Atari’s secret weapon – Neverwinter Nights

Too many things here scare me. I'll list them.

1) Atari - They tend to rush development and have questionable reputations with developers. I don't pretend to know the business but Bioware had problems with them and now Turbine.

2) Cryptic - They develope kid MMO's. D&D is immersive and complicated adult game play. Any attempt to dumb it down will be met with resistance by the fan base and will not be well received. Not sure cryptic is up to the task.

3) Financing - To do it right a long development process will have to be observed. They are already projecting 2011 with a lawsuit pending with Turbine.

Sounds like a recipe for failure.

Don't get me wrong here. I would love to see FR or even Dragon lance hit the MMO scene in a big way. I much rather see Bioware or Blizard as the developer though.

EA has a terrible reputation of ruining a potentially good MMO called Warhammer Online. Unconfirmed but splattered everywhere on Warhammer Online forums says EA, acting as a financer, pushed the Warhammer Online developers/programmers to release early an "incomplete" game. It could have been a good game but the early release is slowly sending the game to join MMO graveyard.

If EA is financing this game, I think I'd be cautious and watch the ratings and comments before purchasing the game.

Awesome! Count me in. I'm a huge NWN fan, and a bigger Forgotten Realms fan. But it has to be worth paying for. So if this rumor turns out to be true, I'll buy it, I'll explore what it can do, I'll be honest in my reviews!

But I will say, I'd be a huge DDO fan if it were built in Forgotten Realms and had a grand world to explore.

My only hope is that Cryptic uses some creative zeal, and breathes life into a world that is so much more than just Neverwinter.

Get it right, and they will come. Nay sayers included.
Don't count this one out until the reviews are in. Sheesh!

without the ability to make your own world and dm it I have 0 interest in yet another fantasy mmo. Especially since cryptic is attached. They are proving to be the king of generic mmos. I'm very dissapointed. Id rather see nwn3 retain what makes it great. I doubt many fans of the first two will be interested in this without the toolset and dm client cryptic and atari are ripping out the heart and soul of nwn and handing us some shallow zombie with the nwn name. Go to hell Atari I won't touch this game and I loved the first two.

It sounds bad, MMO is not my kind of game style, I never wanna pay montly fee for MMO games any way, so good luck with it, and count me out of this game.

NWN1 and NWN2 is good because folks can build servers/worlds, a MMO is the devleopers world, and a gold mine for few, like Blizzard. MMO is not that exciting, a NWN MMO will not offer many aspect of D&D as do NWN1 and NWN2, where a lot of diff. worlds are build, so I think it will be boring to play NWN MMO.

As a Neverwinter Nights PW builder and player, It seems to me Atari doesn't seem to understand what really made NWN so popular. I don't believe a Neverwinter Nights MMO will save Atari. Infact, I think it might be what finishes them off. That is, if the rumor is even true.

Ill say that this just made my day. All too long have we been waithing for a good RP game and if Atari are making plans to start NWN3 server, they can count me in for it, even if ill have to pay.

However there are some things that there have to be included to make this good. First of all Atari should use the base they have of players from NWN1 and NWN2, simply becorse all the contend made by players, could have a great value to the game...imagen that you could bye the game, then if you where a builder you could make your mod and send it to Atari to get it implemented in to the game...that way the world would grow, and pretty much with out too much work from Atari.

Also the DM part is a MUST in the game, that was what made NWN1 so great.

And dont go using an grapic engiene as in NWN2, where builders had a hard time making it work, but also had to sit for hours thinking of how to reduce the lag issue, just make it pretty and simpel.

As for the paying part, well wake up peopel, you pay for most online games, so why should this be diffrent. Atari have to pay there workers aswell as any company, so for me it fine. You use ther server to play on and ofcorse they should be payed for the service.

No worries Soth767676. We took care of it.

No No No... The ability of any player to become a DM of a persistant world or even making a world in your own vision, THAT is what made NWN and NWN2(albeit less) a success.. Not cookie cutter, same ole same questing and gameplay. The ability for players to generate and create custom content.

Finally what I feel the final nail in the coffin. The worlds made and maintained, custom content generated IS ALL VOLUNTEER AND FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME!!!... No "pay to play" and cause of this the owners/admins can cut out problem players cause of it. I am guessing in regular MMO's it takes a lot of players complaining before the "problem" player is finally cut free.

Players can go to the PW's that suit their tastes best or even make their own, if they want to put the time and effort in it. Not being force fed what Atari or Cryptic decides for you.

This is great......just 5 years to late....

I don't get why MMO developers must constantly aim to try and pull players away from a well established, ever changing game such as World of Warcraft. In nearly everything I read about MMO's WoW is mentioned in there somewhere.

Blizzard are constantly working on producing more content and the new expansions/patches reflect that. Whilst hardcore RPers (the kind that NWN worlds such as Avlis pull in) are also catered for in WoW on specific servers, there's really something for everyone across the board, and unlike what was mentioned above it's not just about "The Grind".

Whilst Atari have a lot to aim for - working with any of the D&D rules, a frankly ancient system and badly in need of a rehaul or a burial - if they want to try and be even a tiny bit as successful as WoW, I'll be watching this release with interest, along with the new Star Wars game mentioned at E3.

Of course for the consumer more variety = more competition = greater choice = cheaper subscriptions.

Jimjim I was thinking the exact Opposite of you :). I was thinking that if they go with 4.X it would be a complete flop and that they should stick with 3.X as a system. All my groups still use 3.5 exclussively and the people i know who have switched to 4.0 have switched back to 3X , or in some extreme cases gone back to 2E or even AD&D.

To each his own tho but i truly hope any game coming out for DnD stays far away from 4th Edition.

It seems like they should put this effort into making it easier to create/join/contribute to persistent worlds in NWN2. That should be the way of the future, not more cookie cutter MMOery. This would be the perfect community to enable custom module building, etc...

I hated NWN2, loved NWN to death and still do. There are a handful of great worlds to play on, like the aforementioned Avlis, as well as Higher Ground, Aenea, Arabel, Hala, Arkaz... the Gamespy list still shows these worlds with plenty of players at various times. Some of these places have 5,6,7 servers full of content. The community STILL adds custom content and has expanded the original NWN beyond what we all first purchased. Just look at nwn.bioware.com, and you'll see plenty of activity, including the "Guild Registry" where persistent worlds advertise and discuss, and the custom content areas where people are still making new things.

MMO will always be hack and slash and auto-quest. A true D&D experience requires attentive DMs, and players who will compete In Character and work together out of character to make sure they all have a good time.

Sorry Atari, I'm not paying for yet another lousy experience.

At Avlis, or community-developed NWN PW can host up to 400 players... Unless they come up with something to provide live quests and RP, nobody's going to like it. The Grind is done better at WoW, and RP requires live DMs, a good community, and the willingness to remove the difficult players.

Will Bioware kick problem players off their servers? Not likely...

Stick with places like Avlis if you want NWN online. :-)

I'm not even remotely interested. There is already a Dungeons & Dragons MMO by Turbine that has been out for some time. I don't think it's very likely that someone will go up against that. Maybe they will though.

The only thing that would make me look twice at this is if it was a sandbox environment akin to Ultima Online or the persistent world role-play servers on NWN. Something that is drastically different from the games that focus on the cookie-cutter grind-fest to get the best gear. After over 20 years of MMO/Multiplayer experience that's old hat.

Excuse me, 'to be release on year after the other' should read, 'to be released one year after the other'. I am not sure how that happened.

If true, this shows that Atari just doesn't get it. Most NWN fans like the game for what makes it unique (toolset, DM client), and many I know came to NWN to get away from the MMO grind.

Won't this be just another persistent world? And if so, the EULA of NWN says they can't charge anything for it :-)
This project is doomed from the start.... unless they are building a whole new game and just stick the Neverwinter Nights name to it... either way will be bad..

Does the world really need another fantasy/medieval MMO?

That doesn't make much sense. Trying to use the NWN name, which is linked to a rather specific type of game (toolset, story heavy campaign, DM client, enduser-hosted servers, etc) for a MMO isn't adding any benefit over something completely new.
WotC is most certainly going to insist on the use of the D&D 4th edition ruleset, which means that a setting related to the then destroyed Neverwinter doesn't really work anyway.

I thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of NWN and believe that Cryptic has a chance at doing this right so long as the 1 aspect remains that made NWN what it was; a well-done epic storyline. I never got tired of it and with all the community created content, cryptic has a lot to pull from.

I don't think that Bioware's lack of involvement will hurt this venture, though we were all sad to see them go.

What kind of crazy would be hesitant to buy an MMO by Cryptic?

The "weak link" here is AD&D itself: forcing the devs to develop an MMO around AD&D's weak-because-it's-made-for-tabletop RPG mechanics.

AD&D's mechanics do not translate well to MMO form.