars: The Old Republic. Maybe, possibly. Neverwinter. It’s not bad, but I’m not prepared to put it at #3. EVE Online. No. I’m sorry, but no.

I pulled out Tera again for a bit. Tera is a really a great game for playing a melee character. My main right now is a berserker, and I just love that class. The combat is so visceral and engaging when you can block attacks. Also, each encounter is an epic battle. It’s not like most MMOs where it takes less than a second to kill most things. Fights in Tera go on and on, even against regular mobs.

I discovered that Neverwinter is available in what they’re calling an “open beta.” Rabid fans will tell you that you should only play if you are willing to test the game and that you should expect bugs, but in truth, this is not a beta in the software development sense. It’s beta in the Google sense. It’s live, and there will be no character wipe at the end of it.

From the unpublished archives: I tried out the Defiance beta. It was “kind of” fun but it’s not really my kind of game. MMO shooters never seem that great to me. Lag plays a significant factor in being able to hit anything. Also, maybe my expectations are wack, but I thought all TPS (Third Person Shooter) games were supposed to have cover mechanics. This one didn’t. One thing that drove me crazy was the complete inability to see enemies and players in the environment until you’re standing on top of them.

I got my Control Wizard to 60. It’s really easy to level in Neverwinter, by far the easiest game to level in I’ve seen (after WoW, of course). I think it literally took two weeks (maybe it was three). Admittedly I played a lot in that time, but still, pretty fast. Side note: What is the deal with the class names? Why is it “Control Wizard” instead of just “Wizard?” Why “Trickster Rogue” instead of “Rogue?

I’d been hearing a lot about how threat is “broken” in NW (Neverwinter) and that cleric healing generates too much aggro. I’d also been hearing that DCs (Devoted Clerics) need to be more versatile than simply healing. I’d also heard that DCs get into dungeons a lot faster, since nobody plays them (because of the first two items). Well, I wanted to see all of that for myself, so I started a Devoted Cleric.

When I read the Neverwinter forums, I get the feeling that the only people posting have either a) never played anything but PnP D&D, or b) never played any other MMO, or c) have never played in PUGs before. I can understand some people fitting those criteria, but *everyone*? It’s like nobody has ever seen a “need or greed” loot system before, and they think they are the first people to notice it’s not a very good system.

About those Neverwinter Feats. Is it just me, or is it really hard to get excited about spending points that only increase your damage/whatever by 1%/2%/3%? I mean, statistically speaking, there isn’t much difference between a 3% increase and a 0% increase, right? It seems very … anticlimatic. Two clerics side-by-side, one with 3% increase, and one without - you won’t be able to tell the difference. “Woohoo, I leveled up after all that work, now I get to increase my damage from 500 to 505 points!

I’ve read and heard a lot about how difficult the Lair of the Mad Dragon is (a level 34 5-man dungeon in Neverwinter). I’ve attempted MD five times in PUGs now, twice as a cleric and three times as a GWF (Great Weapon Fighter), so I have some thoughts of my own. For comparison, MD is the third dungeon as you’re leveling. The first is the level 16 Cloak Tower, which is simple enough that anyone can do anything and still get through it.

Failed again in Lair of the Mad Dragon with a PUG. (I think that was the 6th failure in total.) Group composition was a guardian, cleric, GWF (me), and 2 rogues. No control wizard, but it seemed like a balanced group that should have had the tools to tackle Chortlefax. Unfortunately we struggled through most of the dungeon. I’ve noticed that the only people who queue for Chortlefax are people who seem like they haven’t done it before.

I forgot to mention my theory for why Lair of the Mad Dragon is so difficult. I think it’s to get people to buy resurrection scrolls, plain and simple. When you’re sitting there dead on the floor, there’s a button that says “spend X zen to get life scrolls!” I expect that if everyone could rez after every death, the dragon would be a lot easier to defeat. That being said, I do expect them to nerf Chortlefax at some point.

My current favorite class in Neverwinter is the Great Weapon Fighter (GWF). This came as a huge surprise to me, because when I sampled the five classes, the GWF was absolutely godawful in the first four newbie levels, and for a supposedly DPS class, it had terrible, horrible damage output. Even the Guardian Fighter did better, and tank classes are traditionally pretty terrible at damage. Perhaps partially because of the challenge of it, I went back to the GWF to see what it could do.

I see a lot of people on Neverwinter forums complain about the “artificial difficulty” added to boss encounters. The argument they use is that bosses aren’t difficult to kill, but the adds that spawn make it difficult to focus on the boss, so this was a cheap and lazy way for Cryptic to “artificially” make boss encounters hard. This logic makes no sense to me. Most of my instance experience comes from Rift, but I’m led to believe it is typical of what you might find in other raids and dungeons like from, say, WoW.

My GWF dinged 36, so I can’t queue for Lair of the Mad Dragon anymore with him. Instead, I queued for the Throne of Idris, which I think is a level 38 dungeon. Idris is a bit easier than MD, in that it is actually finishable. I’ve done it twice, and finished both times (though it took two tries on the last boss both times, too). And it’s very short, which is awesome.

Word has come down that Neverwinter’s “launch day” (June 20) will bring major balance and gameplay changes. This coincides with the 1-month-after-launch massive patch that every MMO always does to address issues that arise after launch. To me, this also seems to be the time when the developer actually implements a lot of the feedback they got from their beta period. They hardly ever change anything but major breaking bugs between beta and launch.

I just love how every single MMO forum thread goes something like this: A. I don’t like this aspect of the game. B. No, I think you’re complaining about nothing. A. What are you retarded? Learn to read! I didn’t say I was complaining! You’re a total moron! You’re a scrub loser with a pathetic gear score, and you’re stupid! Can’t you even read? Rage rage rage. B. Did you even bother to read my post?

I have to say that the dungeons are my favorite part of Neverwinter. Everyone on the forums whines constantly about how poorly designed the bosses are but I find them rather fun. You don’t have to memorize any strategies beforehand - you just jump in and play your class and your role well, and chances are you’ll do fine. If you don’t play your class well, chances are you’ll get schooled and then have to go to the forums and whine about it.

So I hit level 52 on my GWF and decided to try Spellplague Caverns again for a Dungeon Delve event. That turned out to be a huge mistake. Do not ever go into this dungeon. Ever. It is just not worth it. There’s no way the loot justifies the time spent. We had a GWF (me), cleric, wizard, and two rogues. At first. Somewhere before the first boss, one of the rogues disconnected and someone had the brilliant idea to kick him and get another from the queue.

I think I’m going to lay off of Neverwinter until the big upcoming patch. I find that I have little interest in doing anything in that game except running dungeons, but since it is nearly impossible to get through a queue after level 50, I just stand there doing nothing most of the time. I’m rather hoping that the next patch will make the dungeon queue work a lot better. If not, then I doubt I’ll play it much more until they make some changes.

Well the “big patch” for Neverwinter came a week earlier than I expected. Guess what? No changes in queueing - it still takes forever. So I’ve basically given up on Neverwinter, so it’s all Rift all the time for me! My mage reached level 60, so now I’m a “fresh 60.” I’m not sure how long the total journey from 50 to 60 took, but it took a little over a week to get from 55 to 60.

I finally got to Grandmaster Runecrafter (375), one tedious point at a time. Then I realized I could have been buying recipes from the Runecrafter Vendor all along … I never scrolled down below the 375 recipes heh. Speaking of professions I bought a fourth profession slot for Artificer, because I had removed it from my cleric to make him a pure gatherer. At the time I thought I would level it up and be able to runebreak the artificer items I made to get to grandmaster, which is still a sound theory, but I hit Runecrafter 375 before I even got to Artificer 150.