Neverwinter: Lessons Learned

Neverwinter has clear links back to the lessons Cryptic Studios has learned with their previous titles. Continue reading »

MMO Predictions 2013: Morituri Te Salutant

Predicting what is going to happen to the Western MMO market in 2013 seems a lot harder than doing the same for 2012. But when it comes to random guessing about stuff I only half understand, I’m going to give it my best shot. Continue reading »

City of Heroes / Villains: NCsoft Says Sale Not Going To Happen, Closure Happening on Schedule

NCsoft issued a statement about the future of City of Heroes / Villains (CoH/V). The TL;DR version is “It’s still shutting down”. The full statement says: “City of Heroes®Players and Fans, We wanted to let you know that your voices have been heard and your concerns have been taken into serious consideration. We appreciate the … Continue reading »

Reading the MMO Tea Leaves for 2012

In previous years I’ve spent a lot of time reviewing and writing up a year’s worth of Massively.com / other MMO sites news articles. Although this is very useful from an information point of view (particularly the “oh, I’d forgotten about that” articles) it takes a very long time. So, this year I’m still doing … Continue reading »

Insert Coin To Continue: Perfect World Buys Cryptic Studios

Atari has sold Cryptic Studios to Chinese online game developer Perfect World for €35 million (US$50.5m), pending the final factors of the deal coming together. I’m sure it will, which is why they announced it, so Cryptic’s ownership will be transferred over and thus Cryptic will continue under its third master after NCsoft (sure, not really … Continue reading »

The Very, Very Late 2010 MMO Recap (Part 2)

Part 1 is here, including a note about why April is the best time to review what happened about 16 months ago. July: Star Trek Online Executive Producer Craig Zinkievich leaves both the title and Cryptic Studios. Capcom’s Xbox Japan- and Xbox 360-only MMO Monster Hunter Frontier Online tops the sales charts in Japan. Activision … Continue reading »

The Very, Very Late 2010 MMO Recap (Part 1)

A Note of Explanation At the end of 2010, I wrote up a recap of the year’s MMO-related events for a particular site, as I’ve done for a few years. Given that it’s now almost May, I don’t think that site is going to use it, but I’m really loathe to throw out all the … Continue reading »

IP Less-Than-Freely: MMOs Based on Licensed Properties

With the news that Jagex and Hasbro have signed a deal to do a Transformers MMO (guess all that Mech-based development wasn’t a waste then, Jagex) I was reminded of all the other MMOs based on popular nerd properties that have been indicated as “in development” but have had varying levels of success. And by … Continue reading »

It’s Important For Tech Companies To Update Their Websites Too

One rough sign of company health in this modern age is the state of their website, notably how often it is updated. This is especially true of companies in the technology space, like Cryptic. Of note is that their Executive Team page is wildly out of date (alterations are mine): Craig ‘Zinc’ Zinkievich announced his … Continue reading »

Following Up on Fallen Earth’s Restructuring

Releasing bad news on a Friday can be a mixed bag – it can be buried since people have better things to do on the weekend than read news articles, or it can backfire since no-one is around to deal with the speculation and issues that arise from the bad news. Because MMO players are … Continue reading »