I loved Neverwinter at the start of open beta. I thought it would be the last MMORPG I would ever even want to play. I loved the action, and the class I picked, guardian fighter, was superfun. I like tanking, I like leaping, and as a tank in Neverwinter, being able to raise my shield and block a boss’s attack was supersweet, better than in TERA because you can actually move while blocking in Neverwinter.
The game had its flaws, though, but it was in open beta after all. Caturday and the rollback didn’t get on my nerves as much as it did for others, but the tank-cleric threat issue did. A lot. How can a tank tank if she can’t hold threat? By the time they fixed the issue, if it indeed was fixed, I had already stopped logging in frequently.
Turns out as I look back, and this comes as no surprise to me, it wasn’t the game I loved so much as it was the having fun playing the game alongside others. However, as is typical with the casual MMORPG gamer, once they hit endgame, they quit. I wanted to have fun with endgame content: running epic dungeons, getting my gear score up, and taking on Castle Never. Fortunately, others in the guild wanted to do the same, and the guild actually grew as we picked up people from pickup groups, so all was well at first, but as time went on even we couldn’t deny what dawned on us as the game’s problem as we ran endgame dungeons: boss adds.
Certainly, the tank-cleric threat issue didn’t help, but what we found in epic dungeon after epic dungeon was that the bosses weren’t all that hard but the fights were impossible on account of boss adds coming in wave after wave after wave after wave after wave ad nauseum. So while the casuals bailed before they even began running endgame content, those of us who continued on started to lose interest, and some left before Castle Never on account of endgame just being repetitive, unfun wiping to boss adds.
Five of us from the guild finally did head into Castle Never about a month and a half after the start of open beta. Finding it was just more of the same, it was actually the last time I ever ran anything in the game. We made it as far as the spider boss which we only beat by luring it out of its room of adds. I tried getting people from the guild to come play Rift with it going F2P, but most weren’t interested in that game. I don’t really even know where some of them have ended up because if you’re not making use of social networking sites, how can we stay in touch?
I’ve logged in from time to time, but few if any people are ever on in the guild when I do. I can’t really imagine getting back into the game at this point with Final Fantasy XIV so close to release and no community holding me to Neverwinter, so I’m uninstalling the game and freeing up some space.
