"People want MMOs, and the sales of New World proved it" – Cryptic Studios head Jack Emmert on why MMOs are ripe for reinvention

Jack Emmert, back at Cryptic Studios as CEO, is making the case that MMOs are still commercially viable if teams stop trying to build everything for everyone. He points to New World’s sales, the persistence of long-running games like World of Warcraft, and nostalgia-driven projects like EverQuest Legends as evidence that the audience is still there.

The core of his argument is production discipline. He says too many MMO projects get bloated by publisher expectations, aiming for massive budgets and broad appeal, which leads to generic “feature soup” instead of a clear identity. His preferred model is a focused niche, a reasonable budget, and a launch that’s intentionally smaller, then expanded with live content once player behavior is known.

That’s especially relevant for teams planning online games now, because it reframes risk: don’t spend years and millions on content players may never touch. Emmert’s examples are telling—Neverwinter launched with a simple “kill stuff, take loot” loop and has lasted 13 years, while Fellowship is cited as a raid-first concept that can grow over time if the live team keeps feeding it.

For Cryptic specifically, Emmert says the immediate job is to stabilize and reinvigorate Neverwinter, Champions Online, and Star Trek Online, while also figuring out whether the studio’s next move is another MMO, a single-player RPG, or something else. He also flags faster prototyping as a major industry problem: the cost of finding out a game “sucks” is too high, and that hurts margins and experimentation.