They made a big deal of it, kicking it off with the Gates of Neverdeath adventure at D&D Games Day (August 2011), and then continuing into the 14-week series of Forgotten Realms Encounters.

"[5]: 194  Appelcline noted that even while Dungeons & Dragons 4E was showing increasing signs of weakness at the time, "they changed up their campaign-a-year format with the release of the Neverwinter Campaign Setting (2011), which returned to the Forgotten Realms rather than breaking new ground.

"[6] Laura Tommervik (Wizards of the Coast marketing team) explained the approach: "We use Neverwinter as the connective tissue across multiple product categories.

[...] I have mixed feeling on the themes ranging from 'Holy hell, that’s awesome' for the lycanthropes and 'Wow, that is pretty underwhelming” for the Red Wizard'.

[...] The final chapter of the book, Gazetteer takes up half the pages contained therein and it pretty much answers all the complaints people had about earlier 4th Edition Forgotten Realms publications.