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

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

"I think that the idea that the MMO crowd doesn't exist is belied by the number of players who are still in World of Warcraft"

Image credit: Cryptic Studios

Feature

by Lewis Packwood<br>Features Editor

Published on May 22, 2026

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"One of the things I take pride in: every MMO I've ever made is still live today," says Jack Emmert, who rejoined Cryptic Studios as CEO back in January.

That's an impressive claim in a famously punishing genre, especially when you consider Emmert has been in the business for more than 25 years. His previous releases include City of Heroes, Star Trek Online, Neverwinter, Champions Online, and DC Universe Online, all of which are still alive and kicking. (City of Heroes was shut down by NCSoft in 2012, but has since been revived by fans on private servers.)

In the US and Europe, we've seen a few high-profile MMO cancellations recently, like Amazon shutting down New World: Aeternum and reportedly cancelling a Lord of the Rings MMO, as well as Microsoft stopping work on ZeniMax Online's long-in-development Project Blackbird. But Emmert maintains the demand is still there. "People want MMOs, and the sales of New World proved it. But I don't believe that the infrastructure and the strategy was there to sustain it, and so ultimately they shut it down."

Video Game Insights estimates that New World has sold around 10 million units across Steam, PlayStation and Xbox. Emmert says it's clear that the market is out there.

New World: Aeternum will go offline on January 31, 2027. | Image credit: Amazon Games

"I think that the idea that the MMO crowd doesn't exist is belied by the number of players who are still in World of Warcraft, or in my games, or in the Daybreak games, or whatever. They want something new." He points to the MMO Ashes of Creation, which shut down earlier this year after a difficult launch, but that had gathered an army of backers on Kickstarter, raising $3.2 million through the platform. "There were a lot of people following that game for a reason."

He was pleased to see Daybreak announce earlier this year that it was bringing back the original 1999 version of EverQuest as EverQuest Legends. "I hope it does really well," he says. "I think it's a great idea. Nostalgia works. There's no new MMOs out there in the West, and so there's a whole class of people that would love to jump in that maybe are intimidated by EverQuest today, but if you could get on the ground fresh, maybe you'd give it another look."

Keep it simple

Emmert thinks the secret to a long-lasting MMO is to efficiently target a niche rather than trying to please everyone.

He says that large publishers tend to come in with the idea of competing with World of Warcraft. "So in their minds, they needed to spend hundreds of millions of dollars, and they also needed to appeal to the widest possible audience."

But what this tends to result in is somewhat vanilla titles, he says. "These new MMOs or MMO-adjacent games become so watered down by the expectations that it's got to be everything. And so you see games that are basically features, but without any soul... And so they fail, and you've seen it over and over again."

Neverwinter was released in 2013. | Image credit: Cryptic Studios/Arc Games

Instead, he thinks, publishers and studios need to "establish a reasonable budget with a reasonable projection, stick to it, and have a very distinct vision of what you're trying to do."

It doesn't need to be overly complicated, he adds, pointing out that the initial concept for Neverwinter was: "Kill shit and take their loot. That was it, over and over again. And make it fun." The fact that this Dungeons & Dragons title is still going some 13 years later is testament to the success of the formula.

"A major publisher would have said to this game, 'Oh well, you're going to need to build your own house, and you're going to need to cut down forests: What's going to differentiate you from World of Warcraft?' And when I made Neverwinter, I never even thought like that. I was just trying to make the experience of what I had work. I didn't worry about competitors. I didn't worry about the X factor that's going to make me stand out. Just didn't even think about it."

Emmert thinks the main thing is to target a specific audience. "I'm a niche developer in the grand scheme of things, because I identify – like [with] Warhammer – something with a passionate fan base, and then I try my best to create an authentic experience." Emmert was working on a Warhammer title at the...