On April 30, Perfect World’s latest MMORPG, Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter, officially entered open beta. But, like many open betas, this is to say that the game is essentially already in release. They say that your characters will not be wiped whenever the game “officially launches,” so any changes at this point between now and release will be fairly minor. And that’s a good thing, right?

Of course, many people have had kind of a love-hate relationship with this game. Initially, when the game was under the official banner of Cryptic, people thought it would be a great game. There were plans to make it a very serious adaptation of the earlier franchise while keeping close to the rules of the D&D system, and the foundry system was supposed to be pretty detailed. Then, when the company was acquired by Perfect World, there were a lot of fears that the game would become “yet another Asian MMO.”  But, from what I played of the alpha of the game, it seemed like it remained at least fairly adherent to the original plans. How does this final build look?  I’ll have to play to let you know.

The game is using a free-to-play model that favors the use of their online store to make purchases, although you do have the option of purchasing special packages that contain unique items, buffs, currency to use in the store, and more. I am not a huge fan of the free-to-play style, because this often ends up nerfing some aspect of the game to essentially goad you into upgrading (or just making you get frustrated and quit), but maybe this game will get it right.

Anyway, though Guild Wars 2 still occupies most of my MMO time during the week, I am willing to give this one a shot, probably on the Dragon server. Look me up as @Allahweh there!