13 réponses à ce sujet

[Naeryna]

I only know they got into lawsuit and that Atari got nwn1 and hasbro nwn2. I'm aware you know little else, but most article about this lawsuit are not on google anymore, so... what was that about?

[kamal_]

They fought over who had rights to what, leading to Cryptic getting the rights and everyone losing.

[Jfoxtail]

No it didn't have to do with dividing NWN1 and NWN2. Cryptic was a bi-product as well I would suggest.

 

Hasbro owns Wizards of the Coast as I recall. Wizards of the Coast is D&D in terms of intellectual property rights.

 

Atari has (had) exclusive content - production - distribution - rights dating back to Baldur's Gate et all and many D&D games. 

 

Atari through the years has also struggled with a number of financial difficulties and disputes ~ not just D&D games. Some people have opined that the ongoing revenues of D&D games may be the biggest reason Atari has survived. I have never seen their financial statements nor proof of this opinion.

 

In fact Bioware itself had some long lasting disputes (reportedly) about the financial returns and on going support for NWN1. Patches, updates, new content, and ultimately the Premium Modules initiative were all impacted by these disputes. Some people speculate this is why Bioware bowed out of NWN2 for example. This is however speculation and not confirmed.

 

Bottom line is that it boiled down to the "contract lawyers"... Atari's vs Bioware. Atari vs Hasbro. etc

 

As a result Wizards/Hasbro took back some content - production - distribution rights and awarded them to Cryptic instead.

 

To contradict the good Kamal - the only winners were the lawyers... :cheers:

 

The gamers did at least get the NWN and D&D ultimate DVD collection quite inexpensively. What we seemed to have lost is the potential for ongoing support for a number of dearly cherished games.

[Tchos]

For what it's worth, GOG and the other digital retailers who sell/sold the D&D games (Steam, GamersGate, Impulse...) used to list Atari as the publisher.  Then in 2012, during the time I was working on my module, they were all taken away for many months, disappearing from all of the stores, including Steam (I note that as the time it happened because I was concerned that they'd still be unavailable when I was ready to release it).  Then they returned to some sellers, but the name Atari was changed to Hasbro.  Neverwinter Nights is no longer sold on the Atari store, either.  I don't believe it's accurate to say that Atari retains the rights to NWN1.

 

As I understand it, the dispute was over the fact that Atari wasn't using the license to make new D&D games to capitalise on the opportunities such as the new rule set releases and highly advertised big budget releases like Neverwinter Online.

[luna_hawke]

This is the death of single player AD&D games sadly.

 

Cryptic is an MMO shop.

 

Hasbro screwed anyone who wants a single player AD&D game.

[Kaziem]

D&D being made into a WoW clone was the saddest 8 hours I spent downloading a crappy game.

[Basher of Glory]

D&D being made into a WoW clone was the saddest 8 hours I spent downloading a crappy game.

Do you mean this "Neverwinter" FTP MMO?

 

If so, I agree 100%

[Luminus]

Until a PROPER DnD game comes along, DnD is dead.
Crappy MMO and hack n slash games won't cut it.

Sword Coast Legends seems decent but nothing close to NwN2.

Personally, I would rather see a Pathfinder game NwN-style. Obsidian made a deal with Paizon (creators of Pathfinder RPG) so we can only hope for a spiritual successor to the NwN games.

[Thorsson64]

Until a PROPER DnD game comes along, DnD is dead.

 

If that were true WotC would be moving heaven and earth to get a proper D&D game out, whereas clearly they are not. There seems more money these days in (so called) micro transaction games. After all 50% of people are below average intelligence. 

[kamal_]

If that were true WotC would be moving heaven and earth to get a proper D&D game out, whereas clearly they are not. There seems more money these days in (so called) micro transaction games. After all 50% of people are below average intelligence. 

Neverwinter Online is doing badly.

http://www.mmobomb.c...t-less-perfect/

 

By "North American operations", they mean Cryptic since it's PWE's only North American studio. Cryptic's other properties are older games and should have predictable revenue streams at this point.

 

Cryptic is a week from release of "Module 6" for Neverwinter, which will pretty much abandon all pretension of free to play for pay to win. They are drastically changing the stat power curve from soft caps to linear increases, and the new endgame is apparently so hard on the preview server people are reporting that they are getting destroyed by individual trash mobs. The only way you have a chance is apparently to max out the level of all your artifact items (artifact items have levels too in Neverwinter Online), and the only way to do that in any sort of reasonable time is pay (people calculated that it would take two years to max out a single artifact based on loot drop rates, there are artifacts for 8-9 different item slots). So it seems the new strategy is soak the whales for money, since you can buy stuff to level your artifact items.

[kamal_]

Amusingly, at least one of Neverwinter Online's community moderators is posting a ton on the Sword Coast Legends forums, Zebular. He's the one who banned me from the NWO forums. A number of other posters in the Sword Coast forums are other Neverwinter foundry quest authors who didn't get the hint about Foundry and now think Sword Coast Legends will give them the freedom NWN has always given people.

 

There seem to be plenty of posts in the Sword Coast forums by people that say they are current/former NWN PW admin/dev people. They think SCL will be the future. The complete lack of showing the toolset for a game that's releasing this year pretty much shows they're wrong. It may be a fun game, but it won't replace NWN for building your own worlds.

[Thorsson64]

Soaking the Whales is the last stage before abandoning NWO, because you're pretty much killing off the community. But good riddance IMO; it's just another one of hundreds of MMOs, with nothing in particular to recommend it.

 

I agree that SCL is unlikely to replace NWN/NWN2; however that doesn't mean it won't be a decent game in itself. I won't be holding my breath though.

[Tchos]

My interest in SCL is as a game, not as a building platform.  I do play and enjoy other games.

[kamal_]

nevermind, moving to the relevant thread