The Neverwinter Nights MMO just entered open beta with a proper release date scheduled for sometime in August and a lot of people seem to have a lot of nice things to say about the new D&D MMO.

This is quite the turnaround. When it was first announced by Cryptic Studios, expectations were not very high for the Neverwinter Nights MMO, chiefly because it was being developed by Cryptic Studios, whose past few entries have been less than excellent (Star Trek Online, Champions Online). It didn't help matters any when the Chinese dime-a-dozen MMO outfit Perfect World bought out Cryptic. It looks like the acquisition turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

"In the very beginning our goal was to make Neverwinter into an MMO," Craig Zinkievich, Cryptic's chief operating officer, told Eurogamer. "That's what Cryptic does. We love MMOs, we love to develop MMOs and that's what we're best at.

"As we started developing the game and working with Atari, we weren't able to fund the project at the level we needed to to make it a fully fledged MMO. MMOs are big beasts, right? We looked at what we're doing with Neverwinter and decided six months in to change scope, make sure that we could get a game out, make sure that we could be true to what we wanted to do with that D&D game, and ended up scoping that down to a co-op online RPG game.

"When [Perfect World Entertainment] purchased Cryptic we were able to change course and take Neverwinter and make it into that fully fledged MMO we always wanted it to be.

"They were able to fund the Neverwinter MMO like we wanted to make it."

You can play the Neverwinter Night MMO right now. Playable classes include fighter, wizard, rogue, cleric and ranger. More will likely be added to the mix by the time the open beta elapses.