Cryptic Studios Shrouded In Neverwinter

What the hell does that even mean?

Who cares, the interesting part is that all the rumors have come true.  For starters, Atari held to its word and announced a new Dungeons & Dragons based property in the month of August.  Cryptic, being a large part of the announcement, also held to its word that it would announce its third concurrent MMOG during the summer.  Of course, the long-standing rumor that these facts were not mutually exclusive came true. The best kept secret in the video game world it was not.

Cryptic Studios is working on a second Dungeons and Dragons property for Atari, although Cryptic COO Jack Emmert doesn’t think the MMOG label applies.  “I wouldn’t say MMORPG at all — Neverwinter is a cooperative RPG.”   Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter is slated for a 2011 debut.

Here’s a nice summary from the press release:

In Neverwinter, players choose to become one of five classic D&D classes and team up with friends or computer-controlled allies to form five-person co-op groups. Players also create their own storylines and quests utilizing an extremely user-friendly content generation system, tentatively codenamed Forge.

GameSpot used its corporate dollars to score an immediate interview that has given us some additional details:

• Five classes – Cleric, Fighter, Ranger, Rogue, Wizard
• Races – humans, elves, dwarves, “as well as a few special ones“
• Player generated content to be core component
• Ruleset – the somewhat-unpopular 4th edition
• R.A. Salvatore’s not content with creating one world, so his upcoming trilogy will introduce players to Neverwinter

It appears that Cryptic is going to be keeping the project more manageable than Champions Online and Star Trek Online.  Hopefully the tunnel vision enables them to create balanced characters and races that compliment the designed and player-generated content.

I am interested, but Cryptic remains in my doghouse.  What about you?