Rumor Mill: Cryptic Working on Neverwinter Nights MMO

Atari, as the publisher, and Cryptic Studios, as the developer, are said to be working on a MMO based on the Neverwinter Nights franchise. The tentative release date is for sometime in 2011 and, apparently, the title is one of the big bets that Atari is taking in order to insure its survival as a videogame company.

The above information is being offered by inside sources that are buried deep within Cryptic and that talked to the CutScene blog of Variety. Atari bought Cryptic Studios in late 2008 and allowed the team to work on projects that it already had in the pipeline, like Champions Online, a super hero MMO that is set to be released this year, and Star Trek Online, the long awaited MMO based on the universe dominated by the Enterprise starship.

Because the title is only a rumor at the moment, there are no specific details related to it. Still, we know a bit about the Neverwinter Nights setting and that could give gamers some clues about what the MMO might be about. The setting was initially used back in 2002, when BioWare created a role playing game using it. It was very well received and reviewed, and a sequel arrived in 2006, created by BioWare.

The toolset accompanying it was powerful enough to allow fans to create adventures for more than 50 players, which can be seen as being a sort of mini MMO. More recently, Neverwinter Nights 2 received an adventure pack, called Mysteries of Westgate, that provided more hours of adventuring for those players who like the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 system.

One of the interesting questions related to a possible MMO is whether the rules used will be those of Dungeons and Dragons or whether the developers will design new game mechanics in order to make the Neverwinter Nights setting work in a MMO.