Is the Driftwood Tavern Community Live Stream a Sign of Good Things to Come?

In the wake of the announcement of the new Driftwood Tavern Community Live Stream that will take every two weeks on the PerfectWorld channel on Twitch, “TheHappyLion” on our message board titled the thread to talk about it “It’s finally happening…..”. In my opinion that’s a pretty darn good sentiment. Let’s be blunt about this: The communication between the community and the company has always been atrocious. Be it bugs, feedback or just general involvement. Even their sporadic features have stopped eventually. Anyone remembers guild spotlights or player spotlights? Me neither, because where are those?

Community work is done by the community itself

Any kind of community work is currently done by the community itself, most namely by our small site. The Community Watch is a great format and its good to see PWE picking up the idea for themselves. I don’t think by the way that former Community Managers didn’t want to get more involved, their schedule just didn’t allow them to. Especially StrumSlinger stressed multiple time that he really wanted to get some streams going. The task list of a CM however consists of so much more than people actually think. Hint: They do not have time to read the forum all day! We hoped that with the installment of Julia as full-time Cryptic CM some of these resources would free up, and voilà… here we go!

That being said, let’s not get carried away be a new format. So far pretty much no community related projects were sustained and we need to wait and see what they want to do with the stream anyway. But it can’t be wrong and given the first stream I say give them a chance. Go watch the stream and show them that you appreciate what they are doing. Just don’t expect too much. If you’re going into the channel and just bring up the latest bugs and the state of PVP, the Foundry and want answers on a weekly basis, you might not only get disappointed, but silenced in the process. We are talking baby steps here and using the format to promote an agenda is not the way to go.

It’s a start

So while I really like this as being progress, I think we can agree it’s only a start. Cryptic and PWE generally need to do a better job to promote the Twitch, Youtube community, fansites (*cough*) and others that create content for their games. That’s especially true for a small community like Neverwinter where extrinsic rewards can lack a little. The example of Kali Gold has shown that aiming too high can lead to frustration. So if you have people that create content on a daily basis, let them know you know!

I think back when Elemental Evil hit on consoles was the only time that streamers were provided official giveaway codes to hand out. Not sure why it stopped. Maybe it’s something that fell off the task list as well, maybe they thought it’s not worth it for the tiny amount of viewers. But in any case, they have to re-establish stuff like that.

Anyway, I think we are heading into the right direction. The overall presence on the forum has visibly increased, although it’s still not where it should be. And now with the new Driftwood Tavern Community Live Stream, they up their game on Twitch. It could be a sign of more good things to come in terms of community involvement!


Did you watch the first Driftwood Taverns stream? Did you like it? Share your experience and thoughts in the comments below or visit the corresponding thread on our message board.

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j0Shi

j0Shi plays the Neverwinter MMORPG since the open BETA in 2013 and is a regular contributor to the blog and the whole UN:Project. Originally a Guardian Fighter, he has built up ALTs of all classes and plays on BIS/near-BIS level.

One thought on “Is the Driftwood Tavern Community Live Stream a Sign of Good Things to Come?

  • April 17, 2017 at 7:30 am
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    If they are anything like all the previous live streams then PS4 players need not attend. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dev answer a single question posed by a ps4 player. Actually now that i think about it, i’ve never seen a dev acknowledge the existence of a ps4 player in a stream.

    Maybe i’m just cynical who knows. Still waiting on some news as to why nwps4 keeps crashing twice a day for the past month and a half too!

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