Drow have a complicated history inDungeons and Dragonsto say the least. The race has evolved over the years since they were first introduced as enemies to become a fan-favorite playable race in the tabletop game’s more modern editions. Along with many other races in the franchise,drow have been dramatically reworked by Wizards of the Coastto have a more nuanced and layered representation. When it comes to the race’s representation in theNeverwinterMMO, the creative team has taken a similar approach.

Neverwinter’steam have taken the game to the Underdark before and have plenty of drow NPCs who are central to the game’s overarching narrative. That said, they are always working to make improvements and align with the current Wizards of the Coast ideas about what the Underdark is like and what defines the drow.

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Game Rant recently had an exciting opportunity to sit down with Neverwinter’s Narrative Director, Winter Mullenix and Principal Lead Game Designer, Randy Mosiondz to chat about Northdark Reaches andeverything else drow and Underdark related…

Game Rant:What are the Neverwinter team’s ideas about the best way to present a modern take on drow and the Underdark?

Randy:From my perspective, we like a lot of the updates that they’ve (Wizards of the Coast) been doing with the drow. Treating them more like people and less like an evil race that is irredeemable and are easy to kill. We want to make them real characters with real motivation and stories behind them. We’re still an action gameplay focused game with narrative interweaved between all of that, so we need to setup reasons why you’re doing things, and I think the narrative we brought to the drow does a great job of that. We drop you into the middle of a drow civil war. There are drow who want to escape from Lolth and fight against her cause. And that’s where players come in as heroes and assist in that.

Winter:Based upon all the changes that Wizards of the Coast made and R.A. Salvatore made we kind of went back and started updated out materials. We went back and rereleased Rothe Valley. We updated all of the dialogue, all of the voice over, and we updated it a bit. Because the Drow are just as nuanced a people as any other race in the Forgotten Realms, and it’s important to represent that properly. We took pains to make sure that we are updating everything we can as we go and continue working forward with the Underdark. When I was writing with the Salvatores we always kept that in the forefront of our minds. This more nuanced portrayal. If you look back at the drow, there’s always been a struggle. You’ve always had Eilistraee and Lolth, but it usually fell to the wayside of us versus them. I feel like they’ve finally really broken out of that and really gotten to a cool place where it feels like a fantasy all of its own, as opposed to the story of a few specific drow. It feels like the drow are a huge sprawling world filled with just as much diversity, chaos, and beauty as the rest.

Randy:Yeah, and I think Drizzt has always resonated as a hero amongst the fans and people have wanted to know more about Drow culture over the years. They developed the whole city of Menzoberranzan as a focal point. It’s basically evolved away from a single lone hero who was rejecting the evil ways of his people to a situation where he’s not alone in this. There are many others like Drizzt who want to escape from this situation that they’re in and the story line explores that.

Winter:And that’s part of the beauty of the civil war in Starlight Enclave.

The 24th module forNeverwinter, releases today and offers players a chance to head to the Underdark and play out the events that take place between book 1 and book 2 of the Way of the Drow novels. Players on PC can dive into the free to play content today.

Neverwinteris free-to-play on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox consoles. Northdark Reaches launches on June 08, 2025 on PC.

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