While we all knew it was coming, it still doesn’t make saying goodbye very easy. The Foundry — a repository and creation tool for players to make and share their own Star Trek Online and Neverwinter missions — is officially offline. The Star Trek Online Facebook page offered the last bit of lip service, thanking the Foundry community for the support.
For those who don’t recall, PWE announced the closure of the Foundry feature in the beginning of March, citing a lack of “legacy knowledge required to maintain the Foundry” as a result of the original devs who built the Foundry no longer working for PWE. Additionally, the company suggested that maintaining the Foundry was a drain on resources.
While the Foundry was reportedly a mass of bugs every time the related games got updated or used as a means to lessen certain grinds, it was also clear that many players had a deep, abiding passion for the Foundry’s suite of creation tools. In one instance, a player even created a sizzle trailer for their Star Trek Online Foundry mission:
Also, there was the chance for players to write their own humorous moments. Here’s another STO Foundry clip of a player character stumbling across a sneaky romantic tryst between two officers:
Neverwinter players were also pretty creative with their Foundry missions. Here’s another sizzle trailer for “The Absence of Light,” a mission which took three months to build according to the video’s blurb:
Finally, here’s a nice collection of Neverwinter Foundry mission moments from YouTuber Silv3ry:
Goodbye, Foundry. In an age where MMO creation seems to begin and end with the character builder, we’ll certainly miss you.
