UPDATE: The Enhanced Editions of Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate 2, and Icewind Dale do not support co-op or any multiplayer at this time. They are single-player games only. We have removed the console versions from our database. The original news post is below.
For this last issue of 2018 for MMO Co-Opportunities, we’ll be looking at two updates for TERA, listing all the winter festivities coming to Perfect World’s MMOs, and reporting a large scale layoff at Daybreak. Let’s dive in. TERA to get PC and Console Updates TERA will be getting two updates in the near future: one f...
Last week, Canadian developer Beamdog announced that they are bringing back the seminal D&D cRPG, Neverwinter Nights, as Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition. This version of the game is mainly the same as the Diamond Edition, but with enhanced visuals that will go all the way up to 11 (i.e., 4k).
Spring is here, and with it comes a ton of new content for MMOs as well as the ever-increasingly common rebirth of MMOs into a free-to-play model. This month for MMOCO, we have a cohesive theme of death and rebirth: TERA is getting a new Valkyrie class (the arbiters of life and death), Neverwinter has announced a new content expansio...
For this month's volume of MMO Co-Opportunities, we'll be going back to classic format. I'll be taking a look at Neverwinter, the free-to-play MMO by Cryptic, and pulling out some unique aspects of the game that facilitate a co-op playstyle. Let's do it!
Neverwinter, a free-to-play MMO with some pretty strong cooperative elements (it is based on D&D after all!), goes into public open beta tomorrow. Just in time for the launch, I had the opportunity to do a Q&A with lead developer Zeke Sparkes from Cryptic. Many of my questions touched upon the cooperative aspects of the game as well as similarities and differences to the pen-and-paper game for all you tabletop nuts out there. Zeke really went above and beyond the call of duty here in the depth of his answers. So read on!
Seems like all the MMOs are going Free-to-Play these days, whether they started as sub-based games, or they're just launching straight-up F2P. So perhaps it's unsurprising that this month our stories come from three F2P games: TERA, Neverwinter, and Wizardry Online.
GameSpy has recently come under new ownership by a company called Glu Mobile. Unfortunately it looks like the first thing the incoming regime did is what happens a lot in corporate takeovers, they trimmed the fat so to speak. With that they shutdown a lot of multiplayer servers for several older PC games. Many co-op titles like Neverwinter Nights, Hidden and Dangerous 2, SWAT 4, and Star Wars: Battlefront no longer had any multiplayer functionality - though some games do allow LAN or direct connection options.
This year at PAX East, the showfloor was bursting with MMOs, Free-to-Play (F2P) games, and F2P MMOs. We went hands-on with some and were shown the demo for others. If you missed our impressions of these games before, sit back and relax while I round them up for you and break them down.
Part two of my appointment with Perfect World Entertainment was for the other F2P MMO they have in the works: Neverwinter. This is a title I’ve been excited about every since it was announced, but it’s gone through some big changes since that announcement. The developer from the start has always been Cryptic Studios (the guys behind City of Heroes/Villians, Champions Online, and Star Trek Online), but they’ve changed publishers. Also, I was originally under the impression that it was intended as a multiplayer game, and now it’s a F2P MMO. I won’t lie - I was a little nervous about some of these changes; it turns out though that my fears were unfounded because the game looks absolutely great.
With a new Neverwinter game on the way, you'll probably want to replay some of the classic title. Sure they may not share a lot in common, but we've already seen that the classic Neverwinter Nights is a great co-op experience.
Looking back over the years of fantasy quest games, such as Dragon Age, and the Elder Scrolls games - these have been largely single player experiences save for some gigantic MMO’s. The new team working on the Neverwinter game hopes to take that same epic world feel, and turn it into a co-op game - not an MMO like some may think.
