D&D: Heroes of Neverwinter - Open Beta Launched

Atari sends word that D&D: Heroes of Neverwinter - the first Facebook D&D game - is now in open beta. Head here if you'd like to sign up and try it or here for the official forums. Here are some details on the game itself:

Dungeons & Dragons: Heroes of Neverwinter brings the magic, lore, and adventure of Dungeons & Dragons to the Facebook in the most engaging RPG ever to hit the platform. Create your character, form your party and set forth to explore the wilderlands and dungeons of Faerun.

Character Creation & Advancement
· Character creation and growth are based on Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition rules – chose your race, class, powers and stats to build a character to fit your play style.
· Your character will grow and evolve through your adventures as you discover powerful items, select new powers, and improve your abilities.
· New equipment will be visually represented on the battlefield and on your character sheet to show off your custom appearance and gear.
Socialize
· Bring your friends’ characters along as you build your adventuring party. You use their unique skills, they gain experience and loot!
· Friends can join in your adventures in Active Spectator mode. A friend can look in on your adventure, give advice in the chat channel, heal and buff your characters to improve your chances and gain additional experience!

· <span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Visit your friends’ houses t...More information.

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New D&D game going open beta is the kinda thing I wouldn't miss…

But FACEBOOK? It forces you to log in to facebook? This is an outrage! This is a new low for gaming. Rant, rant, rant, rant, need a 4th Ed. TOEE kinda game with coop and pvp, rant, rant, thread.

I played a bit.

Quite a good game. Until you realize that for some reason , which is obviously not engine limitation. They decided to skimp on essential 4e mechanic like AO , Sneak attack ...
etc

Why the hell can they companies just bring D&D as it is ?

Even when its 4e that was made with computer conversion in mind !

It's not a bad game, but the balance between the classes is kinda rubbish. Which is especially infuriating, since there are only 4 of them. I thought base 4E has like 8 classes, even though they are probably not the ones I'm used to from all those DnD CRPGs.

I messed with it for 15 minutes. It's kinda like Temple of Apshai with better graphics.

I've been saying for awhile that Facebook is he new AoL. Now the circle is complete.

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again.

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4E was not made with computer conversion in mind.

It's a decent if extremely simplified game but it does get a bit repetitive. It doesn't bother me that they change around the rules, computer games and rpgs are different so different things work differently. But it does probably simplify things a bit too much. Still as far as facebook games go it's pretty advanced.

Oh and class balance is ok, it's just that classes don't necesarily perform the roles they did in 4e. Rogue for example is not a damage dealer anymore, he seems to be more about dealing with traps and locks and using abilities that disable the enemy. It is kind of odd though that the class with by far the highest damage in 4e would be given the lowest in this game even if it is made up for in other ways.

Overall it was fun to play around with for a bit, and to see how they managed to convert the 4e rules into computer game form. But I can't see playing it too much.

Since Facebook is one of the few places my workplace doesn't block, I'll probably give this a pretty good look. In the early game at least, picking a dragon-born is the most favorable class. You get a free extra attack in every encounter. If anyone wants to join up, I'm crpgnut on facebook too.

I hate Facebook games/apps. The ones I've seen force you to spam friends with invitations, or what have you. I'm not touching it unless someone disabuses me of this notion for Neverwinter.

Nope, same silliness as with all facebook games. The more friends you have, the better any of their games will play for you. Also, people who are stupid enough to use real money, will always have much better characters and stuff. What I do, is play with the same 4 characters all the time. I have two accounts and my wife has several, so I just create characters with those accounts and rotate playing them. Same group of 4, just with a different guy as lead. I can play all day this way, though the game isn't really deep enough to warrant that.

crpgnut said:

I have two accounts and my wife has severa

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and I though I was cool with my single dummy Facebook account...

Well so far I'd say that it's nowhere nearly as silly as games like farmville and mafiawars in terms of requiring you to spam friends. Having friends is an advantage but not an big one. Plus I haven't seen much that would require you to spam them, other then the occasional opportunity to send them a minor gift.

But the game is still in beta so I suspect that more friend spamming is just a matter of time. It is a major part of the facebook game business model.

D&D or not im not playing a facebook game that forces me to provide my personal information. If this is the way of the future I might be retiring from gaming soon.

Well, you won't be missing anything by skipping Heroes. It's very shallow, which is to be expected. I played 4 characters through the 3rd level and there just isn't very much here. The items are very limited, there are only the 4 classes/4 races, all the starter area dungeons lasted about 10 minutes and contained about 5 rooms with combat and maybe one or two pieces of loot. The treasure is catered to the party leader but your chances of actually finding the one good piece of loot is directly tied to luck potions which must be purchased with real money; at least after the first 10 potions are used up. Even the friends portion is goofed up because they have a cool-down timer before you can use your friends again. Right now, the game is just a mess of pieces that really don't meld into a game. It's obvious that the only way to succeed in the game is to pay your way to success. It makes farming in WoW seem to totally altruistic

Another limitation is the game only goes to level 10 and then it ends. Since I was able to get to level 4 with one of my characters in about 5 hours it's incredibly short. I'm amazed that this game is getting any buzz at all. It is just so FAIL in so many ways

The loot/luck potion thing didn't bother me, it didn't really seem like they expected you to drink luck potions, it was just an option. If you didn't luck out on a good loot drop it was easy enough to just buy things from the town store. Maybe it was different at high level but I wasn't patient enough to find out.

What bothered me more was just that how shallow it was. Difficulty levels were a bit wonky too, it was way too easy on the base difficulty level but frequently too hard at even one level up. It might have been nice if there was an option somewhere between cakewalk and slaughter.

Tried it out. Garbage. Buy more of these stupid diamonds and make sure you drag your friends into it and make them buy more of the stupid diamonds too. For the low low cost of 9.95 every 3 encounters you can experience half the quality of a third rate abandonware rpg from 1984.