OMG NEW MMO WTF BBQ

Posted on August 23, 2010 by Scott Jennings| 51 Comments

Oh, and it's 4th edition D&D, so all the mind-numbing MMO parts are already baked in!

Cryptic finally announces new “Online Multiplayer Game” Neverwinter.

To commemorate, Cryptic COO/guru Jack Emmert gives an interview to Massively where he rediscovers the joys of scope:

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.

So if you don’t understand what they’re making, you should make sure you do.

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  • http://Website Guy

    Is this going to be on the test?

  • http://Website Xanthippe

    Why do talking-head-devs (like Emmert or Jacobs or ) learn the wrong things from their games?

    People didn’t continue to play City of Heroes because it isn’t much fun after the second or third month due to the sameness in the gameplay and the slow leveling curve – although the combat is fun (but only for a couple of months).

    One thing these guys need to learn is how to polish.

  • http://stabbedup.blogspot.com/ Stabs

    Did Emmert basically just say their other games are crap?

  • http://www.cesspit.net Abalieno

    Another nice proof of cluelessness.

    “PvP” or “Crafting” are words that define an empty space. They are meaningless and irrelevant. So, if you add “PvP” and “Crafting” to a game I’m not surprised if there’s no change in subscriptions, because you just added some empty boxes. It’s the typical mentality and approach of those who can only look and analyze superficially and arrive to some sort of idiotic conclusion.

    So let’s establish the principle that “PvP” or “crafting” mean absolutely nothing, and what actually means something is WHAT YOU PUT IN THOSE EMPTY BOXES. Which means game design and execution. Or how PvP and Crafting are concretely implemented.

    That’s the correct framework. If bringing PvP and crafting produced no consequences it means explicitly and with a very small margin of error that those two features were designed and implemented poorly. Probably implemented and tacked on a core game that was designed with completely different purposes.

    What that excerpt actually reveals and that now STO and Champions are considered as dead and buried. And all the flaws and shortcomings of those game won’t be recognized and solved, but they will instead be used to hype a new game. Hoping that the players will be fooled that way, since they can’t be fooled by adding broken parts to former games.

    These interviews are always superficial and demagogic, you never see even the glimpse of some insight or actual desire to make something well.

    “Whatever you’re going to have at launch defines you as a game. ”

    Indeed. Especially if 90% of the workforce is moved from the game that was just launched to a brand new project. It’s like shooting a horse in the legs and then wondering aghast why it can run very fast.

  • http://www.cesspit.net Abalieno

    P.S.

    The nice change we have today is that years ago we needed a game to came out before figuring out if it was good or bad, today instead we can call with certainty the outcome even well ahead of the release!

    “Whatever you’re going to have in the first gameplay video on Youtube defines you as a game!”

  • http://Website dartwick

    Listening to these guys explain what went wrong in their last poor releases is like listening to a blind guy in the back seat of a taxi explain to the police what caused the his ride to wreck.

  • http://Website Jade Falcon

    He can go on and on about learning from their mistakes and this time it’ll be different! like every other publisher or developer has the last few years but in the end it boils down to what they’re willing to spend on polish.Until developers start having realistic launch goals and the suits/bean counters start giving the developers time/money to polish what they will launch with it’s just talk.

    I’m also not sure I agree with what he said about what you launch with your stuck with.I didn’t play CoH long so I don’t have experience with how they added crafting/pvp that he mentioned but if any new system is just patched in without a lot of thought or design time then yes it’s going to be a mess,on the other hand if a new system is added (and the only one that comes to mind at the moment is jump to lightspeed for swg) as an expansion with proper resources and time I think you can add anything successfully to a game.I could very well be wrong and I’ve forgotten some other system that got added with a lot of time that failed but I’m sure I’ll hear about it soon enough.

  • http://www.cesspit.net Abalieno

    Just do not do a similar mistake and start to use “polish” like it means something either.

    It’s the whole trend of simplifying a complex process to just a few keywords to be a mistake. “Polish” also means nothing if it is out of context.

    What would be a more positive trend is to start discussing about motivations. On the causes that produce certain effects, and then suggest solutions to those problems.

    Talk about what you are doing that is different in “PvP”, “crafting” or whatever. Talk about what you have observed and how you are going to make advancement. Talk about what is specific to YOUR game instead of how many canonical features you squeezed in that are common to every other game. Talk about at least ONE reason why someone out there should pick YOUR game instead of all other games already available. Talk about how you’re doing something better, or something new.

  • http://Website March

    No, he gets it… you just need more polish on bigger scope.

  • http://www.therealstupid.com Stupid

    /agree

    That is the very first question I would ask a MMO developer/publisher at trade shows. I already play an MMO. I might even enjoy the game I’m currently playing. Even if you (as an MMO game developer) can demonstrate that you’ve come out with a perfect clone to what I’m playing, there really isn’t any impetus for me to switch to your game (aside from the fact that it is “new”, something which is only true for a very short time).

    Unless you can demonstrate one or more features which make your game interesting, innovative and compelling to me as a consumer, I’m unlikely to even bother downloading a free trial.

    Unless of course, I’m _not_ currently playing an MMO. In that case, I’m going to be downloading and trying out a new games every few days. If you have an interesting, innovative and compelling feature set that will keep me playing your game, it is far more likely that I will subscribe.

  • http://Website Iconic

    Jack Emmert still hasn’t learned the important lesson: He’s not good at designing games because he apparently doesn’t like to play them.

    I don’t even know what he’s smoking when he talks about the crafting system in STO. The “crafting” consists of handing items to a vendor and getting items back. That’s not crafting, that’s buying things with dfferent combinations of currency that are not even well disguised as actual items.

    The only thing he’s ever gotten right in any game, ever, is that the combat is pretty fun and the games usually look pretty good. That’s a really good place to start, but if that’s all he understands then maybe he should just concentrate on finding ways to keep the combat cool and give people more ways to look cool.

  • http://Website Iconic

    Oh yea, and maybe he shouldn’t be making MMOs, since just killing stuff all the time doesn’t really require a persistent or massive world.

  • http://beafraid.com hellfire

    Ugh. I wish I could learn all the wrong lessons from my failures and continue to be employed.

    For that matter I’m sure there’s a website or a wiki or something out there that describes, in great detail, all of the features that have been added to WoW since launch. All (or most) of which even the most jaded of fanboi would have to call “polished to a high sheen”.

  • http://Website gyrus

    So, it’s an “OMG” or a Co-op RPG… but NOT an MMO… why is that?

    Legal reasons I bet

    Remember that Turbine is/was suing Atari?

    *I have heard that this was settled but I have been unable to confirm this. Can anyone here?*

    part of that complaint read:

    [i]36. Even though Amendment Number Four involved Turbine assuming

    responsibilities for publication and distribution due to Atari’s breaches, Atari demanded yet

    additional consideration, namely, that Turbine agree to relinquish its right to exclusivity such

    that Atari could launch a competing MMO based on the D&D’ and Advanced D&D’

    intellectual properties. Having already made its vast investment in the development of the

    service, Turbine’s “choice” was to agree to this term of Amendment Number Four or face a loss

    of its multi-million dollar investment. The result was that Atari not only succeeded-by way of

    its own default on the Agreements-in evading its North American publishing and distribution

    responsibilities, but it also strong-armed Turbine into waiving its exclusivity rights so that Atari

    could compete with the DDO: Stormreach service. Indeed, starting in or about December 2008,

    video game industry news sites reported that Atari planned to develop and launch a new MMO

    based on the D&D’ and Advanced D&D’ intellectual properties.[/i]

    http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/08/26/Atari.pdf

    So, if Turbine hold an exclusive license, no-one can produce another D&D MMO until Turbine’s license expires in May 2016.

    My prediction is that if Cryptic proceed with this – expect a court battle – which will include a definition of what an MMO is.

    And Jack Emmet has already admitted in an interview that this game uses the same technologies (or at least some of) as past Cryptic Games.
    http://au.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/neverwinter/news.html?sid=6274162&mode=previews&tag=topslot;thumb;1
    So, if they were MMOs then they should avoid using anything from those games to avoid legal complications.

  • http://Website Brian

    You know what we need? A damn Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition tactics game. That’s what the rules are set up for! Square grids, defined actions, turn-based at its finest! Slap it on the DS or PSP, brand the crap out of it, and nerds like me would devour it.

    What we don’t need is… is this even an MMO? It keeps talking about teams of five, NWN2-style content creation, that sort of thing. How do you make a D&D 4th Edition MMO anyway? Everything’s based on squares and a ton of the powers have movement baked in.

    Sorry to derail the Emmert-hate. Then again, I’ve been playing City of Heroes since launch, which means I’ve been hating him back when he was Statesman; back before it was cool, man.

  • http://Website Otis

    @Brian: That *does* sound tasty. Get rid of all the BFF crud that every Fire Emblem has in it too while we’re at it.

  • http://geldonsgaming.blogspot.com/ geldonyetich

    I bought both of Cryptic Studios’ games riding City of Heroes hype. I loved that game up until I burned out from it.

    Now, having found Champions Online and Star Trek Online to be largely… lacking, Cryptic Studios’ is going to have to pull a major upset in game design philosophy for me to have much optimism about anything they pump out.

    Emmert’s “we learned that we should probably rehearse our act to perfection before performing it” is about as bad a thing for an entertainer to say as what I heard him saying back at the beginning of Champions Online beta, “oh, wow, our players are teaching is so much about what we’re doing wrong in Champions Online (because apparently we didn’t learn dick about how to make MMORPGs from City of Heroes).”

  • http://Website Hatch

    Cryptic is to MMOs as Michael Lohan is to Lindsay. Neither progeny is going to be very much fun once it’s been screwed up by daddy.

    You would think Wizards would have a little respect for the game is sired all of fantasy RPG for my generation. You might think Wizards would only let a proven successful company like Blizzard in the door. Unfortunately Wizards is as discerning with its IP rights as Eric Clapton was with his baby sitter screening process. I don’t think I need to continue that analogy, but no one stand under the balcony that NWNO crawls onto.

  • http://Website gyrus

    Actually, Hasbro / WotC was trying to recover the D&D license from Atari in their action.

    But that’s another one I cannot find any info on (besides the initial stories from last year)

    If that is still going on and Atari lose then that stops Cryptic as well.
    No way Cryptic got the rights direct from WotC/Hasbro because Atari has the rights under license.

    If the deal was direct between WotC and Cryptic then Atari would be taking legal action.

  • http://www.redlow.net Redlow

    In order to launch a successful game, you have to finish the game?

    Wow… That’s why he’s a game developer and I’m unemployed. Man, I have so much to learn :\

  • http://Website Aufero

    I don’t know, it sounds like he might have finally learned that releasing half a game and hoping people will stick around for the whole thing doesn’t work well. Guess we’ll see.

  • http://Website mcl

    JE should know better than to come out of his hole for another game.

    Seriously I’m still holding a gunny sack and have the peanut butter on my nose and my snipe whistle from the last two.

    Oh … and a picture of a tractor:

    http://dotnot.org/blog/wp-content/TractorOnFire.jpg

  • Pingback: Cryptic Calls My Forgotten Realms Bluff « The Ancient Gaming Noob

  • http://Website Freakazoid

    Seems to me he hasn’t rediscovered the joy yet, because everything he said stank.

  • http://smakendahed.wordpress.com SmakenDahed

    Like Brian said, it’d be good if they made a grid-like/tactics type of game. Given that they’re supposed to be providing a toolset, I think that would be the best way to go.

    There seemed to be more content out of the first NWN (from Bioware) than NWN2.

    Sad thing about this guy’s ‘learning’ things about MMO release is he could have learned it the easy way by actually reading what bloggers and gamers have been saying about other games that failed along these lines.

  • http://unsubject.wordpress.com UnSub

    @SmakenDahed: Here’s the problem with that – a lot of people said the same things about CoH/V. It’s too easy. The gameplay is dull. There isn’t enough to do in it. Players run out of content. Instancing sucks and ruins the game world. No PvP / crafting means that players won’t stay in the game for long. And so on.

    Yet CoH/V carved out a pretty good player base for itself – up to almost 200k active subs at one time. So I think part of Cryptic’s learning was that you can ignore those voices, because they aren’t reflective of ‘true’ players, or something.

    Now, if new lessons have been learned for NW, that’s another thing.

  • http://Website Mark

    So what he has learned is what we have all known for some time now — the quality of your game at launch defines it.

    I really think that Cryptic has a different kind of business model for MMOs. They churn them out quickly and rely on initial sales of the game rather than banking on holding onto hundreds of thousands subscribers. They seem to be able to develop an MMO in two years or so.

  • http://Website TylerDurden

    Wait, I thought everybody knew that CoH’s big problem was that it doesn’t have loot. Everybody wants some item to pine for, to sweat to get and then to hold over everyone’s head like a giant, gleaming trophy.
    And I also thought everybody knew that the reason CoH lacks loot is the reason it’s not full of jerks.

  • http://Website Joe

    Why does anyone care, exactly? DDO is an incredible game that’s getting tons of new content.

    Turbine is 3 for 4 on producing MMOs that are fun.

    Cryptic is 1 for 3.

    If they actually make this, how is it going to be anything other than too little, too late compared to DDO?

  • http://Website Peter S.

    Wow, this deep in and no one’s quoted “I don’t play games to bake bread”?

    Thanks for making me feel old, guys. :(

    ( :P )

    (Also, HELL YES to D&D Tactics game. 4th Ed is truly MADE for it (literally, if you’ve ever played the miniatures game).)

  • http://Website Octopaganini

    Roper jumping ship makes more sense now… even he is smart enough to not be there for Hellgate: Faerun.

  • http://Website ericfate

    The problem is, no matter what they include in the game, it will still have Jack Emmert’s name attached to it. He’s become the M. Night Shyamalan of the MMO industry.

    I don’t have any faith that he has anything new to offer that won’t somehow suck worse than the last thing he came up with.

  • http://Website koro


    Mark:

    So what he has learned is what we have all known for some time now — the quality of your game at launch defines it.
    I really think that Cryptic has a different kind of business model for MMOs. They churn them out quickly and rely on initial sales of the game rather than banking on holding onto hundreds of thousands subscribers. They seem to be able to develop an MMO in two years or so.

    Unsurprisingly, this was actually why Atari bought Cryptic. Cryptic was pitched as a company that could take a small budget and crank out a profitable MMO in around two years of dev time. I believe it was mentioned at some conference call or earnings report.

  • http://unsubject.wordpress.com UnSub

    @koro: If you look at the press releases when Atari bought Cryptic, they mention that fact everywhere. They also announced three projects at the time, ChampO, STO and … one other (NW, obviously).

    Cryptic was bought to give Atari a short run into the MMO industry.

  • http://Website koro

    Ah, I should have figured. I missed a lot of the hoopla around Atari buying Cryptic due to real life stuff, so I only found it out late.

  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    here is some missing insight into this delicate subject: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3339975

  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    ignore above, wrong topic! LOLOLOL.

  • http://Website Jerid

    In memory of the original MMORPG version of NeverWinter Nights: (yes this was actaully fun for us old timers!)

    I’m wondering if someone were to use a time machine and pull out the old code from AOL if this would outsell whatever Cryptic comes up with.

  • http://Website ToeJob

    I played DDO from launch and I’ve returned to try the f2p reincarnation. I still wonder now if we’ll every have a decent fucking D&D MMO. I get more immersed in a MUD I’ve played for 12 years than I did with DDO and anything in Cryptics belt.

  • http://geldonsgaming.blogspot.com/ geldonyetich


    ToeJob:
     I played DDO from launch and I’ve returned to try the f2p reincarnation. I still wonder now if we’ll every have a decent fucking D&D MMO. I get more immersed in a MUD I’ve played for 12 years than I did with DDO and anything in Cryptics belt.

    The score goes something like this:

    1. Non-instanced zones are hard because updating everybody’s position when they are in close proximity requires bandwidth exchanges that increase roughly exponentially with the number of clients involved.

    2. “No problem,” says the modern MMORPG developer, “instancing solves that problem handily.”

    3. “But instancing sticks in a knife in my immersion’s heart and twists that knife until that immersion is a cold, lifeless sack of wasted potential,” says the old school MMORPG gamer, “in fact, if you instance a game enough, and make it so casual friendly that soloing is the preferred activity, the experience you deliver is indistinguishable from the single player games I play.”

    4. “Stop being a whiny bitch and learn to properly appreciate the elegance of my solution,” replies the modern MMORPG developer.

    And this is a large part as to why the subscription model is on its way out.

    Too little details on Neverwinter Online. Interesting point, though: if putting together zones of around 75 players with Dungeons and Dragons Online was their goal, current Neverwinter Nights servers already do this. Dungeons and Dragons Online has already done the third person perspective version of the instanced game. If it’s Cryptic’s intent to make a highly instanced, third person perspective game (as they normally do), then they’ve already been beaten to market.

  • http://Website ToeJob

    I’m not holding my breath for what they are going to bring to the table and I’m certainly not going to endure another Cryptic launch again. I’ll just have to give it launch time and see.

    I can understand the hurdles developers face, they WILL be bitched at either way.

  • http://tremayneslaw.wordpress.com/ Tremayne


    ToeJob:

    I played DDO from launch and I’ve returned to try the f2p reincarnation. I still wonder now if we’ll every have a decent fucking D&D MMO. I get more immersed in a MUD I’ve played for 12 years than I did with DDO and anything in Cryptics belt.

    Here’s the problem. D&D is not a setting, D&D is a ruleset, and that ruleset is designed for table-top RPG play with a group. a straight conversion as an MMO would feature forced grouping due to extremely poor soloability of most classes, and depletion of resources that take a painfully long time to recover. “Cast your Magic Missile? That’s it folks, come back tomorrow for more low level wizard fun!” In other words… it would be a lot closer to original EQ or DAoC than to WoW and its descendants. DDO made a number of concessions towards MMO style play in its design – and was forced to make even more after going live.
    Having said that, 4th edition D&D is deliberately designed for a more MMO-ish style of play, so it might make a better port. My preference, though, would be to take one of the D&D settings and then build a ruleset that suits the MMO platform. Not Neverwinter/Forgotten Realms though, that’s just yet another bog standard cod-medieval fantasy setting and the MMO market is flooded with EQ and its unholy spawn. Give me Spelljammer. I would kill for a good Spelljammer MMO …

  • http://Website ToeJob


    Tremayne:

    ToeJob:
    I played DDO from launch and I’ve returned to try the f2p reincarnation. I still wonder now if we’ll every have a decent fucking D&D MMO. I get more immersed in a MUD I’ve played for 12 years than I did with DDO and anything in Cryptics belt.

    Here’s the problem. D&D is not a setting, D&D is a ruleset, and that ruleset is designed for table-top RPG play with a group. a straight conversion as an MMO would feature forced grouping due to extremely poor soloability of most classes, and depletion of resources that take a painfully long time to recover. “Cast your Magic Missile? That’s it folks, come back tomorrow for more low level wizard fun!” In other words… it would be a lot closer to original EQ or DAoC than to WoW and its descendants. DDO made a number of concessions towards MMO style play in its design – and was forced to make even more after going live.Having said that, 4th edition D&D is deliberately designed for a more MMO-ish style of play, so it might make a better port. My preference, though, would be to take one of the D&D settings and then build a ruleset that suits the MMO platform. Not Neverwinter/Forgotten Realms though, that’s just yet another bog standard cod-medieval fantasy setting and the MMO market is flooded with EQ and its unholy spawn. Give me Spelljammer. I would kill for a good Spelljammer MMO …

    I dig me some Spelljammer but I’m a Dark Sun fan. By the time I found out about DSO it was closing, I never got to see how it was online.

  • http://Website hitnrun

    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.

    This is one of the ways in which the industry evolution of the last decade or so have outdated the old model of cavalier disregard for the Day One product.

    Back when there were only 3, 5, or 8 MMOs with a reasonable likelihood of being playable at some point, it was considered reasonable to leave something that most people would consider a huge chunk of the game – like “PvP’ or “crafting” – on the table to be messily appended later.

    Nowadays, players simply don’t have the time or inclination to come back to a game they already gave a chance and found wanting, on hearing it was deeply flawed, just because the company says “it’s cool guys we fixed it now.” Either their guild is raiding in WoW tonight or they’re playing one of the four other amply budgeted MMOs they’ve tried since then.

  • http://Website SteveG

    Hah, I remember playing Dark Sun online through Ten.net (a $19.99 month sub). As I recall it was similar to the Dark Sun crpg that was out at the time, but you could chat as well. Had the same look and feel.

    For this new D&D mmo they should use the Ravenloft setting and cash in on the latest True Blood, Twilight craze.

  • http://Website ToeJob


    SteveG:

    Hah, I remember playing Dark Sun online through Ten.net (a $19.99 month sub). As I recall it was similar to the Dark Sun crpg that was out at the time, but you could chat as well. Had the same look and feel.
    For this new D&D mmo they should use the Ravenloft setting and cash in on the latest True Blood, Twilight craze.

    Good point but keep that shit under wraps man, we have enough twinklers in the world as it is. My preteen daughter is a rabid fan, I have to deal with that shit all the time.

  • http://Website Patrick

    I think Jack is stretching the truth a bit, I don’t think CoH did crafting until after NCSOFT bought them out and he was no longer there.

    At any rate, CoH had great beginning. Then Marvel waved too much money under Jacks nose to turn down. So he devoted all resources to Marvel while letting CoH languish. So NCSOFT buys him out, but has been trying to play catch up since then.

    They did just release a nicely done if modest expansion, Going Rogue.

  • http://Website Toastrider

    I suspect Paragon Studios is still suffering some growing pains, although the GR expansion and most of the normal updates have been generally well received. (The exception was the Ultra Mode for graphics, which seems to have done some very peculiar things to the game play. I for one have been suffering bursts of lag, animations not triggering, scripts not going off properly, etc).

    Frankly, Emmert wasn’t nearly as good as he thought he was, and the fact that CoH continues to prosper (modestly) while Emmert crashes one project after another tends to lend credence to that.

  • http://unsubject.wordpress.com UnSub

    @Patrick: Crafting came in with I9 and that was an issue that Positron indicated included a lot more people than usual from Cryptic, including Emmert. NCsoft did buy out CoH/V from Cryptic following that patch, so he was still there at that point (although Positron had been lead dev on CoH/V for a while).

    @Toastrider: The updates since NCsoft acquired CoH/V may be well received, but it is on an increasingly shrinking player base.

    I get that Emmert may have an ego that could probably stop anti-tank shells – his comments about how long it took to release CoH ignore the years that Rick Dakan was leading the project (and Dakan was a friend of Emmert’s before he got kicked from the top job and replaced) – but thus far he’s been pretty successful. ChampO and STO could certainly have been better, but to my knowledge Cryptic didn’t blow a WAR-sized budget on developing them either.

  • http://geldonsgaming.blogspot.com/ geldonyetich


    UnSub:

    @Toastrider: The updates since NCsoft acquired CoH/V may be well received, but it is on an increasingly shrinking player base.

    Actually, the City of Heroes/V servers are showing 2/3 or 3/3 population dots since they released Going Rogue last week. The highest I’ve seen them in the history of the game.

    Although this is probably a temporary increase in population surrounding the release of the new expansion, at best.

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