For a long time, I stopped playing NW because it was an unoptimized piece of garbage and Cryptic weren’t all that interested in fixing it. I’ve returned after more than six months to NW and I gotta say it’s a pretty fun F2P MMO, taken in small doses. The combat is fast-paced and satisfying, plus after a long-ass time the game is finally optimized, and you can properly enjoy it (it should run at 50-60fps on most PCs even in more crowded areas or while engaging in combat with multiple enemies).

Although it’s based on the Forgotten Realms D&D setting, this game is nothing like its tabletop counterpart (or Neverwinter Nights for that matter). NW is an action MMO through and through, your characters have no alignment to speak of, so you can choose whatever class you like without giving it a second thought (except for the fact that some races work better for some classes, but the race bonuses aren’t really that major). The voice acting is decent, the music is pretty good, graphics are acceptable (better than most F2P MMOs on the market), just don’t go into this game expecting the next big thing, it’s still a budget game. If you want a more faithful adaptation of the D&D rule-set, you’d have a better time playing DDO.

If you are looking for PvP, the game’s PvP scene is pretty much dead and the devs don’t seem interested in reviving it. It’s been a few years since the PvP got any updates and Cryptic seem to pour all their resources in new PvE content, which is also what players seem to enjoy the most. Plus, PvP was pretty busted in the past, as players weren’t really on an equal footing, meaning most matches were pretty frustrating, so that might explain why the devs abandoned it.

As for PvE, it’s pretty entertaining, albeit repetitive. The leveling was overhauled with Mod 20, making it easier to get to the end-game (the new max level is 20, down from 80 and all you have to do is follow a linear storyline, which will get you to the max level in about 10–15 hours). Once you hit max level, your main goals are to obtain some artifacts, 10 mythic mounts & 10 mythic companions (for max bolster) and do the campaigns, which mostly consist of doing daily quests and getting some resources that you’ll use to research some passive skills for your character. The quests you do aren’t all that memorable, but at least they aren’t very long, so you won’t have to spend too much time with ‘em. There are also catch-up mechanics for alts, which speed up campaign completion once you’ve finished a campaign on at least 1 other character. They also rework campaigns from time to time, making them faster to complete. There are also trials, dungeons, advanced dungeons, and skirmishes that are all completed with other players (new ones are added from time to time or older ones get revamped) - but I wouldn't recommend joining them using the group finder, as most of the groups you'll get into are full of people that don't know the mechanics and are unable to read the chat to understand what they need to do, meaning you'll waste a lot of time and fail many of these activities (better to join a guild and complete activities with people that actually try to understand what they have to do). There are recurring events and also holiday events that offer either ways to boost your character’s stats or cosmetic items, so there’s plenty of stuff to do if you are a new player. New modules are added, usually once every 6 months, giving you more stuff to do and even more ways to improve your characters. Also, getting into a guild early on is really important, as guilds offer different boosts and really help you while leveling, and players are usually really helpful and offer you tips on how to better play your class or what to focus on.

There’s a cash shop where you can buy mounts and companions (not all that great and low rarity, meaning you’ll have to upgrade them to max to fully enjoy their bonuses), some character boosts (might be OK-ish for new accounts, but the once you have a character that’s endgame ready, you’ll realize the boost isn’t all that great), campaigns buy-outs (meaning you can skip the campaigns and get the passive bonuses, which aren’t all the important, are really useful if you want to fully max a character) and a VIP system (monthly sub) which offers some QoL stuff (the only worthwhile thing in the cash shop). There are also some premium races (Menzoberranzan Renegade, Moon Elf, Dragonborn, Gith, Aasimar), some of them were offered in different giveaways (some of them still active), but again, the race bonuses aren’t all that important, and the free races can compete just as well with the premium ones. As a side note, you are able to convert Astral Diamonds (a currency you get from different in-game activities) into Zen (the premium currency used in the cash shop, that can also be bought with your hard-earned $) to buy stuff from the cash shop, but the conversion rates aren’t all that great.

One annoying problem for free players is that we are limited to 2 character slots per account, which is kinda ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and the only way to get more is with Zen (on the other hand, you can make and use as many free accounts as you like). With the recent changes on Steam, you’ll have to link a NW account with your Steam account, so you no longer can change accounts easily. If you want to use multiple accounts to test different classes, you’ll have to download the Arc launcher, which is kinda of a pain in the ass.

The thing that really sucks in this game is the upgrade system for enchantments, artifacts and mount collars, as it's purely RNG with a very low chance of success. The solution is to use items called motes (there's one that gives each upgrade a 100% chance of success), but these items can only be obtained as extremely rare drops from different activities or can be bought with cash from the cash shop (or on some very rare occasions, bought with AD). Getting everything maxed is the real end-game activity in NW, but you don't really need everything fully upgraded to be able to participate in most of the content. It's still really annoying having to grind a ♥♥♥♥-ton for all the items and repeat the process each time a new set of gear is released.

Another gripe, their support is pretty useless, most of the time you need to do their QA stuff and figure out on your own what the issue is. Also, reporting suspicious behavior or ♥♥♥♥♥ that don't feel like helping, doesn't really do much (from my experience at least) so I'm pretty sure it's not worth the time bothering with reports.

All in all, if you can look past its flaws (which are quite a few), NW is a pleasant way to spend your spare time mindlessly killing monsters and grinding some gear.