Neverwinter Nights Online. (Cryptic Studios)

[Cyrrex]

They're going to fast-track this motherfucker to completion using the same engine and conventions as STO and ChampsO, are they not?  Same old shit, then.  Sell a million boxes (or whatever) and then let the premature fetus die slowly once it starts trying to breath oxygen.

[Stabs]

I always thought one of the brilliant things about WoW was the way they harnessed the player base to write their UI. WoW would be much less of a masterpiece without Decursive, Questhelper, Auctioneer and so on. (Even if you don't use them and proudly walk uphill in the snow barefoot you need them to exist in order to have something to feel proud about not using).

User-created content could be simply wonderful. Especially in D&D where there is a tradition of homemade campaigns which are more fun than the professional ones.

I hope they can avoid some of the more obvious traps (miaow missions, griefing Tomb of Horrors dungeons, tilesets sculpted to look like penises, etc) and engineer a system where players make fun dungeons for each others. It's a big ask but a worthy goal to aspire to.

[Typhon]

Actually, I think this is one case where Cryptic has more experience and demonstrated expertise than anyone in the market for this specific game design.

The CoX/CO character creator was very well done.
The CoX basebuilder was pretty to very well done.
My guess is that the CoX mission maker was begun while they were still in charge, so they also have experience with that.
The CO/StarTrek netcode seems decent enough (I never had any problems with it).
The CO instancing engine does a good job.

Third time's the charm?

... Lol, naaahhhhh.

[Mrbloodworth]

Actually, I think this is one case where Cryptic has more experience and demonstrated expertise than anyone in the market for this specific game design.

The CoX/CO character creator was very well done.
The CoX basebuilder was pretty to very well done.
My guess is that the CoX mission maker was begun while they were still in charge, so they also have experience with that.
The CO/StarTrek netcode seems decent enough (I never had any problems with it).
The CO instancing engine does a good job.

Third time's the charm?

... Lol, naaahhhhh.

Ryzom Ring

[UnSub]

You can't sell subs to a user-gen game. Microtrans works much better and the way Cryptic is set up (with a C-Store) could work very well. Basic game is F2P but the extras cost.

[Stabs]

You can't sell subs to a user-gen game

Eve does.

[Malakili]

You can't sell subs to a user-gen game

Eve does.

[NiX]

You can't sell subs to a user-gen game

Eve does.

I concur with that smiley.

[Koyasha]

I really want to not care about this, but sadly, knowing it is true that Cryptic is making this makes me angry.

[statisticalfool]

You can't sell subs to a user-gen game. Microtrans works much better and the way Cryptic is set up (with a C-Store) could work very well. Basic game is F2P but the extras cost.

Are people going to pay for user-generated dungeons and etc? Or, to be more precise: are people going to care that there are epic, well-thought out, user-gen dungeons when they could just be downloading: "powerlevelz room lol exploding barrels #753" and zooming to cap?

If the answer is, because you give worthy rewards to the good modules and not to the spammy rooms, then how do you do that on a large scale?

And come on, this is Cryptic: they've proven themselves largely unable to handle even reasonably simple design questions. Now they're tackling how to make user-gen maps and dungeons drive a MMO?   

[UnSub]

I don't think people will pay to dl user dungeons, but that's not how I'd have my business plan. You'd sell map / weapon assets in packs so that those who wanted to create a particular type / style of adventure could use them. The dl of the user created things is free, but someone has paid to unlock them so they can use them in a module.

From the dev side, release a mix of free and paid-for content, with the paid-for stuff having some kind of unique unlock associated with it - you can only get the Sword of Turninatrix from the "Saga Of Emmert The Brave" content, for instance, which also unlocks a new tileset for content creators.

Key thing is that the basic game has to be F2P. And then time and effort has to be spent culling the weak content. With this kind of title you are practically opening the door to exploitation of in-game systems / farm content, so you do need a way to keep that from overloading the quest search function.

However, for all of this to work Cryptic has to deliver an incredibly fantastic map creation system. The CoH/V supergroup base system is a start, but it was always a static map. NW needs to have a lot more dynacism in its maps to keep players / creaters interested.

[Moosehands]

As someone who was deeply involved with the PW crowd for NWN1, I found NWN2 to be a gigantic kick in the dick and 100% the wrong direction to take the franchise.  We had whole planets modeled with thousands of areas stretching across multiple physical servers.  We had true persistence with a runtime hook to MySQL.  We even had the ability to ftp your character files to other servers across the country or around the world with a framework in place for rudimentary planar travel.  NWN2 can't support 1/10th of that.

NWN3:Online in whatever incarnation they come up with can suck it.

[Malakili]

As someone who was deeply involved with the PW crowd for NWN1, I found NWN2 to be a gigantic kick in the dick and 100% the wrong direction to take the franchise.  We had whole planets modeled with thousands of areas stretching across multiple physical servers.  We had true persistence with a runtime hook to MySQL.  We even had the ability to ftp your character files to other servers across the country or around the world with a framework in place for rudimentary planar travel.  NWN2 can't support 1/10th of that.

NWN3:Online in whatever incarnation they come up with can suck it.

This, pretty much.  NWN 1 had a stellar PW community, and one that was coming from a pencil and paper background that was used to putting in lots of labor to get a great game world out in the first place.  There were PW servers out there that, aside from pure server capacity, were on par with many modern MMOs.

[Stabs]

I really like Unsub's business model but it seems to me that the people who are planning the business models at large companies are generally terrible. Eberron Unlimited was obviously very slick but before that you have to go back to UO for a genuinely good new business strategy in Western MMOs.

Some of them look like they've pinned their competitors' models to a dartboard and thrown darts to see which bits they should nick (cough EQ2E cough).

Not only do I not think most of the professionals are as smart as Unsub but I don't think they're even planning the same kind of thing. Cryptic remember had the fiasco of introducing paid retcons paired with a radical rebalance and was apparently completely surprised their player base exploded.

http://www.frogdice.com/muckbeast/business_models/bill-roper-computer-game-poison.html

I would be astonished if this product launches with a business model that minimises how much we slam into an objectionable pay barrier while still incorporating plenty of opportunities to make money. It's an incredibly difficult balancing act and Cryptic's track record is completely different. (ie how much can we sneak into the cash shop while still getting box sales plus subs?)

[tazelbain]

How was UO anything but the common subscription model?

[Stabs]

That was new in a mass marketed game at the time was it not? There may have been precursors but they didn't have widespread appeal so can hardly be pointed to as marketing successes.

[UnSub]

Some MMOs before UO used to charge by the minute to play. A monthly sub was something different, especially in an era where (locally at least) they were contemplating pay-by-the-minute charges for internet services - and I believe that occurred in the UK.

IIRC.

[carnifex27]

So please laugh at my pathetic naivety if this is part of his usual dog & pony show, but here is an interview with Emmert explaining what went wrong with CO and STO and why it won't happen with NWNO.
http://www.massively.com/2010/08/23/massively-exclusive-jack-emmert-speaks-about-neverwinter-and-a

Here are some excerpts that caught my eye.

Massively: We weren't expecting Neverwinter to be a cooperative RPG; we were expecting another MMO from you guys -- so why the sudden departure?

Jack Emmert: First of all, there's the IP itself. Neverwinter originally was more of a cooperative RPG, although it has an MMO accent, where players could set up their own servers and so forth. Nevertheless, predominantly, it was smaller groups of people. From our point of view, we just had to take a look at ourselves and kind of change the way we were doing things, and with the tools and the resources with our previous MMOs, we knew that Neverwinter had to be the highest possible quality, and we had to improve, dramatically, everything that we did. The best way to do that was to sort of change the style of gameplay so that the focus wasn't on hundreds of hours of mediocre (some would say even worse than mediocre) content, but instead create a rich story-driven multiplayer game. We want to make a great game -- the original Neverwinter is a true classic, and it's really important to hold to that standard.

Massively: One thing I've noticed so far, in reading your interview with Gamespot and reading about the game, [is that] it seems to be very focused. We have five classes, the heroic level set, and Neverwinter which is a huge city and you can do a lot with that. Is Cryptic going for a light content approach, like a lot of base content to start with, enough for a game, but light, and then looking to expand on it from there?

Jack Emmert: I'd say what we're trying to do, and having learned from Star Trek Online and Champions, let me tell you my philosophy before STO and CO. Coming out of City of Heroes we launched to great acclaim, we got a lot of publicity, everybody loved it, but we didn't have crafting and we didn't have PvP. All there was to do was fight. Over the years everybody pinged us on this. We added PvP and didn't really gain any subscribers. We added crafting and we gained roughly ten thousand subscribers for three months and then it went back down. So in the grand scheme of things, what I learned is, if you didn't have a feature at launch, you might as well never have it. Whatever you're going to have at launch defines you as a game.

Coming into the launch of STO and Champions, I made sure we had something for everyone. Here was the problem. By following that philosophy, nothing was polished. We ended up having lots of half-done features in some quarters. What I forgot was, inasmuch as a consumer or a player, if it isn't there at launch it might as well not be there, well if it's in half-done or half-done well, that's what you get remembered for. The fact that STO and Champions have gotten better since their launch, we've added content, we've fixed bugs, we've responded to players, all that stuff isn't as important or as forceful as that initial interaction with the game. So we have a very different mindset here. Right now, whatever we do, it's got to be the best possible quality we can. One of the ways of doing that is to focus your content. Make sure you understand what we're making. What is the game going to be and what isn't the game going to be? You're seeing that in the interviews. Here are the classes, here's where the game's going to be set, so that the stories, the quest, everything is entirely focused. We know what we're trying to make; we're not trying to make something for everybody.

Massively: We've always said you guys were super-fast.

Emmert: But super-fast doesn't mean super-good. And that's what the reviews said, that's what the players said.

This may actually be an example of an MMO Dev. trying to learn from past mistakes.  That is either a great thing for me or a horrible thing for me, depends if you emphasize trying or learn.  I really enjoyed the original NWN's private servers and this part made me feel like that magic could maybe happen again.

Massively: The Forge, the toolset, how extensive is that going to be for players?

Emmert: What we've done is take versions of our own tools and skin them, simplify them, and make it possible for players to create things like we do every day. Naturally that means they can be extremely complex, and one of the things we're looking at now is ways of organizing the tools so that people can get in and do it without needing extensive knowledge of 3-D tools. Fans of the original Neverwinter I don't think will be disappointed, and my personal goal is to include a group of people, like myself, who just want to get in and make simple adventures without having to tackle a large amount of complexity. It's easy to make complex tools.

[Tannhauser]

He's saying the right things but talk is cheap. 

If they had had three fully playable factions; Feds, Roms and Klingons with full storylines and RvR and enough content, they would STILL be adding servers to STO.

Instead, they thought they could half-ass it and wear money hats and, now that the subs have dropped thru the cellar, realize they should make a good game.

At least that's my perception of it.

[Lantyssa]

Instead, they thought they could half-ass it and wear money hats and, now that the subs have dropped thru the cellar, realize they should make a good game.

This.  They could have paid any one of us a bundle to tell them to get their heads out of their asses and it would have been a bargain.

It wasn't a lesson they needed to learn, especially since they already had a shipped game.

[koro]

So please laugh at my pathetic naivety if this is part of his usual dog & pony show, but here is an interview with Emmert explaining what went wrong with CO and STO and why it won't happen with NWNO.

This is very much a part of his usual dog & pony show. He played the "candid self-deprecating" card heavily and often during the development of Champions (in reference to CoH), and had he been the PR voice for STO instead of Bill Roper, I suspect he would have there as well.

So yeah, he's saying the right things like Tannhauser mentioned, but if they end up meeing that Q4 2011 projected release date (meaning that this game has likely only had roughly two years in the cooker), I suspect it'll just be that: all talk.

[Malakili]

It wasn't a lesson they needed to learn, especially since they already had a shipped game.

I think this is what made the beta STO a huge warning for me.  I think the first post i made in the STO thread after the NDA went down was like "total crap avoid at all costs" or something.  The number 1 thing behind that statement was that they were making EVERY FUCKING MISTAKE they made in Champions beta over again.

[Threash]

So five classes: fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard and... ? ranger? druid? monk? bard? paladin?  All four of those are mainstays of D n D, game is gonna feel weird without them.

[Stabs]

I must say I'm utterly appalled by Jack Emmert's comments. There are people who bought lifetime subs to CO a year ago and to STO 6 months ago and now it's being implied "the focus was on hundreds of hours of mediocre (some would say even worse than mediocre) content".

If I were a Cryptic customer I'd find this completely unacceptable. Saying that a game you made several years ago was poor is one thing. Saying that games you just brought out are rubbish and no one at the company gives a toss about them any more, which is what Emmert is implying, is just not on.

If you look at successful MMOs they clearly employ staff who absolutely love their game. CCP, Blizzard, EQ2 has enthusiasts like Domino. I want the people who work on my game to be people who would play it if they didn't work there. That may be a little starry-eyed but the minimum I expect is that they not slag off the game I love in public.

So what does the future hold for 6 months after Neverwinter's launch? Emmert self-deprecatingly saying that user-generated content was an experiment that didn't work and telling us how hyped he is about quest hubs, a feature of their next game?

[Lantyssa]

So five classes: fighter, rogue, cleric, wizard and... ? ranger? druid? monk? bard? paladin?  All four of those are mainstays of D n D, game is gonna feel weird without them.

Ranger.

The announcement listed them.

[UnSub]

The Gamasutra interview is also interesting. He puts out that Cryptic have traditionally made games pretty quickly - he got CoH out in two or so years when he took over, CoV in about a year - and for cheap - $8m for CoH and $6m for CoV. (I've always heard that CoH cost closer to $13m, so I'm wondering if Emmert's figure doesn't include some kind of initial development costs or something.)

He confirmed a theory of mine: Cryptic saw all these complaints about CoH but the game still exceeded expectations, so thought the same applied to ChampO and STO. Feedback was mixed for both titles during the beta, but there certainly were boosters for both titles. Of course, following ChampO's launch, I would have thought that Cryptic would have delayed STO's launch, but there was this underlying "we have to launch!" attitude that makes me wonder if Atari and / or Paramount had some ironclad deadline that had to be met.

Both ChampO and STO have been improving since launch, but it is very difficult to get over initial shortcomings / perceptions. I'm happy with ChampO - log in, tool around for a bit, log off having achieved something minor - but it is very much in the casual MMO space. Where Cryptic's business model - get an existing IP, develop a title on a short time period, release and work to improve the shortcomings - falls down is that the people who really like the IP get pissed off and help fuel a nerdrage ball that is damaging to Cryptic's reputation. Plus then they get to max level within 30 days and don't bother re-subscribing.

[Malakili]

I'm happy with ChampO - log in, tool around for a bit, log off...

I think the problem is that most people aren't going to pay a monthly fee for this experience.  Maybe if you REALLY like super heroes.  I'm a firm believer that its the metagame that keeps people playing MMOGs most of the time, with a few exceptions perhaps.  The last two cryptic titles have had barely any compelling meta game of which to speak.  The result is, even the people that generally think its sort of fun to play don't feel compelled to keep playing the game long term when there are 100 other good action games out there.

[Lantyssa]

He confirmed a theory of mine: Cryptic saw all these complaints about CoH but the game still exceeded expectations, so thought the same applied to ChampO and STO. Feedback was mixed for both titles during the beta, but there certainly were boosters for both titles. Of course, following ChampO's launch, I would have thought that Cryptic would have delayed STO's launch, but there was this underlying "we have to launch!" attitude that makes me wonder if Atari and / or Paramount had some ironclad deadline that had to be met.

Emmert's problem is he listens, but doesn't hear.

CoH was a fun game, it just had issues people wanted to make better.  He heard "<rabble> <rabble> <rabble>".

CoH and STO had massive issues and people were savaging it, though the helpful ones were still offering suggestions.  He heard "<rabble> <rabble> <rabble>".

During the ED, and any other important change, he acted the same way.  His attitude is "I'm right, you the customer do not know what you're talking about".  Now he's finally found out what happens when he lets his ego get out of check and he doesn't have lucky coincidence on his side (or y'know, being the only super hero game on the market).  Sure there are idiots in the masses, but they do actually sometimes know what they want.

[CharlieMopps]

That would suck, I haven't used it myself, but I hear the suite of tools that came with the NWN series was a huge selling point for the series and its life span.

I used it quite extensively. My programming career basically started by making NWN1 modules. You could do damn near anything with them with relatively little skill at all. The persistent servers would range from Complex team death match systems where you'd gain levels, skills, and money to buy equipment from a vendor to full scale mmos very similar to Ultima Online. The offline player made content was staggering in its breadth. There were player made campaigns that dwarfed the original game content. Some even had voice actors to cover the parts of the main characters. Some done kind of cheaply but a few had real production quality to them. To this day I think buying NWN1 Diamond edition is probably the best value in the gaming market... followed by Valves Orange Box of course.

[Malakili]

That would suck, I haven't used it myself, but I hear the suite of tools that came with the NWN series was a huge selling point for the series and its life span.

I used it quite extensively. My programming career basically started by making NWN1 modules. You could do damn near anything with them with relatively little skill at all. The persistent servers would range from Complex team death match systems where you'd gain levels, skills, and money to buy equipment from a vendor to full scale mmos very similar to Ultima Online. The offline player made content was staggering in its breadth. There were player made campaigns that dwarfed the original game content. Some even had voice actors to cover the parts of the main characters. Some done kind of cheaply but a few had real production quality to them. To this day I think buying NWN1 Diamond edition is probably the best value in the gaming market... followed by Valves Orange Box of course.

Yeah, it was just a great toolset.   I think you are overestimating its accessibility.  The actually world building was a since, but there was quite a bit of scripting to be done if you wanted to do most things.   I think the community was extremely willing to dig into the tools though, and there were great resources out there so that if you wanted to put in the time you really could do a lot.

I had years of fun with that game and still install it every so often.  There are still great PWs up and running with communities.

[Ingmar]

The thing that surprises me about the Emmert interview is that he's allowed to talk about what the subscription impact of various things was on CoH - I would have assumed that somewhere in the Cryptic->Paragon/NCSoft transfer deal there would be some gag rules about stuff like that.

[HaemishM]

I'm happy with ChampO - log in, tool around for a bit, log off...

I think the problem is that most people aren't going to pay a monthly fee for this experience.  Maybe if you REALLY like super heroes.  I'm a firm believer that its the metagame that keeps people playing MMOGs most of the time, with a few exceptions perhaps.  The last two cryptic titles have had barely any compelling meta game of which to speak.  The result is, even the people that generally think its sort of fun to play don't feel compelled to keep playing the game long term when there are 100 other good action games out there.

This is why I'm so firmly behind the F2P experiments like LotRO and EQ2X. Get in for free, put in as little or as much money as you want, play when you want to, don't play when you don't want to. It really can be the best of both MMOG worlds, so long as the system doesn't fuck you over for things you need. If NWN is a sub service, I'll never even look at unless the beta gives me blowjobs.

[CharlieMopps]

How was UO anything but the common subscription model?

No, and it's a crying shame. They could make that game browser based, and free to play with a lot less effort than they put into their last worthless 3D upgrade. People would swarm to it. I'd even argue there's a good chance it would dominate the F2P market.

[shiznitz]

I never even thought of UO as a browser possibility.  It should be done.

[koro]

I would go back to a "professionally"-run F2P UO in an instant, even if it were monetized to hell and gone. Something about free shards just never clicks with me.