Welcome back, everyone to the Neverwinter Foundry Focus. We took last week off due to a few North American Holidays. Regardless of your nationality I hope you enjoyed your week. Two weeks ago we did something a little different on the NFF: instead of playing through a foundry mission I interviewed Rob Overmeyer. Rob is an Executive Producer with Cryptic Studios and is responsible for the Foundry toolset.
Can you imagine using the internet without a search engine? Pretend all the great content that is currently available is still out there but how would you ever find any of it? Sure you could use forums, bulletin boards, and word of mouth, and this may lead you to find some of what you are looking for, but the bulk of what you really want to find would probably go unnoticed. This is similar to what is currently going on in the foundry. One of the reasons I created the NFF is to recognize content creators that for one reason or another are not necessarily being spotlighted by Cryptic for their contributions but who are creating quality content.
Rob recognizes this as a problem and coming with the release of Fury of the Feywild we should have a solution. Cryptic has been working on a more robust search system that will allow players to find the type of foundry missions that they want to play. Players will be able to search by keywords. They are also working on a recommendation system that based on your feedback will recommend missions that the system believes will appeal to you.
Rob also had a number of very candid answers to some difficult questions. One of which involves the prolonged downtime of the Foundry. The reason for the outage was to prevent data loss. Cryptic had identified an issue with the Foundry that needed correcting and could lead to content creators losing their work. Rather than run the risk of allowing author’s to lose their work they chose to leave the system down. This was a bold move and one they would take heat on no matter what the decision. You can hear Rob’s answer verbatim at 20:20 in the interview.
Another interesting topic we talked about was allowing Foundry authors to create custom 3D objects to place into the game. The biggest stumbling block that Cryptic faces with this system is the approval process. They are also very concerned about preventing people from stealing credit from other creators.
Rob and I also talked about the possibility of Foundry authors creating PvP maps, how the release of foundry updates are structured, the genesis of the Foundry toolset, and more. If you are a Foundry enthusiast this interview is definitely worth a listen.
This week on the Neverwinter Foundry Focus I will be joined by Lead Producer Andy Velasquez. We will talk about Module 1- Fury of the Feywild, the addition of the new campaign system, and where Neverwinter will go from there. You can watch live and submit your own questions on our MMORPG.com livestream channel at 9:30 pm EDT on July 11. I hope to see you there, and as always, make sure to stop and read the quest text.
Robert Lashley / Robert Lashley is a Staff Writer and Online host for MMORPG.com and RTSGuru.com. Rob's bald and when he isn't blinding people from the glare on his head talking in front of a camera you can chase him down on twitter @Grakulen
More great game coverage:
- The Duplication Debacle
- Foundry Focus Episode 6: Bored of the Rings
- Final Fantasy XIV: ARR Initial Impressions
