Neverwinter is approaching its first full month of open beta and Lead Producer Andy Velasquez has posted a new missive to discuss the good, the bad, and the painful of open beta testing. Velasquez reflected on the initial open beta launch, recalling the command center style setup at Cryptic the day that the servers opened complete with a Mimic chest birthday cake. But as with all things beta, problems inevitably arose from the hardware issues during the first week to the recent auction house and Astral Diamond exploit that forced a 7-hour rollback of all characters. Suffice to say, its been bug squashing crunch time at Cryptic.
Velasquez listed off some of the major fixes to the game since open beta launched and provided a short list of some of the top priority items that the devs are working on.
- Network performance and overall connection stability
- Queue system issues (wait times, teleportation issues, group composition)
- Party Loot issues (better allowing players to win the items they legitimately need)
- Making gear progression feel more visually and mechanically meaningful
- Improving the PvP system to better reward participation
- Aggro and threat balancing
- Auction house bug fixes and UI improvements
- Monitoring the economy to ensure that appropriate actions are taken to remove any remaining illegitimately gained currency and items
The rest of the update covers plans to improve the game further, the before-mentioned exploit and the gift package to players following the rollback, and a brief teaser of something new thats in development with Gauntlgrym, the first competitive PvP/PvE raid-sized content for Neverwinter. While no release date was given, Valasquez did indicate that it will be released to the open beta within a few weeks.
Other content in development includes new companions, zones, mounts, mechanics, updates for the Foundry, Paragon Paths, and a new class. As for the new class, Valasquez wouldnt reveal what it is but did confirm that the it will be ranged, but thats about as specific as it gets. Oh, and he did say this.
Finally, weve got a few big surprises coming with Module 1, which we plan to share more info about very soon!
Let the speculation begin.
Source: Neverwinter State of the Game
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