Neverwinter trailer introduces the Jewel of the North

The Forgotten Realms campaign setting has plenty of memorable locales, but few of them rival the city of Neverwinter in terms of iconography and fictional history. Neverwinter is the kind of city that you name a game after, in fact. Possibly even two games if you want to get technical about it.

Perfect World’s latest website update pays tribute to the town known as the Jewel of the North with a bit of expository text to bring you up to speed on Neverwinter’s place in the D&D timeline. The firm has also released an accompanying video that you watch after the break.

I am sure plenty of people disagree, but I just don’t get it. There are superior single player games out there if your going to play something alone. Well, sure I can grind the same instance over and over with a group of people in most MMOs, but that is rather dull too.

I guess I like my MMO to lean on the “Multiplayer” aspect. I’ll use WoW as an example in that leveling game was MUCH more fun to me when you had to group up to get through the levels and a handful of quests required others. Today, unless you raid WoW is a single player experience you happen to do alongside a thousand other people. It’s like when Garriott said something about MMOs are like being in New York where you just don’t care what anyone around you is doing – you just care about what you are doing.

I prefer my MMOs the opposite. Odd he would say that too. Ultima Online you cared a great deal about what others were doing near you. Constantly. The early MMOs were not all roses, but I will say that the systems in place enmeshed you in the world and made friends and enemies of others far more powerfully than the modern MMO crap today.

There have been many improvements in MMOs to be sure, but community is the one where I think any evolution has failed. If anything, its worse. Neverwinter felt so cold community wise. More-so than any beta I have been in for a MMO.