Perfect World and Cryptic Studios are brewing some new magic — and it could result in the biggest massively multiplayer online role-playing game since The Elder Scrolls Online debuted in 2014.
Yesterday, Wizards of the Coast announced that it’s tapping Perfect World and Cryptic Studios for Magic: The Gathering’s first MMO. Wizards publishes the Magic card game and Dungeons & Dragons, and this is the first time in the franchise’s 24-year history that it’s getting an RPG (it’s appeared as either a real-time strategy game or a digital card game). With more than 20 million players and millions more who know the brand, a Magic MMO could hit the market with a bang.
This move is in-line with how Wizards is treating the Magic brand. Last year, it announced that Magic is getting its own D&D campaign, giving the card game its first pen-and-paper RPG in its long history.
But this decision is also a thumbs-up for Cryptic and Perfect World. The duo run Neverwinter, the D&D MMO. That game launched in 2013 and hit consoles in 2015 (Xbox One) and 2016 (PlayStation 4). It now has 13 campaigns (content expansions, some larger than others), and new expansions come every time D&D announces a new storyline (like last week’s unveiling of the Tomb of Annihilation). It has more than 15 million registered players, a nice feat in today’s MMO market. Wizards’ partnership with Perfect World and Cryptic shows that the publisher and studio have done a good job with Neverwinter in the eyes of the IP holder (and not a beholder in this case!). And it also shows why it’s important for big brands to find partners they trust — and to nurture those relationships.
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Kudos, Perfect World and Cryptic. We’re looking forward to what’s next.
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—Jason Wilson, GamesBeat managing editor
P.S. We love it when publishers port their console games to PC, but don’t do what the Vanquish devs did when they forgot to check how higher frame rates affect their game.
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