In my humble opinion, no NWN MMO style game will ever be created.
"Why?" you ask? The answer is WoW. Indies like Bioware was originally, will not/can not get financial backing unless they can PROVE that they will make as much money as was/is being made by WoW.
You can NOT give the community the power to create their own things without being liable for all of the IP copyright issues that absolutely WILL occur. Here in NWN land, there is a huge amount of copyrighted materials, creatures. weapons etc that have been directly stolen from other games. In a MMO style environment, the lawsuits would be flying left and right.... here in a "dead" game that is no longer supported, the only folks that could get sued would be the folks that directly copied the materials, and lawyers won't bother since they know it would cost more in legal/court fees than could ever be confiscated from Billy Joe Bob, 17 year old that broke the law. They can't sue Bioware since Bioware no longer provides support, same with suing Atari, can't do that since they are also disconnected from the game.
So, since idies can't get financial backing without having that proof that there will be hundreds of millions in profits, well, the games can't get created. It all boils down to completely unfounded greed. Bio had a chance to continue with NWN dev work, but Atari and WotC said no. End of story. No one can step up to the plate and offer competition since WotC want's way too much money to make the possible sales work and still have enough to pay the employees of any potential company, much less the so-called financial backers.
The stock market demands that your IPO will make millions in profits, way above and beyond a safe margin. It used to be that the word "profit" meant that all your bills were paid, all your employees were paid, and you had "extra" money left over. Might only be 1-5% but it was a "profit" and was accepted as such. Now, well, now that word "profit" means a return on investment of well over 500%. invest $10, incur an additional $10 in expenses, so a total of $20 of real world expense, and the banks want your return to be $100, not $25.
The world can not work that way. We have proved that beyond a shadow of a doubt here in USA and all across Europe. The world can NOT live on credit when the interest rates are 28%. You can never pay that debt down.
Ahh well, back to working on stuff for a "dead" game, that might get used by a few hundred folks, and do it out of love of the game and the opportunity to be able to create. I don't need 100 million folks to pat me on the back, or to pay $1 each for the privs of using what I may or may not create. It would be nice of course, but in the real world, it is just not going to happen. There are no more premium module teams for NWN that I can help as I did with Wyvern Crown, since all development was stopped by infrogrames(atari) and WotC. Thank you WotC for your thick-headedness and infrogrames for your financial stupidity.
Modifié par Bannor Bloodfist, 22 septembre 2012 - 09:48 .