Neverwinter Interview

There’s a ten-question interview with Neverwinter systems designer Lindsay Haven over at Gameranx this evening, which covers such topics as the game’s overall success, the recently released Fury of the Feywild expansion, the team’s plans for the Foundry, and more. A few such questions and their answers:

2. How was your first add-on Fury of the Feywild received by the Neverwinter user base? How has it affected your gameplan for future add-on releases, and do you plan to release it as frequently as every month?

Fury of the Feywild was our first module and we’ve seen a lot of positive feedback about it. It contains a whole new zone with a new art style, new story to explore, a new skirmish, and our most exciting and fun dungeon ever. But since it was our first release like that we have some ideas about how to improve the experience and we are already deep in development for our next module release. Since each module is packed full of high quality new content and game features were looking at longer than a monthly release cycle. However we are planning as quick a release cycle as we think we can handle because we realize that the Dungeons & Dragons universe has many more adventures for us to explore.

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5. Of course, an older game franchise based on the world of Neverwinter has already been released. Would you consider taking content from that prior game to use in your version of Neverwinter?

I assume you are talking about Neverwinter Nights. We would consider taking inspiration from NWN, and to some extent we have, but since those games were made by another studio on another contract with Wizards of the Coast it is difficult to take them directly. In reality though, the industry and types of games that people play now are very different from what they used to play. There are still elements of those games that are fun, but as a whole they are dated (classic, but dated.) We’d rather look at iterating on successful and fun elements that make contextual sense in Neverwinter.

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8. Do you see a competitive scene possibly coming for Neverwinter? What support would you be interested in providing fans if it ever came about?

At this time we don’t feel that competitive gaming is the future of PvP in Neverwinter. However, this doesn’t mean that we don’t think there is a future for PvP and we are currently working on improving some of the less polished aspects of that part of the game.