Group content in an MMO can be a double edged sword.
I'm not referring here to dungeons and raids - not much anyway - but to open world events intended to be handled by several players. The Sword of Damocles will always hang over this content, or rather the Sword of Diminishing Player Population. What happens once there's simply not enough players around to take on and complete these challenges?
It's not overall numbers that matter here, but how many players there are in a particular zone. With the focus on endgame so dominant in many MMOs it's not unusual to find the number of active characters at max level easily exceeding those still levelling. Lower level zones, and even the older endgame zones, can end up sparsely populated, and that makes group content harder to handle.
One solution to this problem is to offer incentives to max level players to take part in these encounters - Neverwinter does this with the various random queues, which keep the dungeons and skirmishes busy even if the lower level ones are invariably run at a sprint that leaves any player who's actually on-level for it struggling to keep up.
Another solution is to power up characters so that what was once only doable by two or three players can now be done by one. This is what The Old Republic did when it buffed the companions up to god-mode, making it possible for anyone to complete the planetary Heroics, and to some extent it's what Neverwinter has done also.
The legacy campaign system is really a combination of both of these fixes, with level 80 players being encouraged to complete Heroics in the older campaign zones through weekly quest objectives, and being powerful enough to handle at least some of these encounters solo, if necessary.
None of which does anything to keep those campaigns with few Heroics feeling in any way relevant at level 80. That includes a couple of those I talked about last time, but with the exception of the second half of Tyranny of Dragons and Dread Ring these have always been easy to out-level. Now I'm coming to the later campaigns, which mostly do have their fair share of Heroic encounters, and as such don't feel quite so uninvolving when run at level 80.
Storm King's Thunder
Around the time I returned to Neverwinter for this blog I was talking to a friend with whom I'd played through the game previously. He had questions...
"You're really going to complete the campaigns again?"
"Yes."
"All of them?"
"Yes. I'm actually looking forward to it."
I really was. I still am. Except that 'all' does include Storm King's Thunder.
This is a marathon of a campaign and the only one I didn't finish the last time around, and even with the faster progress that's now common to the older campaigns it's still a daunting prospect to return to this one. It plays out across several zones, starting in Bryn Shander.
Bryn Shander suffers from what I think of as the Silithus Effect - a zone that's so effective at evoking an unwelcoming atmosphere that it becomes something of an exercise to get through it. The atmosphere of a town that's barely holding on amidst a bleak and inhospitable landscape is altogether too well realised, and helped - if that's the word - by a score that's both grand and grim. This may be part of why it takes me so long to go through SKT - I can't adventure through this zone for too long before I feel the urge to go somewhere more upbeat, like... well, like anywhere else.
The mobs in Bryn Shander aren't quite one hit kills, which makes them (slightly) more formidable than those in the preceding campaigns. There's also a few quests that spawn multiple waves of attackers and these can be fairly tough even now,* but these are the exceptions.
*The removal of Lifesteal has changed the dynamic of combat, especially extended fights like these battles with the barbarians. I haven't been dying to these encounters, but I have been using a fair number of healing potions to stay alive.
Icewind Dale
The emphasis on completing Heroics makes Icewind Dale a better fit for the new approach than many of the other campaigns, since these encounters are thick on the ground in Icewind Pass and Dwarven Valley. On the other hand these zones are also focused on Black Ice crafting - whch is more or less obsolete now - and PVP - which I'm not aware has ever been big in this game.
Still, it's a nice change of scenery which continues the snowy theme without being anywhere near as grim and desolate as most of Storm King's Thunder. Indeed, Caer Konig, the hub town for this campaign, is one of the most pleasant places in the entire game - beautifully made, with a cheerful and upbeat theme that always makes me think it should be the title music for a children's cartoon about a girl in an adorably oversized furry hat who goes on adventures with a friendly talking bear.
The Cloaked Ascendancy
Almost all of Neverwinter's campaigns have strong openings, and The Cloaked Ascendancy is no exception. It's probably the longest intro sequence of any of them, and is one of the better written ones as well as it sets the scene and gives everyone involved a little more character development than is the norm for this game.
It's also long because it has a lot to explain. The River District, where the action of the campaign proper takes place, is perhaps the most ambitious zone in Neverwinter in terms of interactivity, and all the moving parts - guard posts, dig sites, ritual locations and the treasure ship - take some time to explain. I must admit that when I first explored this zone back in 2018 it took me a long time to come to grips with how it worked. I did come to enjoy it though, and still do.
The standard mobs in River District aren't particularly tough, but the ritual locations are - at least if I'm doing them solo. Which I mostly am, since as discussed, most of the playerbase has moved beyond these campaigns now, and none of these zones are as lively as they once were.
They're still fun though, and getting caught up in the dynamic nature of River District is why I won't be talking about the rest of the campaigns until next time, because I haven't got to them yet.
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