Not the sequel (NWN 3) we were hoping for, however, it's not all bad...
Years of my childhood and young adulthood have been surrendered to games of all sorts, but I have been a huge fan of the likes of Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, and especially Neverwinter Nights. After NWN 2, and all of it's interesting new features (such as "pimp my castle"), I was entertained and ready to see where they could possibly take the series next. Interestingly enough, they took the MMO freemium route. Did it work out? Sort of.
Neverwinter is [somewhat appropriately] an F2P MMORPG. As far as production values such as Graphics go, it's pretty far up there, especially considering how much I've spent on it thus far (Nada!). Pretty nice textures, great art design, and thoughtful dungeons made this game entertaining. If there was any way to describe the combat system and general feel of the game, I'd have to say it feels like NWN meets Dark Alliance, and I definitely felt moments of deja vu in some of the dungeons.
Nostalgia aside, this game is a fairly well done, and refreshing take on current MMO's with a NVN touch to it. It has PVP's, daily 5-mans, and most other standard features as well. One especially cool feature is brings to the table, is The Foundry. This section is a showcase of user created adventures that offer real XP and rewards, and mostly very well done and especially entertaining.
Now for the downsides... Collision detection and glitches. One quest so far has been broken, as in, it doesn't work. Another glitch has landed me on an invisible platform in the air (the top of the skybox/bg). These are fixable things, just as the other minor issues with the game. It's short, but with the addition of daily events, user created content, and [obviously] more Expansions, that can be fixed as well. I'm just about level 40 already, about 2/3s the way through the single player story. There is no real, crazy, "main story", and some of the puzzles aren't really puzzles at all.
All in all, overlooking some of the shortcomings, Neverwinter is still a great package for the price tag, and most of its shortcomings are definitely fixable. No, this isn't the sequel we asked for, but it's not all bad and actually has some pretty enjoyable elements that help it stand out. Let's just hope Bioware frees up there schedule, and goes back to NWN - just as I wish ActiBlizzard would get started on WC4. 8.5 out of 10.