Neverwinter Online: Beyond Elemental Evil

Neverwinter Online: Module 6 (aka "Elemental Evil") is out and it increases the level cap to 70. While there isn't a "campaign" (that I can see anyway), there are new adventure zones to level up in featuring enemies of the four planes (earth, water, fire, and air). Talk Sergeant Knox at Protector's Enclave to get that quest line started. If you have a free character slot or are new to the game, you may also want to try out the new paladin class.

What it doesn't make clear is that the new level cap also has changed ALL the old campaigns. Sharandar, the Dread Ring, Icewind Dale and the Well of Dragons now have level 70+ enemies. Expect a very difficult time if you decide to continue doing quests there as a level 60!

I also have a feeling we might be seeing a Spelljammer module sometime in the future. Why?

Because of this bald guy behind me.

That's Minsc, who some players may have encountered in Baldur's Gate. He has a pet named Boo.

• Boo is a minature giant space hamster. Giant versions power vessels in Spelljammer.
• Cryptic's other game is Star Trek Online. A space game where players own star ships.
• The air ship in pirates skyhold has gotten a lot of upgrades since I last saw it.
• Owning / Upgrading a vessel would cause a lot of people to invest in more Zen / Astrals / Time. Cryptic likes money.
• Spelljammer is not in the faerun universe? Neither was the base elemental evil (World of Greyhawk).
• Being able to Spelljam might open doors to other D&D realms such as Greyhawk or Krynnspace!

For now though, there are lots of crazy elemental forces that need killing rebalancing which will keep everyone busy. When the foundry comes back up, you can try scratch the Spelljammer fix with this player made quest (not one of mine):

'To Infinity, and BEYOND!'
NW-DSQ39N5SJ

I haven't tried it myself yet, but at least I'm not the only one with Spelljamming in mind! Let's kill some Neogi! :D

All Things Unrelated

Intellectual Property is an interesting topic I've come across lately while working on my NWO Foundry stuff. There are clauses there to only use IP of Neverwinter related things and nothing else which is obviously to protect Cryptic from copyright violations. For example I can see how putting Batman in my campaign might cause a few problems (least of all plotwise! Don't worry, I'm not. :P) but they don't really make it clear just how much of the D&D multiverse we can use? If I make references to Krynn, Greyhawk or Spelljammer will I get in trouble? Probably not since people are actively recreating Ravenloft there as I type this.

Then I look at other games where the lines blur sometimes - Mabinogi is a great example. I'm not talking about where other Nexon related characters from their other games hop over occasionally, that is understandable. With the latest release players have the ability to pull off a "shadow clone" move, or kage-bunshin exactly like on Naruto down to the the hand seal. Previously they even had the vocaloid Hatsune Miku (a ridiculously popular singing synthesizer) feature prominently in the game as well, in addition to other anime characters who have been or are yet to be in the NA version.

On a much broader scope does this mean a game like Card Hunter (which I'm still waiting for access to, weeks after signing up. Not a good look in my opinion) are in violation for encroaching on Gary Gygax territory? Who even polices this stuff? The answer, in China anyway, is no one - as evidenced by this wonderful copy-pasted League of Legends rip-off called 300 Heroes. It slightly goes over the limit of what I'd call cross-over acceptable, don't you think?