Neverwinter Preview

I’m not completely sure as to whether Atari or Perfect World are going to publish Cryptic Studios’ sort-of-MMO Dungeons & Dragons title at this point, but this doesn’t make IGN’s pre-E3 preview any less relevant. There’s not much in the way of new information, but it should serve as a good refresher of what kind of experience Cryptic are trying to go for with the game. Here’s a snippet:

“There is a main campaign thread that you can follow,” said Velasquez, “but you can also work your way through the dungeons at your leisure. They’ll unlock at certain points but it’s not mandated upon you to do them at that time and only at that time.” Chatting with non-player characters won’t all be about questing, either. “We absolutely plan to have lore context, people sitting at the pub that you can chat with and find out more about any number of things, from the main villains to weird and random facts that hardcore D&D fans will get a kick out of.

When the game is ready to ship, Cryptic is planning on having at least five playable classes (Wizard, Fighter, Rogue, Ranger, Cleric), though that number could change. “We’re kind of waiting and seeing,” said Emmert. “We want to identify what’s absolutely necessary for the game to be fun and make that as good as possible before we start turning the crank and creating dozens of different classes.”

Post-release, it sounds like there’ll be a number of classes will be made available. “We’re pretty psyched about doing as many [classes] as possible,” said Velasquez. “We’ve looked already at some of the player handbooks like 2 and 3 and started picking out like the Artificer and even the Beastmaster Ranger. We plan on doing as many as we can down the road.”