Neverwinter’s Underdark expansion launches on November 17

A questline written by R.A. Salvatore

Jeeze, it doesn’t seem five minutes since Perfect World released Strongholds, the last expansion to their pretty great MMO Neverwinter. Now they’re already preparing to release the next major expansion for the game, Underdark.

One of the main points of Underdark is the inclusion of a story questline written by R. A. Salvatore, a fantasy author known for his work in Dungeons & Dragons and Kingdoms of Amalur.

The expansion also sees the return of popular D&D characters such as Drizzt Do’Urden and Bruenor Battlehammer in a new 10-player raid against a two-headed demon lord known as Demogorgon. For a lot of people those are just words that have no meaning, but for Dungeons & Dragons fans it might be a bit more exciting.

There will also be new dynamic content, though we’re not entirely sure what that is yet, and there will be some new content for the Strongholds that were introduced in the previous expansion. For the few fans of the game’s massively unbalanced PvP, there will be a new PvP tower available too.

Admittedly, this expansion so far seems a bit of a step down from the sheer scale of Strongholds, with its massive dynamic events and guild-based questing. But Underdark really feels like it might be placing more of an emphasis on the story and world-building that Neverwinter has so desperately needed up to now, especially after more gameplay-focused expansions like Strongholds.

Neverwinter: Underdark releases on November 17 for PC, and in early 2016 for Xbox One.

Disclosure: An ex-PR rep for Perfect World gave me a piece of DLC for Neverwinter a few weeks ago, however there was no expectation from either of us that this would lead to further coverage.