Cryptic’s Neverwinter is a Full MMO

Last year Cryptic announced a new Neverwinter game that was originally going to be a co-op online multiplayer game. A year later, and after an acquisition by Chinese MMO powerhouse Perfect World, the game is now going to be a full MMO. IGN has the news today of the change of direction:

Neverwinter is shifting from the co-operative multiplayer game that was announced last year and into full-fledged, free-to-play MMO territory. In fact, it’s shifting towards the action end of the MMO spectrum.

The article compares the combat in the game to Vindictus, which is action based. What isn’t discussed is how this will affect Turbine’s free-to-play Dungeons and Dragons Online. DDO is set in the Eberron universe that was really popular back when it launched, but waned in the last couple years. Neverwinter is naturally set in the more popular Forgotten Realms universe; so it may be that the future of DDO will become uncertain sometime next year as Neverwinter closes in on release.