One of the best features of Cryptic’s MMOs over the years was the fact that players could communicate cross-game in a unique multi-server global chat, allowing friends in different guilds and worlds to stay in touch. That’s now coming to an end.
“On Monday, March 9 2020, we will stop supporting Global Chat across Cryptic games,” the studio announced last night, referring specifically to Champions Online, Neverwinter, and Star Trek Online. “This decision was not made lightly but was necessitated by the resources required to sustain this feature and the standard of quality we strive for across our games.” That includes cross-game chat, cross-game private messages, cross-game private user-owned channels, and the cross-game friend and ignore lists.
“Cross channels that currently exist will remain within each game, with the messages staying within the shard the message originated from. For example, if you are a member of a channel on both STO and NW, you will still have the channel available in both games but only see messages that originate in the game you are currently on.”
MMO players will recall that last year Cryptic and PWE likewise put an end to the Foundry, the player-generated content system that was one of the other best features MMOs have ever conjured. The games have recently all enabled account linking on Steam, and of course Cryptic has another online title on the way.
