Neverwinter’s events are always so unique and engaging. It offers a great break from the normal adventuring and offers some of the most unique rewards as well. While adventurers are celebrating the Summer Festival Event, we wanted to sit down with our awesome events team and find out what it takes to create these exciting events. 

We spoke with Lindsay Haven, Producer at Cryptic Studios. Enjoy!

Can you tell us a little about yourself? How long you have been at Cryptic? What your role is?

Hi, I’ve worked at Cryptic for 4 years now. I was originally hired as a systems designer but became a producer about 1 year ago. I’ve mostly been developing events with our super small elite strike team, but I also do some work on our module team.

Outside of having to deal with our constant emails about events, can you tell us a little bit about what it takes to get events up and running?

Sure. While we usually have 3 to 5 events in varying stages of development at any given time, the process of any given event is pretty straight forward. The team and I will brainstorm a few ideas; these ideas are usually high level and don’t yet have a theme unless it’s really obvious to us. Then the idea that compels us the most gets sent to Wizards of the Coast for approval and feedback, this collaboration is where we usually decide how the event we’re making fits into the Forgotten Realms.  Because we have strong early designs, after that it’s pretty straight forward development and QA process.

What’s one of the hardest parts about creating events like the summer event?

Something like the summer event is challenging because it’s one of our larger events. There are a lot of moving pieces involved with them. Besides our scope and deadlines, one of the most difficult things to develop are the rewards. We always want to give players the opportunity to get something they like and it’s hard to know we got it right before we release an event. It can be tense waiting for the release day of an event and waiting to see if players are going to think the effort they put into it will be worth the prizes in the end.

One of my favorite parts of this year’s summer event is the piñata. What inspired you guys to create something like this and could we see more items like this in the future? 

The great thing about the events team is that because we move quickly to produce many different types of content we are always looking for creative ideas and engaging mechanics to put in the game. This means that everyone has a chance to come up with great ideas, not just designers. The piñata was the idea of one of our senior environment artists and everyone loved it, so we implemented it for the first event that made sense. You’ll definitely see a different kind of piñata in one of our events later this year, and hopefully we’ll keep creating new types of fun rewards as well.

When you have time to get in-game and play the summer event, can you tell us what your favorite activity and reward is from the event?

My favorite activity is a tossup between two this year. I’ll always be fond of the Summer Feast Contest because I think the herding mechanic is unique to our game, really all Cryptic games, and its implementation was brilliant and simple. Really a stroke of genius by one of our content designers.

I’m also drawn to the water fight because it’s such a simple, fun, way to implement something with the feel of PvP. It’s also one of the few event contests we’ve done that encourages players to interact with one another. For rewards I’m going to have to go with the piñata and the new Sunite Steed. As you mentioned before, the piñata is a new type of reward from Neverwinter and I love how the idea was created and the passion the team showed to get it implemented. As for the Steed, I’m just a sucker for a good looking horse. 

Everyone is really enjoying the summer festival event, especially the water balloon fight, can you tell us a little about what was the inspiration behind creating this contest and the others included in this year’s event.

We had a potion slot item last year that allowed players to splash other people with water. It didn’t really do anything other than that. That paired with the fact that we knew we had wanted something along the lines of light hearted PvP gave rise to the idea of the water fight. For the other events it was more about bringing back what people already knew and liked, and putting that all in a timed rotation that kept players engaged for as long as they want to hang out in the Summer Festival zone.

What’s most important to keep in mind when designing an event for Neverwinter?

The players. It wouldn’t be worth making an event they didn’t like. We get a lot of player feedback from the forums and the data we collect from in-game actions. We try to bring what we learn from one event over to our other events.

In your opinion, what makes for a good in-game event for an online game?

I think you know an event is good if it changes player goals and behavior in a short term way. Players can get fatigued if they have they have a lot of long term goals in a game because it takes a while to get that feeling of accomplishment. If you have a goal that will take weeks, or even a month, it’s going to be very rewarding to focus on something else for a weekend and accomplish a short term goal while getting some nice rewards in the process. 

Are there any events that you have planned or would love to create that you can talk to us about?

Well, we have a lot more Call to Arms events that I’d really like to get out there. They are a great way to meet up with friends of all levels and complete content you might not have had a chance to do when you were leveling. Aside from that, I’m still looking for more things like Respen’s Game; events that have a way of changing our perspective of the game and its mechanics.

We’d like to thank Lindsay for taking time to answer a few questions, and more importantly we’d like to thank her and her team for creating these amazing events.

If you haven’t done so already, head in-game now to check out the Summer Festival Event happening right now!

Click here to register for Neverwinter, the Dungeons & Dragons action MMORPG. The best part about Neverwinter: it's free to play! Get a head start in-game by purchasing Neverwinter item packs which include unique companions, mounts, boosts, and exclusive benefits!

Want more game details, screens, and videos? Like Neverwinter on Facebook for more fan-exclusive content and follow us on Twitter – tweet us your questions! And, subscribe to our YouTube channel for the latest Neverwinter videos.