The released date for the upcoming MMORPG Neverwinter Online was pushed back today from sometime in 2011 all the way to late 2012. It was learned via Gamespot that due to the recent purchase of Cryptic Studios by Perfect World Entertainment, Neverwinter Online would be pushed back so that the game could be worked on more.
My guess is that PWE wants to go Free2Play with this and they need to incorporate an in-game item store with the current game. However since that addition shouldn’t need a full year to be added, perhaps they are going to be making more changes it. Maybe they’ll take a page out of the old Blizzard handbook and introduce RMT. The Diablo and Neverwinter RPG series were always compared to each other, so perhaps Cryptic or PWE saw some things that D3 was doing better and they are going back to the drawing board.
The delay was mentioned in today’s announcement that Atari and Hasbro’s lawsuit has come to a close.
http://www.wizards.com/Company/Press.aspx?x=wz/press/54
Sounds like PWE is throwing some more money at the project (and they have plenty) along with hiring more devs for Star Trek Online too.
However, Neverwinter is *not* an MMO, it’s a an online co-op (5 characters to a party, can be players or AI companions) RPG, and it sounds like some variant of F2P was the plan all along.
Look, a time-travel machine: “[…] was pushed back today from sometime in 2011 all the way to late 1212.”
PWI = absolute garbage. I have over lvl 90 in PW, LVL 40 in Forsaken world, etc… I never write a comment or review without gaining a full experience of a game. All I can say, is these are like gambeling poker sites for the addicted gambler, just a group of greedy Devs that copy and paste an old game, give it shine for marketing, and give you a POS that is not fun, but is the alternative to your addictive habit, and they gamble with the idea your addiction will eventually lead to your credit card. WHICH IS EXACTLY how all their games run. Try playing PWI games without the game turning into a giant game of “How to beat the cash shop”…sounds fun right?
@buttlord: PWI developing games (primarily for their Eastern audiences, I might add) and PWE *publishing* games are two entirely different things.
You don’t hear people complaining about PWE publishing Torchlight, do you?
YEs actually! OMG LOL. Did you ever play Torch light before it was assigned under the investing agency, which is the conglomeration group that drives the publishing mish mash of PWI games to get their full investment back. LEt’s just say, befire it was sold to gain % of profits through mmo publishing, the Torchlight was a cute fun little dungeon crawler. Now its a cute fun “pay to get your sword glowing” type of PWI crap. Look outside of the PWI box, more to be had.