If you played the original, pencil and paper Dungeons and Dragons, then it's probably occured to you how cool it might be to actually bring the quests and adventures of you and your friends to life.  While we might still be a few years from actual Dragons thundering through the skies above, we can still have a taste of this experience through Neverwinter's Foundry tool.  In a recent Developer Blog, Sominator outlines some of the detailed efforts that Perfect World and Cryptic Studios have made to create the wonderful Foundry tool that is available to all players in the new Free to Play MMO, Neverwinter.  

Today the floodgates began to open as the Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter open beta head-start commenced.

May the battlecries of Orcs, Undead and Goblins be drowned out by the clamoring of your steel and the swishing of gold coins filling your pockets. This is where your legend begins!

Neverwinter fans who have shown their support by throwing money at their screens (hopefully not loose change), have have been reminded to get the babysitters/book time off work as the head start for Founders dates were confirmed.

Those intrepid, deep walleted individuals who stumped up for a Hero of the North pack will be able to set out on their Forgotten Realms adventure on April 25 at 9am Pacific. If you opted for the Guardian of Neverwinter option, you can get going at 9am PST on April 27.

Everyone else can finally play with the Foundry system (something all budding designers, writers and frustrated GMs will be looking forward to, as well as try out the Gateway portal.

You can blame it on a certain Drizzt Do'Urden, but the drow are perhaps the most enigmatic race of all in the Forgotten Realms mythos. After completing another successful beta weekend (in fact the final one), fans of Neverwinter can get a glimpse of the dark elves in this new video.

Neverwinter has been a lot of fun in the past three beta weekends and the final chance to jump in before launch looks to be no different.

Beta Weekend 4 begins at 12pm Pacific today (Friday, April 12) and ends at 11:59pm April 14. Though BW4 is restricted to Founders, you can still purchase a pack over at the Neverwinter site. If you're not playing (or if you want to hang out), keep an eye on the ZAM Official twitch page as we will be streaming some play time today and over the weekend.

Rule number one for any adventurer: Always come prepared. Which also means that you should know your enemy.

In order to help make this task easier for you, Neverwinter has released their latest Monster Manual volume, which highlights an enemy that most Dungeons & Dragons fans know all too well: Kobolds.

The news that Neverwinter fans have been eagerly awaiting was announced this morning as Perfect World Entertainment and Cryptic Studios announced that April 30 will be the day that the free-to-play MMO enters Open Beta.

From a Press release this morning:

"The direct response and support from the Neverwinter community during our Closed Beta Weekends have pushed us to make Neverwinter the best free-to-play MMORPG anyone has yet seen," said Cryptic Studios Executive Producer and COO, Craig Zinkievich. "On April 30, we go into Open Beta. That's when the world we've labored for years to build comes to life -- that's when every gamer can login and play what we've worked so hard to create. We could not be more excited."

Earlier this month, after its second beta weekend (the third one being this weekend - don't forget to grab your key!), I talked about Cryptic's new MMO Neverwinter. In the videos and the hands-on preview, I was pretty positive on the game as a whole, but one area I did have an issue with was the class selection available. Technically, we do have all of the important roles covered among the five launch classes: Guardian Fighter for tank, Devoted Cleric for heals, Trickster Rogue and Great Weapon Fighter for melee DPS and Control Wizard for ranged DPS.

However, this is Dungeons and Dragons we're talking about here! It's not about just having the holy trinity of MMOs available - it's about having YOUR character available and that may not be the case when you have only five choices. Most of the D&D books on my shelf are directly related to that desire for choice; additional base classes, prestige classes / paragon paths, feats, etc. Cryptic may have some additional classes already planned for post-launch but, in the meantime, I have a pile of 4th Edition sourcebooks and a text editor in front of me, so let's think about what's to come.

Now we can’t fit every character class from every sourcebook and all of their different builds into one article. For this post I’ve decided to focus on just three classes I’d like to see added to Neverwinter: the ranger, the bard and the warlock.

In preparation for the third Neverwinter beta weekend starting on Friday, a group of reporters and I met with Cryptic Devs for a press preview of the Great Weapon Fighter class, exclusive hacking and slashing in PvP and a level 31 Skirmish. 

If you’ve been eager to experience the world of Neverwinter, here is your chance! Thanks to our good friends over at Cryptic and Perfect World, we have a limited number of beta keys to give away. Act quickly though, as the third beta weekend starts at 12 Noon Pacific on Friday, March 22.