Cryptic’s Dungeons & Dragons MMO Neverwinter comes out of open beta on June 20, publisher Perfect World has announced, at which point it will officially be a Thing. To celebrate, Cryptic will release a free content pack called Gauntlgrym, which you can check out in the trailer below. The new content is aimed at level 60 characters, but dont worry – your characters wont be reset at the end of beta, so you have no excuse not to be prepared. Cryptic is also preparing a free expansion for sometime this winter, called Fury of the Feywild.

Source: PC Gamer

If you’re trying to play Neverwinter at the moment, you’re out of luck — the game is completely offline at the moment due to a massive bug in the auction house that saw players receiving free money simply by bidding negative amounts.

Last night, some clever chap found that if you bid negative amounts on your auctions the game freaked out and handed you not only the item you were bidding for, but all of the money you bid as well. So if you slammed down negative two million Astral Diamonds on an item, you’d not only end up with the item, but with a further two million Astral Diamonds on top. Nice!

Then players discovered that you could take those Astral Diamonds to the Zen market, where players were offering real life currency in exchange for Astral Diamonds, and… well, needless to say, Cryptic immediately shut the game down.

They’re now working overtime to investigate who exploited the economy, and are currently promising a “high likelihood of character-specific rollbacks” and are “investigating the possibility of a shard-wide rollback” — something which would make the hundreds of thousands of completely innocent players pretty unhappy, as this 100-page thread on the official forums shows.

Neverwinter‘s official Twitter account claims the game should be back online within the next hour.

Source: Neverwinter Forums (thanks, Nemesis_22!)

When it comes to the MMO genre in 2013, a particular saying instantly comes to mind — “The more things change, the more they stay the same”. The formula for success has been been well and truly established, over the ashes of a plethora of failed titles. Developers now know what works and what doesn’t, replacing potentially risky gameplay mechanics with small refinements to well trodden, successful systems such as real-time combat and dungeon crawling.

So if anyone should be in a position to know precisely what failure looks like and how to hopefully alleviate it, it’s Cryptic Studios, reborn under the Perfect World banner to develop the second Dungeons and Dragons MMO – Neverwinter. With three (and a half) titles under its belt, Cryptic are one of the most experienced development houses in the industry, coupled with a publisher (Perfect World) considered a rising star after a host of successful free-to-play efforts in both Asia and the US. Can this team strike gold with one of their most ambitious projects yet?

Our good friend and file library overlord Cas Bitton has uploaded the current beta files for Neverwinter to the games.on.net file library! You can download them here.

Please note that our file library is of course only quota-free for customers of the iiNet group — everyone else only gets to enjoy the fast speeds instead.

Neverwinter just went into open beta yesterday and is free-to-play, so jump in if you’re keen. Sign-up here.

A lot of people are shrieking at me lately about how much they’re enjoying the beta for Neverwinter, the D&D MMO from Cryptic and Perfect World. Well, Neverwinter has now entered open beta — so you, like me, can download it and find out for yourself exactly how much fun it is.

There will be no further character wipes, and the game will be free to play, so… essentially, Neverwinter has pretty much just launched. There you go! It might be a bit unbalanced or unpolished as it’s technically still in beta, but hey, it’s free.

If you’re interested, you can sign up right here. Are you already playing it? Share your experiences with our GONnites in the comments below.

Perfect World have announced that Neverwinter, the 4th-edition-based D&D MMO, is set to head into open beta at the end of this month.

Starting April 30, you’ll be able to jump straight in and play it for yourself. Before then however, existing beta-testers will enjoy another gameplay weekend from April 12-14 where they can test out the new professions, among other things.

Looks good? Hit up the registration page here and get ready for the 30th.

The first closed beta event for Neverwinter has begun, and to celebrate Cryptic have announced a new character class — the Devoted Cleric. As you would expect, the cleric is mostly a support class with healing powers and AoE buffs and debuffs, but they are definitely capable of dealing some holy damage as well. Check out the trailer below, showcasing the clerics and their many talents, and tell us what you think.

I’m sure that there will be much moaning and groaning about this entirely CG trailer. But let me tell you, I play a lot of D&D and seeing these ideas come to life, even if it is 4E, is pretty spectacular to me.

We have a dracolich and an army of otherwise undead creatures attacking Neverwinter, and a group of adventurers trying to stop them. They seem a little outnumbered to me — perhaps that’s where you come in, eh? — followed by Valindra the lich queen being all evil and undead and stuff.

This is apparently the third part in a three-part series of CGI trailers, but I cannot find the others for the life of me. Watch it and tell us what you think. And if you happen to know where I could find the other two, please link me! In other news, the beta events start this week, for those of you lucky/rich enough to get in.

Source: VG247

If I’m going to play Neverwinter, I say to myself, I might as well play as Drizzt, right? With the ‘Hero of the North’ Founder’s Pack, you essentially can be! Between being a “drow renegade” and having your own unique panther companion, I hope to see lots of characters named ‘Not_Drizzt’ and other variations in the opening days.

There’s lots more in the Founder’s Pack though, including a new costume, treasure, a respec token and some other bits and pieces. Most importantly however, it will buy you VIP access to the game, jumping you to the front of queues as well as access to the three beta weekends and five-day early access to the game when it’s launched. And an armoured spider mount. FYI.

That’s all very exciting! What do you have to do to get your hands on all this cool stuff? The answer is very simple: go here and pay $200. Yes, it seems a bit steep doesn’t it. Bear in mind though that it’s got over $500 worth of stuff in it. So perhaps not for the casual player, but if it’s your thing, it seems definitely worth the price of admission. For more – and better animated – details, check out the trailer below.

While still cautiously optimistic about the prospects of upcoming MMO Neverwinter, I can’t help but feel that, in this trailer at least, the story seems very similar to that of the original Neverwinter Nights. Of course, it’s the Spellplague instead of the Wailing Death, and the cultists are devil-related instead of creator race-related, but the similarities are definitely there. Perhaps this is just one aspect of the story, I’m not really sure.

I’m still waiting for Neverwinter to wow me (WoW me, perhaps?) and, to be honest, this trailer doesn’t really do it. But check it out anyway, see what you think! And of course, let us know what you think in the comments.

I am cautiously excited about upcoming MMO Neverwinter. I sure loved the Neverwinter Nights games, and I sure love D&D. But Fourth Edition? And an MMO? I am yet to be convinced. This video looks pretty nice, though, and makes combat look pretty dynamic for an MMO, so I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Coming courtesy of IGN, this video shows off the Guardian Fighter, the game’s tank class, doing what he does best.

Flower arrangement.

If you’re reading this you’re probably not at PAX going hands-on with Cryptic’s new MMO, Neverwinter. Neither am I. A moment of sympathy and camaraderie then, before we paw eagerly over what snippets have escaped from the event. The developer is showing off the Blackdagger Keep zone via a new trailer, which I invite you to view below. There’s also a pile of screens through the source link, should static images be more your thing.

Neverwinter is expected in early 2013, having been delayed earlier this month.

Source: VG247