It’s no secret that Cryptic Studios and Perfect World Entertainment (PWE) have had some serious ups and downs in the ongoing Neverwinter open beta. Lead Producer Andy Velasquez is very honest about some of those ebbs and flows in his Neverwinter State of the Game letter.
Auction house exploits, server stability issues, player bans, and the recent 7 hour server rollback all make appearances in the Neverwinter State of the Game letter, but what is missing is any mention of some of these issues being reported for quite some time now and similar exploits happening in Star Trek Online years ago (also a Cryptic Studios title).
While the negatives may be more pronounced than some of the positive, Velasquez does thank the players for their incredible support during some challenging open beta times.
On the good side of things though, Velasquez stated in the Neverwinter State of the Game letter that they do intend to release player numbers to the public once approved because they are very proud of the high player base that the D&D inspired MMORPG has generated thus far.
Velasquez also says that a public test realm will be implemented in game as soon as it is ready so that future exploits can be found and addressed before they go live.
It seems Neverwinter players will be getting their first raid soon as well. The Neverwinter State of the Game letter says that Gauntlgrym will be the first PvE/PvP raid sized content introduced in the title and it should make an appearance in open beta in a few weeks.
Velasquez also teased the addition of a new class. While Velasquez didn’t come right out and say what the class would be, he did say it would be a “ranged” class. So that pretty much tells you what you needed to know.