YMMV / Neverwinter

• Awesome Music: Neverwinter's soundtrack is pretty bland and generic as a whole, but the theme of Protector's Enclave, the game's Hub Level and central marketplace can really grow on you.
• Broken Base:
  • September 2015's patches led to two massive changes to the way players gained Astral Diamonds. First of all, it's now impossible to gain them without playing the game due their removal from the Leadership profession. Second, the long-standing bonus Astral Diamond times for Dungeons and Skirmishes have been removed in favor of static payouts per run (3000 for the first two runs and 750 for each additional run). Some players are on board with this, having rarely used the Leadership profession and are thus unperturbed by the changes. However, a great many more players (many of them solo players) were outraged by the change, calling it a foolish decision that took away their sole source of steady Astral Diamond income due to the fact that much of the game's content takes place outside of Dungeons, Skirmishes, and PvP, thus forcing players to spend time grinding it out in those areas instead of advancing their campaigns for boons and building their Strongholds.
  • The Oathbound Paladin and Scourge Warlock classes have become this for longtime Devoted Cleric players due to the former's capability to heal just as well if not better than the clerics. Some enjoy the ability to move out of the role of being the only healers in favor of more action-oriented builds. Others are irritated that their concrete role in parties has been displaced, weakening them as a class choice overall.
  • PvP is another breaker due to the way it's structured. Matchmaking places any players within the same 9 levels in a match against each other with a grand total of five maps to fight on, most of which are control point based. This is all fine and dandy until players hit level 60. Then balance gets turned on its head as new players are shell-shocked by the blatant difference in power they have to face when pitted against long-time veterans and cash players who are decked out in the best gear (such enchantments that revive players and provide them with invincibility along with extreme damage and defense differences), pummeling them without a fight and rendering many matches practically unwinnable. Naturally, this has earned the game quite a bit of criticism, accusing the developers of inserting it as an afterthought without even thinking of balancing it.
  • The Cryptic's transaction system is equally notorious, blatantly favoring players who shell out cash. It's pretty easy to find players who accuse the game of being Pay-To-Win, which in all honesty is pretty hard to argue against due to the sheer power of many cash-based items which are insurmountably better than the ones normally obtainable (for reference, the normally obtainable mounts give you 50% bonus movement speed, the cash mounts from the lockboxes give you 110% percent!). This was taken further with the addition of the VIP System, which basically allows cash payers to ignore several limiting game mechanics such granting as the ability to invoke anywhere as well as increasing their Astral Diamond gain.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Star Trek Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic and Dungeons & Dragons Online to a lesser extent.
  • Star Trek Online was also developed by Cryptic and that causes resentment when Neverwinter has large periods of time without a major update or content expansion. If you look in the forums, you will find people complaining that Star Trek Online is killing Neverwinter due to being the more popular and profitable game.
  • Many gamers tend to compare Neverwinter with Star Wars: The Old Republic since the former's developers admitted to have taken inspiration from BioWare's style of writing. The Dungeons & Dragons fans that don't enjoy the BioWare-isms tend to look Old Republic negatively because of the influences BioWare had on the game.
  • Being two MMORPGs based on the same franchise, this was bound to happen between Neverwinter and Dungeons & Dragons Online players but to a lesser extent since both games are from two different eras (DDO from the mid-2000s, and Neverwinter from the early-new tens) with different priorities and developers with DDO being a more co-op focused dungeon-crawler and Neverwinter being a more story-driven MMO. The rivalry come more from the fact that DDO uses the way-less popular Eberron setting while Neverwinter uses the more mainstream Forgotten Realms setting (DDO eventually got the Forgotten Realms setting in an expansion, funnily enough) and the obligatory discussions about what game respects the spirit of their namesake Tabletop Game more.
• Game-Breaker: Assassin Rogues get an ability called Toxic Blades that adds a damage over time effect to Encounter and Daily Powers that stacks up to 5 times. Smoke Bomb triggered this and quickly maxed it out in seconds, effectively making it able to easily wipe out hordes of enemies in seconds. This was eventually nerfed and finally completely removed in later patches.
• That One Boss:
  • Rohini the Prophet, the Arc Villain in Helm's Hold quest, can be confronted in the final solo mission of the area. She not only has a large amount of HP, but also having an AOE with large amount of damage. She can also summon a large number of demons around her while aiming at the player to bedazzle them. The player would also dazed after they got hit, accumulating the risk of being hit by other spells. The player won't get through this challenge without proper preperations and agility.
  • Gar Shatterkeel, the Prophet of Water, is one of the four main villains of Elemental Evil expansion and the Final Boss in Drowned Shore quest. In his battle, he showcases his techiniques through summoning a large spehere of water that the player cannot dodge. His AOE also contains the summoning of a large splash that would deal an enormous damage on the player, even killing the player instantly. What is worse, if he's not cornered onto a wall, Gar can flinch himself quickly to a long distance away and dodge any attacks (even including AOE) the player throws upon him.
• The Woobie: Many, MANY characters in the game.
  • The Linkletters were a happily married couple until Dorothea was afflicted with the Spellplague. Helpless due to the Protector's law Josef hides her condition and seeks the help of a rogue wizard named Rhazzad who seems to be able to treat her... only for the wizard to use her along with dozens of other people he "helped" to open a portal to unleash the abberants on Neverwinter in an attempt to become a god. During this time Josef is also afflicted with the plague and is forced to attack the adventurer who came to help him and his wife. After the incident the two join Scar Company in an attempt to save what little humanity they had left, but Josef's deteriorating condition nearly makes him attempt to end it all, only to be saved once again by the adventurer. However, it's implied that the treatment is temporary and may only last a few weeks if not days, leaving all hopes of a normal life for the couple murky at best.