Twitch Streamer Spotlight: Greyhastur

[blog_subscription_form]In our spotlight series, we want to highlight content creators, theorycrafters, and other known faces of the Neverwinter community. Today we present you Greyhastur, who regularly streams the game on Twitch. Next to sharing as much personal information as he liked, he answered some general questions about his D&D, Neverwinter and gaming career. Have fun reading through!

Portrait

  • Name: Matthew Annett
  • Location: Toronto, ON, Canada
  • Age: 51
  • Nickname: greyhastur
  • Platform: PC
  • Content-Type: Twitch
  • Handle: @hastur905
  • Classes: CW, DC, GF, HR, OP
  • Guild / Alliance: Greycloaks / Tredicium Alliance

History of Your Gaming, D&D, Neverwinter Career

I have been playing video games since I was a teenager, but really started playing regularly in my early 20’s. In the past I’ve played both Playstation and Xbox, but that ended with the Playstation 3 and mainly stick with PC games now. I do vary my playing on my personal time but I never play more than two titles at a time. This is largely because I play RPG style games and I feel I lose some of the immersion if I play too many.

Neverwinter first came to my attention in May of 2014. I had never really played MMO’s before and a friend had suggested Dark Age of Camelot. I liked it, because it was the kind of game that offered me some variety from my usual single player RPG games. What I was disappointed in was the graphics and the clumsy movement, so I went searching and found Neverwinter Online. I had actually played the Bioware single person series of Baldur’s Gate and Icewind Dale before. So finding them as part of NWO basically settled it for me, NWO became my game of choice ever since.

I have looked at other RPG style MMO’s, more so in recent years, but after trying them out for a month I end up back NWO. I did play some pen and paper D&D in my early 20’s, but since I moved around a lot in those days it was hard to find a group after the initial group I was in disbanded.

Your History, Goals and Thoughts About Creating Content for Neverwinter

I started streaming NWO about four months ago. I had noticed a few streamers in the Greycloaks guild and had occasionally popped into their streams to see what was the big deal about streaming as I was very skeptical about watching others play a game I play myself. Then I met a variety streamer, TheJungleGirl, and was asked to do some runs with her and I found that being part of a stream brought back some of the community feeling I had been missing the last year or so. So with some encouragement and support from her I started creating my own content. I mostly see it as a fun thing to do. Why not share my journey while I’m playing?

If there is anything unique about my stream it would have to be the variety of classes that I play while streaming, and the music. I play my own personal taste of music, house, while streaming. So you won’t get to select the music, I choose it, but you will get to see a somewhat competent OP, HR, DC, GF often in the stream. I will for the most part stop and discuss anything about any of my builds, I don’t give a crap about item level, and frankly have fun with a number of my viewers on the fact that I refuse to rank up certain items to avoid the IL increase. The main goal of my stream is to help, educate and just have fun in NWO.

What’s the Funniest, Weirdest, Most Annoying, or Frustrating Thing That Happened to You While Covering the Game?

Did you know that Uncensored runs the biggest Discord of Neverwinter? Come join our team, streamers and hundreds of players to talk the site and all facets of the game!

Well since the introduction of random queues an ongoing joke is the amount of times I end up in PoM or Throne as my skirmish. I hate both of them. Also doing the Random Epic Q and ending up in FBI or MSP has led to some epic fails and some epic wins. Both the fails and wins in these dungeons are mostly about the audience though, it’s about the entertainment value for them. Personally finishing the old CN and the epic Dread Vault is something that was personally satisfying. I remember this time when this group of guildies and myself spent almost two hours trying to beat the final boss in Dread Vault, switching classes multiple times, and finally getting that first completion. Those were epic times and memories for me in NWO.

What Do You like / Dislike About Covering Neverwinter and Its Community?

The NWO community is absolutely the best, friendly, helpful, and loyal. Loyal to a fault, if you play another game they will just switch to another streamer playing NWO. As a streamer this can be frustrating because you want to build an audience, which you can with NWO, but the community is fiercely loyal to the game, and since the overall community is shrinking you are kind of in a catch 22. The content is the biggest barrier in both community growth and in the growth of the stream. There are many in the community that are pretty salty about the state of the game, and that includes streamers. I too am disappointed with the direction the devs have decided to take with the game, but my stream is not about that, it is about playing.

What Do You like / Dislike About Neverwinter and Its Community as a Player?

The state of the game is not good. I am not a PVP player, but it’s essentially dead. The same people fighting the same battles over and over again. Class balancing has most of its roots in PVP, and its player base is some of the most vocal in the forums. Many of the nerfs to classes in PVE are rooted in bugs and exploits discovered in PVP. One class is killing another class, or one class is unkillable and the forum posts for balance start popping up again. Just remove weapon sets and enchants from the equation and let them pick there own armor and be done with it!

PVE content since mod 6 has essentially been reduced to daily and weekly quests. If you total the number of dungeons we had in before mod 6, then total up the dungeons available now, the total has only increased by 1 in two years. Yes I understand, bringing back the old dungeons is a popular refrain from many of the streamers, and I would echo that refrain to certain degree. The bigger issue for me though is that the way the new dungeons are played is different than the old ones.

We used to run the old dungeons for gear drops, not for seals. We would take new people through the dungeon so that they could learn the dungeon because they would need to complete it many times to get the coveted piece of gear to complete their set of armor. Now we gang rush the dungeons for AD, Salvage, and seals to buy our new gear. The end result is the same, but the sense of accomplishment or the reward at the end seems less than it used to.

Some would say I am talking about the rewards being bad, I am really not. The devs have substituted RNG for a fixed grind, not totally their fault, we kind of complained about RNG so much that it was a natural progression. What it did do however is take away some of the perceived value from opening a chest. The reward of completing a set of armor seems less when you ground out one dungeon for weeks to purchase the set, versus having to grind four dungeons to complete the set. I mean maybe this isn’t possible anymore, maybe we don’t have enough dungeons anymore, but maybe, just maybe, we should?


What’s your take on Greyhastur’s remarks? Do the game need to get back to their old-school dungeons, or has that ship sailed? Share your thoughts on our social channels, in the comments below, or visit the corresponding thread on our message board! Also make sure to join the fun on Grey’s Twitch channel!

Neverwinter UN:Blogged is always looking for writers to contribute to the blog. If you are an active player and search for a way to spread your opinions, analysis, diaries or reviews to more than 40,000 regular visitors, then don’t hesitate and get in touch with us on our contact page or message board! We are currently especially looking for console and PVP content, but that’s not exclusive. There is no frequency requirement, you post how often you want.

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We are always looking for people that contribute to this blog. For more information contact us via blog@nwo-uncensored.com or check the forum.

2 thoughts on “Twitch Streamer Spotlight: Greyhastur

  • March 8, 2018 at 9:23 am
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    Should it be of interest, Rudy Basso of the Don’t Split the Podcast Network is starting a new kind of show: talking about D&D tabletop while streaming a game. I was a guest on his first episode, where we casually played Neverwinter while talking about different D&D player types. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/236051919

    • March 11, 2018 at 3:34 am
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      Thanks for the hint. We’ll check it out!

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