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Some folks were taken aback by the announcement on Monday that Neverwinter, the latest game from developer Cryptic Studios, would not be an MMO like all of the team's previous titles but rather an online-oriented RPG. In a chat with our sister site Massively, Cryptic's founder Jack Emmert admits this new approach is a big sea change for the development team in more ways than one.

Not only is the gameplay design for Neverwinter different than an MMO, Emmett told Massively that the development team is changing the way they make a game. He honestly states that the last two MMOs the team made, Champions Online and Star Trek Online, were developed and released quickly. However he added, "super-fast doesn't mean super-good", saying that its last two games "ended up having lots of half-done features in some quarters."

Emmett states that "we can't just keep repeating the same methodology over and over -- we've got to make stuff that's great." He says that the development team for Neverwinter has high hopes, saying, "We know we're getting better and better. The ultimate goal is to get a score of 90 or above because we want to make great products." Neverwinter is currently scheduled by publisher Atari for release in late 2011.