Neverwinter Interview
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Ten Ton Hammer: Many fans will be anxious to know what lessons you've learned from Champions Online and Star Trek Online. How will Neverwinter preserve the good things you've learned and correct some of the things that didn't go as planned?
Jack Emmert: Right now, our goal is to create a great game, and we're really trying to change the pattern we had with Star Trek Online and Champions Online. We churned those games out fairly quickly - Star Trek Online came out in 18 months, City of Villains in nine months, and Champions Online and City of Heroes in two years. We created a tool chain and a methodology to get MMOs out quickly that was ten times better than almost anything anyone else could do. Most MMOs don't even launch, right?
The problem is, what made a game successful back in 2004 isn't what makes a game successful in 2010. We need quality, and that's what we're focusing on changing the scope of the game so everything we make is that much better. In the context of Neverwinter, you're going to get a co-operative RPG that focuses on great storylines, great content, great community, instead of every last feature system you can possibly imagine. That's what we were concerned with in our previous products.
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Ten Ton Hammer: You're working with R.A. Salvatore, whose first tie-in novel, Guntlgrimm, is due out in early October, and also a tabletop game from Wizards of the Coast. Dealing with a licensor is nothing new to Cryptic Studios, but every IP relationship is different. How's it been dealing with WotC and R.A.?
Jack Emmert: Both Wizards of the Coast and R.A. have been terrific and great partners creatively and brainstorm with. We've been sharing ideas back and forth. So if you have the Neverwinter roleplaying products you should learn a lot about the game, and vice versa.
Yes, R.A.'s been writing a trilogy about the fate of Neverwinter, and a lot of the events he's writing about form the core of the game of Neverwinter. It's very fun to work with an author that I and many others have read for years.
