The Rant Files: Why I Will Leave Neverwinter (for a while)
The following blog entry was written in the week of the “Keygate“.
I personally was very disheartened about it, especially that there was no reply to the gigantic shitstorm that ensued. But MimicKing took his time and promised to revamp the rewards before the change to the keys is applied. Definitely a step in the right direction. But I still want to show you the rant because this is not only how I felt, but probably a huge part of the community.
Comments and additions to the original post are highlighted in italic.
At this point you should know Cryptic latest fuck up by selling us a change as a fix for a bug which was a feature now for two years. But this is not the only time Cryptic has done such a thing. And while they at least made a little statements in the past to explain changes further, they are currently sitting it out and behave like there is no problem.
I mean, even the moderators seemed baffled by that kind of statement and they are often blamed to be too harsh in silencing critics. But at the end, what is left? A thread with over 1,600 replies and 75,300 views. Unanswered by the higher ups and ignored by the devs that still behave like a 1-2 year old feature is a bug. As stated by the moderators the thread is merely open to let players vent their frustration.
At this point I am like: Fuck it. I mean,.. remember Coalgate? They stated that the Coalescent Wards in the revised trade bar store was a mistake because they don’t want ZEN market items in it. But Scrolls of Life and Healing Stones are still a part of it and it was obvious that they only changed it because of the monetization. They wanted the value of the Ward to climb back to 10$. Them openly lying to us is not the only thing why I will quit Neverwinter for a while.
Riddled with bugs
The game is riddled with several bugs and exploits. As a reminder of the continued fight let me introduce our Exploit History series. And Cryptic is only willing to fix bugs and exploit if they are made public, as old blog entries showed.
Rubberbanding all day every day
Neverwinter has several problems with lag and rubberbanding. Not only are the servers placed in a zone where the connection is not great, several powers in the game cause heavy load within the engine, AOEs are generating a small lag by default, etc. I personally can’t think when I had ONE day in the past year where I had zero lags. Can you?
After the answer of MimicKing I felt more willing to go in and make a proper analysis of the loot in the dungeons and trials, but the lag and rubberbanding was horrible that I was forced to leave the game.
May I DON’T help you?!
Their support sucks. Really really hard. And not in a good kind of way ;). I don’t know your experience but my experience with the support of Neverwinter is really bad.
A reply takes several days and often it is standard answer that doesn’t help in any shape or form. Some player in the Uncensored forum stated that the support prioritizes console request in the past because of the module release, which makes it even worse for anyone trying to get an answer on PC. You go to the customer support and they basically tell you that they can’t tell anything for you within a reasonable time.
Shut up!
One reason Neverwinter: Uncensored exist are the official forums. You simply can’t openly state your opinion without receiving a ban. The moderators even gave up on giving warnings before bans. Instead of receiving a warning if you crossed the line you are directly shadow banned, leaving you to figure out what the hell happened. You hardly see if you are shadow banned, because your posts and discussions look good on your end, but become invisible for the rest of the community.
That’s why people are coming to our forum instead. You can talk/write what your hearts desires. In our unmoderated forum you might need a thick skin or the ignore function though. No one is being hold back if a “fight” starts 
.
Less features than before?
Another big question: Do we have more or less features then before? At the start of Neverwinter we had 14 dungeons and I think one or two skirmishes. We had also Gauntlgrym and also the Foundry was a valid feature. Now we have 8 dungeons and 8 skirmishes. We are currently missing 6 to 7 dungeons! Yes we got a few new skirmishes, but two are obsolete and two have a broken rating system or bugs that make it very hard to impossible for players to reliably get a gold rating.
The Foundry is all but dead. It offers no rewards and is left to die. The Gateway was closed because of budget problems. Gauntlgrym was purged as game mode and with it the two dungeons that came with it.
Campaigns. Ask yourself. What do the campaigns offer? Dailies and repetition… Only very recently they added a decent story that you could argue is interesting enough to care about. And then Heroic Encounters. Did they add anything interesting? In my opinion no. They could simply shift the rewards to regular mobs standing around and it would make no difference.
Heroic Trials. Well hate me for that, but I actually like them. Fighting a big ass dragon goddess that crawls up from hell and a demon prince opening rifts in the fabric of reality is kind of cool. Even if people say it is a glorified Heroic Encounter, it’s still a bad ass boss fight. We also got three new classes. The Hunter Ranger, Scourge Warlock and the Paladin where introduced. But the open PVP areas are abandoned. No one is playing in them, at least I rarely see someone in there.
One step forward, two steps back
So what can I say feature wise? They make like one step forward but two steps back. We have less epic dungeons then before, actually only three from the original set. The Heroic Trials can be fun at least, the new campaign story line can be interesting and we have three new and different classes. But so many casualties left behind: Gauntlgrym, PVP, Foundry. Heroic Encounters are pointless, the Gateway was shut down. But hey, have the arbitrary refinement system to keep us playing .
What to do now?
At this point in the old blog entry I was recommending a break. I still do it. But the break will probably be a bit shorter than before. It is often enough to get a bit of distance to re-evaluate the situation. DON’T GIVE AWAY STUFF FROM YOUR ACCOUNT THOUGH! It is a break. Not a goodbye but if you still want to give someone your stuff send it to @karakla1 because I will take good care of it (*promised*)
Will it get better?
Even with the very recent answer of Mimic King that is hard to tell. It is obvious that some (not all) changes come from the new lead designer Mimicking. Maybe he really wants to turn the game around and the most recent changes are just the first adjustments. But this is an assumption and we will probably have to wait like 6-8 month until we see what Mimicking is able to produce with his team.
As always, Uncensored will keep you posted about anything important. Bookmark this site, visit the forum. Per the (non existing) rules of the site, discussions about alternatives to Neverwinter are allowed. Many players of the community are weighting other options, so just like me you might find something.
Thanks for reading through this. MinMax Fortytwo is still checking out (for a little while).
