Neverwinter Nights Online. (Cryptic Studios)

[Mrbloodworth]

A couple of weeks ago, we posted word that recent Atari acquisition Cryptic Studios was working on breathing life into several Atari legacy titles. Now we’ve got a few more details to share.

Sources tell us that the developer is working on a massively multiplayer online (MMO) version of “Neverwinter Nights” with an eyed 2011 release.Neverwinternights-logo

Details about the project are unavailable, naturally, as it is an unannounced title. But this reportedly was the primary reason Atari was interested in acquiring Cryptic late last year. (The developer is currently working on “Champions Online” and “Star Trek Online”.)

Based on the third edition Dungeon and Dragons rules, “NWN” is a well-loved franchise. The first installment of the role-playing game was developed by fan-favorite Bioware in 2002. A sequel, developed by Obsidian Entertainment, came out in 2006 to slightly less favorable, but still solid, reviews.

Part of what made the game unique was its robust multiplayer component. Many players built persistent worlds, capable of hosting up to 75 players – in essence, mini MMOs of their own.

The new game represents a very big bet for Atari – perhaps as big as the company’s continued existence.

MMOs take a lot of time to develop properly and cost a lot of money to create. And Atari’s cashflow problems are well known. The company could currently be financing the game with the recent sale of its of a sales, marketing and retail distribution business to Namco Bandai.

Once it’s finished, though, things get even harder, as the “Neverwinter Nights” MMO will face some stiff competition.

“World of Warcraft” holds the dominant position in the MMO genre by a country mile, with over 10 million subscribers. The MMO graveyard is filled with titles that have tried to go up against it (see “The Matrix Online,” “Tabula Rasa,” etc.)

Additionally, with Bioware now owned by Electronic Arts, the company will not have any hand in the game’s creation, which could cause doubt among the franchise’s fans.

What say you? Does a “Neverwinter Nights” MMO hold appeal for you? And does Bioware’s lack of involvement make you wary? Sound off in the comments below.

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[raydeen]

Wow. I can't believe it's been this long since NWN 1 was released. I still consider it a new-ish game (guess I don't get out much). This could be interesting if Cryptic includes something akin to CoX's Mission Architect. Letting the players roll up their own mini-modules would be cool.

[HaemishM]

Fuckstupid idea. Seriously, do none of these clueless monkey fucks with money realize how saturated the fantasy MMOG market is?

[Mrbloodworth]

Nope.

[rattran]

Atari hasn't been known for cluefullness in quite a while. Otherwise they wouldn't have had to sell off major parts of the company to survive. And everyone is blinded by Activision/Blizzard's moneyhats.

[Ingmar]

I would hope it would at least be based on 4e?

[Yegolev]

Click-to-move with autoattack.  Kill ten kobolds.

[Nevermore]

I wonder how many titles Cryptic will be developing simultaneously before actually having one out making money.

[Zane0]

bwahaha!

[Slyfeind]

So...NWN persistent worlds are still running today, by players for players, and now Atari wants to make their own and charge money for it.

Heh.

[Koyasha]

So...NWN persistent worlds are still running today, by players for players, and now Atari wants to make their own and charge money for it.

Heh.

And they have more actual roleplay and oldschool D&D feeling than any MMOG could ever hope to capture at least until you can program an AI Dungeon Master.

This is totally the wrong direction to take the NWN franchise.  I would welcome a NWN3 that lies somewhere between 1 and 2 on the builder complexity scale though.  I liked a lot of what you could theoretically do with NWN2's toolset, but it was frankly much too complex for me and I never got anywhere with it.  NWN1's toolset was easy to build a working module with, but I felt limited too often, especially since I tend to go nuts over little things like the exact angle of one building in relation to another and so on.

A system based on tiles like NWN1 but with those tiles being able to be tweaked down to the tiny details would be ideal.  And for the love of the gods, the DM client would have to be a top priority.  In neither NWN or NWN2 was the DM client a top priority for devs, and that more than anything else hurt.  Toolset weaknesses could easily have been overlooked and worked around with excellent DM client functionality.

[Mrbloodworth]

They have the tools, the engine, the settings, the precedence, and an entire groups of fans who have written content for examples.


I bet they make this for under 4 mill.

[Brogarn]

Fuckstupid idea. Seriously, do none of these clueless monkey fucks with money realize how saturated the fantasy MMOG market is?

I'm a pretty big fantasy fan but you and I are in complete agreement on this. Saturation? We're beyond that.

[Nebu]

Fuckstupid idea. Seriously, do none of these clueless monkey fucks with money realize how saturated the fantasy MMOG market is?

Being as there are only two decent fantasy MMO's on the market, I disagree (WoW and LotRO being the two).  Box sales of recent fantasy MMO losers demonstrate that the fantasy MMO market still has room for a good MMO.  Unfortunately we haven't seen any good fantasy MMO's release in recent history.  

I agree with your sentiment that we need something fresh, but there's definately room for a well built fantasy title.  800k+ people bought AoC and WAR boxes... the money is out there to grab.  Someone just needs to develop a game worth sticking with. 

[Tarami]

Yep. There's always room for more elves.

Motherfuckin' elves.

[Kageru]

Cryptic and Atari seem well suited to one another.

More seriously it does seem hard to imagine that Cryptic has the depth of talent and resources needed to develop three MMO's simultaneously.

[Ingmar]

Thinking a little further about this, if it *is* 4e, that means the 4e Forgotten Realms setting, which discards a lot of the things that established NWN players would expect to see (along with a bunch of game mechanics.) I can't see WotC granting a license to use the 3e stuff, so either this will be 4e, or it takes advantage of some aspect of the license they were already granted for NWN 1/2 in which case it will be behind the times mechanically.

There are a lot of mines in the minefield on this one I think.

[Malakili]

Thinking a little further about this, if it *is* 4e, that means the 4e Forgotten Realms setting, which discards a lot of the things that established NWN players would expect to see (along with a bunch of game mechanics.) I can't see WotC granting a license to use the 3e stuff, so either this will be 4e, or it takes advantage of some aspect of the license they were already granted for NWN 1/2 in which case it will be behind the times mechanically.

There are a lot of mines in the minefield on this one I think.

Mechanically, 4th edition would make a much better MMO (Hell, 4th edition OBVIOUSLY takes a lot of cues from the current generation of online RPGs).  The setting isn't a big issue for me, I like both 3rd and 4th edition forgoten realms from a setting standpoint.  In fact, the more I think about it the more I hope it is 4th edition based, because I think that would translate much better into an MMO experience.  Third edition is fantastic if you are turn based, but I think it doesn't quite translate as well into a real time game.  Even NWN had some major problems on that front in my opinion.

[Lantyssa]

I know they could never do it justice, but Neverwinter should be the tutorial, if that.  It needs to be set in Planescape.  Use the 4e rules, but they don't need to tie themselves to any existing lore.

[Ingmar]

Planescape has an ABSOLUTELY HUGE lore canon, actually, and I don't expect WotC to license it out because it is out of print. They'll typically only license settings that can turn around and drive rpg book/novel sales for them.

[Koyasha]

Good Planescape is mostly undoable in a game form, at least as far as more general stories go (Torment was a great story but very specific and even IT had a lot of issues with the Planescape setting, going too far or not far enough on any number of things).  It's dependent on thought and ideas and influence and all sorts of stuff that can't ever be done well with a pre-scripted game and pre-scripted dialogue that has to apply to thousands of individual characters.

It's like trying to put together an MMOG with the already admittedly difficult ideas of SWTOR's story-based gameplay and multiplying it's complexity a thousandfold to take into account the nuances and difficulties of Planescape's grey morality.  Planescape isn't about combat, either, because around every corner are gods or archfiends or something that can crush player characters like bugs without any serious effort, so shoehorning a combat-light setting into an MMOG where almost all gameplay is necessarily combat-based is a tremendously bad fit.

[pants]

And don't forget that even though PS:T was critically acclaimed, it bombed terribly in sales.  It was too weird and didn't have enough elves.  Clearly WoW has proven that we need elves.

With big floppy ears.

[HaemishM]

Fuckstupid idea. Seriously, do none of these clueless monkey fucks with money realize how saturated the fantasy MMOG market is?

Being as there are only two decent fantasy MMO's on the market, I disagree (WoW and LotRO being the two).  Box sales of recent fantasy MMO losers demonstrate that the fantasy MMO market still has room for a good MMO.  

What does a good MMO have to do with anything with the Atari or Neverwinter Nights name on it?

That's right, nothing and no one.

[UnSub]

With there being so many better non-fantasy IPs out there that Cryptic could be chasing, I'm hoping this rumour isn't true.

[Bzalthek]

Fantasy?  Sci Fi?  Spelljammer!

Just to fuck with you all.

[Mrbloodworth]

Yep. There's always room for more elves.

Motherfuckin' elves.

 

Motherfuckin' elves

[Brogarn]

Motherfuckin' elves

Oh fuck ya.

[Surlyboi]

Heh. Man, my kingdom for a sniper rifle and a minigun in any fantasy campaign...

[sickrubik]

Clearly it's time for Dragonlance to make a come back.  

Heh. Man, my kingdom for a sniper rifle and a minigun in any fantasy campaign...

Shadowrun it is!

[Lantyssa]

Heh. Man, my kingdom for a sniper rifle and a minigun in any fantasy campaign...

Your wish is granted!

(You may hate me now.  I'd much rather sickrubik's solution though.)

[palmer_eldritch]

What made Neverwinter Nights stand out was the ability to build your own modules and run servers fairly easily. Without that, it was a decent but sub-Baldur's Gate D&D RPG.

Creating an MMO using D&D rules and set in the Forgotten Realms isn't enough to call the game a NWN sequel. Maybe they have something more interesting planned, like making it easy for players to add their own content.

[sickrubik]

Maybe they have something more intersting planned, like making it easy for players to add their own content.

That would lend more credibility to the idea of setting it in Planescape.

[UnSub]

Were Cryptic to do this (rather ordinary) title, it would make sense to have the player created content feature as front and centre for launch. They'd have looked at Paragon Studio's experience with CoH/V (and others) so hopefully could avoid some of the basic pitfalls of such a title.

And, if it is true, that puts Cryptic across four titles - ChampO, STO, an unannounced one that is referenced from time-to-time and then this.

[Hayduke]

When they said legacy title I actually kind of thought they were referring to the AOL Neverwinter Nights from the early 90s.  I guess that wouldn't make much sense though.

[WindupAtheist]

Motherfuckin' elves

That's the best advertisement for anything ever.