Cryptic Studios has been quietly hacking away at Neverwinter for a couple of years now, barely showing anything to the outside world. Then this past weekend at PAX East, they came out of nowhere to shock fans and media alike with a polished, fun, and potentially epic MMORPG set in the Forgotten Realms. 

Cryptic Studios has something to prove. While both Champions Online and Star Trek Online eventually found their niche as "freemium" MMOs, each game had a lot of hype that wasn't quite met. It's not uncommon on this website to see commenters claim they'll never buy another Cryptic Studios product.  It's a good thing their next offering will be entirely free to play and published by Perfect World Entertainment.  And it's also a good thing that Neverwinter is absolutely and positively the most exciting MMORPG we saw at PAX East 2012. Polished, fun, and inventive (not to mention a D&D fan's nerd-haven) Neverwinter won our Game of Show with good reason.  Read on to learn about combat, setting, story, classes, character creation, PVP, the Foundry, and so much more.

Read the rest of Bill Murphy and Mike Bitton's Neverwinter: Cryptic's Dark Horse Rising.

Got to say i,m quite impressed with whats seen so far.i,m a Neverwinter nights ,forgotten realms fan.so for PW to turn this into a fully fledged mmo is just a lot better than another STO ,just got to hope cryptic deliver what they are supposed to.The foundry on top is also excellent..i loved that in STO so hopefully there will be loads of stuff to do..can't wait..ever get the feeling there are too many games coming out this year.?

Sounds great

Pretty damn awesome. We will be spoiled people at the end of this year.

I wonder what its P2W ratio will be though .. could be horendous, could be acceptable. But you can't really complain beforehand when even the game itself is free too, can you?

Looking forward to give it a shot.

Originally posted by DarkPony

Pretty damn awesome. We will be spoiled people at the end of this year.

I wonder what its P2W ratio will be though .. could be horendous, could be acceptable. But you can't really complain beforehand when even the game itself is free too, can you?

Looking forward to give it a shot.

I feel spoiled already.

I've never seen so many titles that I've actually been excited about being released so close together like I'm seeing this year.

As a D&D fan, Forgotten Realms fan, I will support. But I was quite surprised on how well this looks. Then again we all know better than to get our hopes high before trying it out for ourselves. Can't wait to try it.

Originally posted by DarkPony

Pretty damn awesome. We will be spoiled people at the end of this year.

I wonder what its P2W ratio will be though .. could be horendous, could be acceptable. But you can't really complain beforehand when even the game itself is free too, can you?

Looking forward to give it a shot.

This may sound stupid but when cryptic were with Atari they were under so many restrictions,money wise they were pretty much screwed when it came to STO.Atari coud,nt understand why cryptic wanted more money for content.but since PWE took over they have a lot more money to play with..crptic wont get away with empty promises this time..if they dont deliver they are pretty screwed.Has for the p2w scenario,if peeps are so desperate to do that, let them.i never worry about what other peeps are up to,i just concentrate on my own chars.but not having to pay helps me greatly.for the game i mean.unless its set out differentely than PWE games normally are.one thing for sure if its a lifetime sub i will not be touching it.

i put in another post about cryptic being crapped on by Atari..have a read if you can find it on my posts.its quite a good read.

I am willing to give Cryptic another chance, and i actually believe what Emmert said in Interviews shortly after revealing Neverwinter, how they want to change their design mentality, focus more on quality and stop just making "cryptic barebone game nr x - copys" for all eternity.

Since this game will be f2p, anyone who is even slightly interested in it, should give it a try as soon as it is released.

Originally posted by kevjards

Originally posted by DarkPony

Pretty damn awesome. We will be spoiled people at the end of this year.

I wonder what its P2W ratio will be though .. could be horendous, could be acceptable. But you can't really complain beforehand when even the game itself is free too, can you?

Looking forward to give it a shot.

This may sound stupid but when cryptic were with Atari they were under so many restrictions,money wise they were pretty much screwed when it came to STO.Atari coud,nt understand why cryptic wanted more money for content.but since PWE took over they have a lot more money to play with..crptic wont get away with empty promises this time..if they dont deliver they are pretty screwed.Has for the p2w scenario,if peeps are so desperate to do that, let them.i never worry about what other peeps are up to,i just concentrate on my own chars.but not having to pay helps me greatly.for the game i mean.unless its set out differentely than PWE games normally are.one thing for sure if its a lifetime sub i will not be touching it.

i put in another post about cryptic being crapped on by Atari..have a read if you can find it on my posts.its quite a good read.

Infogrames/ATARI did this to a lot of franchises and licenses that they acquired.

I was a tester at their Sunnyvale, CA. facility when they were testing Neverwinter Nights (the first one) for BioWare, and they screwed it up so badly.  It was only through the seriously hardcore dedication of Bioware themselves that NWN made it out on time and in relatively good shape.  I was so embarassed to be a part of Infogrames when that happened.

Sadly, I feel like the same thing is happening to them again with EA, but I digress...

I'll definitely give Cryptic another chance.  I like what I'm seeing so far with Neverwinter.

Release date?

Originally posted by marz.at.play

Release date?

in the video he says end of the year with pvp coming in ,in 2013(early)

Originally posted by marz.at.play

Release date?

Mentioned in both the video, and the article itself.  Later this year, with PVP in 2013.

Originally posted by marz.at.play

Release date?

 

If you listen to the video in the article it says that beta is  "possibly" somewhere mid 2012 and release in late 2012, with PVP content "expansion" In early 2013

It's Cryptic - they'll find some way to screw it up. I'll wait until after the game ships and see what the reaction of the player base is before I get even remotely excited about this one., given Cryptic's track record.

hm cant believe am getting hyped on this game, considering it is from cryptic/PWE, havent enjoyed a single game from them....aiint much Ive seen or read about it, but that looked awesome

5 man raiding = no raiding. How can this possibly qualify as an MMO when the biggest multiplayer thing you can do is 5 man content? I mean it looks good otherwise, but looks and sounds terrible to be an 'MMO.' I guess 'MMO' is just for marketing buzz now.

Originally posted by Beiloch

5 man raiding = no raiding. How can this possibly qualify as an MMO when the biggest multiplayer thing you can do is 5 man content?

 

5man parties is pretty much staple of DnD campaigns. They did say that they will have BIGGER things with more people, but the focus isto polish and put out the content indicated by title. :)

This really is Cryptic's last chance and because of this I believe they will not drop the ball. To much riding on this one with the epic IP and all. We shall see.

Originally posted by BillMurphy

Originally posted by marz.at.play

Release date?

Mentioned in both the video, and the article itself.  Later this year, with PVP in 2013.

Wow, they actually moved it back even more then. That is actually great news, originally they said summer 2011 and that would just have been another STO but here they might actually make a game worth playing. :)

I am glad Atari is out of the MMO business.

Originally posted by Aquazen

This really is Cryptic's last chance and because of this I believe they will not drop the ball. To much riding on this one with the epic IP and all. We shall see.

 

I'd say this is Cryptic's first real chance at all.

Champions was decimated by Bill Roper (of Hellgate fame)

Atari has been known on "making fast bucks" and in that way killing game franchises. AT least 3/4ths of Age of Conan debacle rests of Atari investors forcing FC to rush the game out, for example. So STO was screwed from the start. 

From the details available, Cryptic folks have been VERY limited under Atari's thumbs, with pretty much non-existent budget. 

PWE it seems pretty much came to them and said "here's a buttload of money, make and polish game greatly and develop it as long as you want" (as indicated by Neverwinter getting delayed by a year last year)

I will judge Cryptic by Neverwinter. Its their first real chance to prove that they can make great games.