While being forthright with his community about the woeful state of Star Trek Online‘s player-versus-player combat, a developer at Cryptic Studios also admitted to something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: PvP in the game is so bad, no one’s participating in it. Participation is so low that the studio has seriously considered removing PvP altogether.
The Forgotten Realms depicted in this new trailer and screenshots for Cryptic Studios’ online co-op role-playing game Neverwinter could have been torn from the scribble pad I kept next to my character sheet back in my Dungeons & Dragons days.
Publisher Atari is “divesting” itself of MMO specialists Cryptic Studios, which it snapped up in 2008. It’s trying to sell the creators of Star Trek Online and Champions Online after losing Atari millions. [Atari Results (PDF)]
Three developers from Cryptic Studios participated in last weekend’s Global Game Jam, the festival that challenges participants to create a game from scratch in just 48 hours. They built this time-lapse video, compressing two days of work into seven minutes.
Bill Roper — one of the forces behind Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo — defected to Cryptic Studios back in 2008 to work on Champions Online and Star Trek. He has recently stated that he’s leaving Cryptic, but hasn’t given specifics.