“The big change is the development philosophy. There are some more changes coming in terms of the games, but we’ll cover that in the months to come. The big change is that we’re not making MMOs, we’re making online multiplayer games.”
-Jack Emmert, CEO, Cryptic Studios.
Things are really bustling over at Cryptic Studios. Bill Roper and Craig Zinkievich are gone, and the throne has been passed to Jack Emmert, who wow’ed us with the announcement that Star Trek Online would be putting less emphasis on cash shop items in the future. Both Champions Online and Star Trek Online boast healthy numbers, according to Emmert, which intrigues us (read: me) here at MMO Fallout all the more with Cryptic’s announcement that they are no longer developing MMOs.
I wanted to talk, today, about comments I’ve been seeing both in my own emails and on other forums, on Cryptic’s shift to these CORPG’s (Cooperative Online Role Playing Game), and why this is causing fear in a few players. Culminating in CEO Jack Emmert’s statement above that Cryptic is moving away from MMOs and onto online cooperative games with Neverwinter Wonders, the question inevitably comes up as to what this means for longevity in Star Trek Online and Champions Online. Cryptic’s two MMOs have come under fire in recent months with concerns that the games may not have much in terms of long term viability, and statements like the one I presented above just add fuel to the fire.
Jack Emmert refers to the status of Champions Online and Star Trek Online as “healthy” and “significant,” respectively, and really all we can do is take his word on it. Champions Online recently reached its first birthday, and is still receiving updates and booster packs (with Demonflame on its way). Star Trek Online has somewhat turned into Cryptic’s main product, and is still receiving regular content updates in the form of weekly episodes and occasional larger updates. Cryptic is set on getting in touch with their community with regular question and answer sessions, as well as monthly “state of the game” addresses.
So when I say that the concerns are understandable, and even justified, I want it to be clear that they are overreactions. Cryptic’s change in pace to non-MMO titles may actually be a good thing, as keeping Champions Online and Star Trek Online as their only two MMOs ensures that the titles won’t have to fight one another to the death in order to obtain attention from Emmert and crew. Remember, Sony and NCsoft may have major libraries of MMOs, but most of their games are being worked on by completely different developers. Cryptic has separate teams, but they are still one company. If Paragon Studios went under, for example, the Aion team would be unaffected.
I have my concerns about Champions Online passing the MMO Turing Test, but I have a lot more faith in Star Trek Online’s long term viability.
Remember, if I see any concern that something is going terribly wrong with any MMO, this website is the first place you will find it. I expressed my concerns greatly on All Points Bulletin, and on the flip side I said over a year ago that Star Wars Galaxies wasn’t going anywhere, and it is still trudging along with regular support. This wasn’t the greatest choice of words for Emmert, and he needs to address this quickly on the forums/website for both games.
More on Cryptic Studios as they appear.
MMO Fallout 
Uhh whut???????
Paragon Studios and Aion are both owned by NCSoft which no longer has any connection to Cryptic. NCSoft bought out Cryptic’s share in the “City of…” franchise back years ago and Cryptic never had anything to do with Aion.
You might want to research facts and revise the latter portion of your article.
Hello,
If you check out the “Big Names” page, you’ll see I’m well aware of which company is involved with which game currently.
The point I was making was that many of the games under Sony Online Entertainment and NCsoft respectively are not interdependent, while the games from Cryptic are. If a game by Paragon studios bankrupts them due to a bad release, the closure of City of Heroes won’t affect Aion. If Neverwinter costs enough and does poorly enough to bankrupt Cryptic, then Champions Online and Star Trek Online are going offline as well. I was using SOE and NCsoft as examples because they host a lot of MMOs from differing development teams, as well as in-house, where-as Cryptic is all in-house.
The concerns are very valid. When Acclaim went belly up just this past August, they took 9Dragons, 2moons, and a whole library of other titles, some of which managed to find home under new hosts.
But thank you for the, um, insight? I’m sorry having two thoughts running concurrently confused you. MMO Fallout may be over a year old, but I’ve been writing on MMOs since the days of Ultima Online back in the very late 90’s. I know my subject matter.
-Omali
I re-read it after you pointed out that there are two thoughts going on and I grasped what you meant.
It wasn’t very apparent the first two times I read it.
No hard feelings,
I should point out that one or two games going under on a company’s portfolio can have an adverse effect on their other products. I have what I refer to as the MMO Fallout “nostalgia shelf,” (which I will get a picture of when I complete it) the boxes of shuttered MMOs, and three of them are NCsoft titles (Tabula Rasa, Auto Assault, and Dungeon Runners). I’ve pointed out a few times that the shuttering of Tabula Rasa, and the allegations in the ensuing legal battle, put a major halt on my trust of NCsoft, especially after they randomly reactivated my account after it was cancelled (I wasn’t charged, they reactivated it for a whole month), while I was in the middle of covering an apparent breach of security where a player had his characters wiped while the account was inactive (Aion).
-Omali