So, how many years will Neverwinter Nights sustain a decent sized community?

[Legacy_ffbj]

               It's fun to reminisce about this amazing game.  Whether it be the campaigns, pw's, modules, or the great work so many have done to make this a historic and monumental game.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Metaldwarf]

               

henesua wrote...

Last I heard young people still get into Jimi Hendrix now and again. Similar with Django Reinhardt and his music is nearly 50-60 years before Jimi on crappy recordings.

My wife and I still play the occasional round of M.U.L.E. on an Atari emulator using legacy joysticks. I run Zork and a number of other Infocom classics from my computer's shell. Lambda Moo still has a community.

Why not NWN too?

If you want to play it then play it. Don't worry about whether the community is bigger or smaller. You can still get players for your project. I've got an upstart project nowhere nearly as developed or polished as the likes of Aenea or Higher Ground. But I've got enough players to run mulitplayer every weekend if I could produce enough content.

Don't sweat it. Play it.

Great references.Love me some Django and most of the bands I grew up with wouldn't have been formed without the brilliance of Hendrix. As someone who is nearly as addicted to music as I am to gaming, I found it very apropo to NWN. There is one very good reason I still play:Roleplaying. I have been rping in one form or another for nearly 20 years (and before that my friends and I didn't bother with a name for running around outside/indoors pretending to be space warriors or ninjas or...you get the point) and NWN provides an outlet for that kind of creative engagement.

As has been mentioned by many on these forums and elsewhere, there really is not another game experience that mirrors tabletop as well as the NWN series. As many people drop out for newer, shinier games and become tired of nwn in general, the stalwarts remain to keep this community active. I came back after years away in 2008 and found an rp server that was as good as the ones I recalled from '02. Granted by now even that server has become diluted but there's still people rediscovering and discovering this great game that I too see it surviving, even thriving, again.

Cheers to the community at large, and especially to the content builders and server providers who keep our hobby alive.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Metaldwarf, 21 avril 2012 - 11:57 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_mysticalkas]

               To be honest, all this tech talk i cannot relate to, considering my extent of tech knoledge is turn on the computer and play lol, I played with a wonderful group, i think that is what made it the best for me. i was not really able to get into the forums over the past few years or play online due to the "environment" i was living in at the time, which i would get back but then have to leave again. I miss those that i have played with, though i was new at the game, i know i made an impression (probably not good lol) but atleast i had a blast. i remember Rio the dancer, Alethia the pal, jori the priest, Uri the ranger, Hendle and Selene......suffice to say i remember lol, I played NWN2 for a while, got online and started searching for those from the past finally, then read something on a post about some that did not switch and stayed with NWN. so i purchased the NWN again and im hoping i can find them once more, I have grown as a player and i want to reunite with as many as i can. except this time im hoping i will have better luck with character creation and builds..."may Mother guide and protect you through your travels". Belia Ellinsfer!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Fester Pot]

               There's certainly a change in the community compared to what it used to be. The interviews provided by the vault staff alone have come to a complete end. Even in 2006, they were still very active in providing module authors a voice with may interviews taking place across all spectrums of the community.

Perhaps in 2006 those who had been around since the release of NWN were noticing the drop of players, builders and community as a whole. I didn't start with NWN until 2004, spending a good year or more simply learning the toolset before releasing my first module.

It's TEN years old, yet even after 6 years, I'm still around building - nothing to show for it since my last module - but still plugging away.

Personally, an active community drove my desire to build what I have. The early days of searching the old legacy forum for what players wanted or what modules lacked. Watching the NWVault daily, following new module releases, all drove my creativity. As one does build, it eventually comes down to building for yourself and not what others want. My first module was an attempt to build a city adventure because at the time, in 2004, it was seriously lacking and a desire based on the posts of players on the legacy forum.

Druid/Ranger and Wizard/Sorcerer modules were also lacking at the time and a Wizard/Sorcerer series was born after I decided what to build an adventure around. 2004 to 2006 was the development of my first ever module because of that demand, and it holds fond memories.

Now? Not so much. In fact, it doesn't even drive my desire to finish the trilogy as it did when I first got my feet wet building. The community has quieted down - would it be such if the legacy forums were taken down? Hard to say - regardless, NWN still continues to provide an outlet to tell good stories, if one is able to see that, rather than what the community has dwindled to become, and as long as that remains, NWN will always be there.

Sadly, it's not the spark it once used to be but by now, one should know to build for themselves, rather than an entire community. With that said, without the community in 2004, my first module may never have seen the light of day and I do miss the activity of those days which drove me like a whip to my back.

FP!
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Fester Pot, 28 avril 2012 - 04:13 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Rubies]

               The NWN community's not as small as everyone makes out, honestly - I think the forum move has made it seem far worse than it is. I have a whole bunch of people on my Xfire playing NWN, and I introduced two new members not very long ago who are now actively working on models and lore. I definitely wish we still had the old forum, but I'm not sure if getting it back would make such a difference now; everyone's fairly dispersed.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_AndarianTD]

               Regarding what FP wrote: well said. I build for several reasons -- mainly to develop an audience for my story ideas, and to learn the new field of interactive storytelling from hands-on experience. I love the feedback from players when I get it, but mainly I do it for myself and for my own purposes. I've been building since 2005 and haven't stopped yet, although life doesn't always allow me to do it at the pace I might otherwise like.

The community of the 2005-2006 era did play a role in my first deciding to try my hand at modding. The fact that there were so many mods to choose from, and the repeated experience of being able to keep downloading and playing them, provided a constant reminder of the thought that "this is great -- I have to try it!" That thought eventually won out and forced me to set aside time to start building, and it wouldn't have happened without the presence of a strong builder and player community to create and encourage that environment.

EDIT: Pretty much all the commments on the thread are well taken, and I think RogueKnights' are particularly so. The "shiny new toy" phenomenon is unfortunate but operates unmistakably here. Sadly the IP issues seem to be a major inhibitor to any hope of updating NWN1 to be more modern. Hasbro, WOTC and Bioware are all going in different directions and it seems unlikely that permission to update the game again would ever be forthcoming, even if there were sufficient interest in doing so and resources with which to try it.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par AndarianTD, 28 avril 2012 - 01:39 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Nissa_Red]

               I am no longer active on these boards mainly because :

1/ I have had no real interest in Bioware's new games since DA:O / ME2.
2/ I have a hard time enduring the many bothersome quirks of these new forums

I still religiously follow the updates of some mods on the IGN Vault, have subscribed to the new Nexus vault, participate in some blogs dealing with NWN/mods and still play with some close friends once in a while whatever we come up with thanks to the Aurora editor. That one is still a *pure* gem many years after its release.

Also, I probably will never give up on NWN, no, no, no, don't count on it!

It's still one of my fav' games that I keep coming back to regularly to get my "fix", along with BG1/2, Icewind Dale1/2, FO1/2, Arcanum, Planescape, and other non top-down view games, like VTM, KOTOR1/2, Drakensang, The Witcher, etc.

For me, most "new" games just don't hold the candle to these.

Best regards, and long live NWN (and its awesome community) ^^

Gorath Alpha wrote...

HipMaestro wrote...

Much of the community interest has been decimated by the move to these boards.  I would estimate that less than half of the regulars of the legacy forum migrated and even of those, did it with misgiving.  Some of the vets limit their social activity to server-specific forums which can actually become extremely active at times depending on promotional gimmicks, season, etc.

Some of us from the earliest of days, nine years ago now, chose to leave some things behind.  I reverted to an Avatar name I'd used on the Black Isles forums, rather than what I'd used most of my NWN1/NWN2 tenure on the Legacy site.

               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ehye_khandee]

               Old friends return to our server almost daily. New friends join pretty much every day also. So, *shrugs* I think the NWN game has a long long way to go - for those of us with a mind to preserve her, for the enjoyment to come.

Be well. Game on!
GM_ODA
http://playnwn.com
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_henesua]

               

AndarianTD wrote...
Sadly the IP issues seem to be a major inhibitor to any hope of updating NWN1 to be more modern.

For me, the D&D flavor of NWN is the least interesting part of it. If they could release NWN without it being linked to D&D I'd be very happy.

But perhaps this is a good thing, because I have strong motivation to realise my vision outside of NWN.

I think what really matters in this community is not NWN, but the act of creating game content that we can share together. NWN makes this easy, but if we found a different tool that enabled the same level of community invovlement I would hope that most of the people here would move over to it.

Unity is almost that tool. BUT it needs some open source add ons so that we can all make role playing games with it. And those don't quite exist at the level of simplicity of use that NWN has. But it would be interesting if some in this community were intereted in taking on such a project, and keeping it open source so that no one could profit from teh sale of games made with such expansions. It would keep us actively involved.

Anyway, just a crazy idea. But I mention it to illustrate what is worth maintaining in the NWN community. I don't think it has much if anything to do with the "D&Dness" of NWN.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par henesua, 28 avril 2012 - 04:18 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <Feeling old...>

I started with NwN before the alpha. I went away for a decade, but never stopped creating stuff. When I came back, I was awed at what the community had done while my back was turned. But I was also amazed at what they *hadn't* done yet...

I agree very much with Henesua, in that the D&D aspect of NwN is nearly immaterial to me. My world was originally created for 1st ed. rules, but was rapidly adapted to a rather eclectic blend of rulesets (Runequest/Chivalry & Sorcery/Sword's Path Glory/Swordbearer/Palladium with lots of Arduin Grimiores thrown in) . It has (mostly) been re-adapted to D&D 3rd Ed simply because that is the ruleset NwN uses (and some of my biggest headaches are trying to augment that ruleset against it's will ;-P ).

It is the toolset that keeps me here, and the distribution-network/community that offers an audience for my creations. It is the inventiveness and depth of the Makers here that satisfies my need for More.

I mean that exactly as stated. It *satisfies* me.

I *need* nothing new (though I am always open to a better toolset/community - I am watching both Unity and Skyrim with fascination...), and am old enough to know better than to abandon something that works for a chance at something shiny & new.

IRT Unity... Ever heard of the Worldforge Project? Unity reminds me a great deal of the Worldforge. I was active in that even before NwN. Such great promise... to make the *content* of worlds independent of the client's platform. There were even text-based clients in the works, and 2-D sprite-based clients. There was discussion about mobile clients, too. All these would be able to share a common world server and play alongside each other, one fellow playing on a rogue-like client at no material disadvantage with his cutting-edge 3D workstation buddy.

Well, I could go on. But the point is that 15 years later they've advanced very little past when I left in 2001.

NwN has blossomed. It may have wilted a bit since, but it is still viable. And it still has potential for a whole lot more.

To answer the OP, NwN will exist as long as it's a viable media for expression (which it still most definitely is!). Without any further modification, that may only be a few years. But between the hardcore augmentation (Virusman, Skywing, PeachyKeen, etc) and the more "within the system" ones ( ShadoOow, ShadowM, etc.), that "usable life" extends much farther into the future.

IMONSHO =)

<...hope>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Rolo Kipp, 28 avril 2012 - 07:15 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_HSeldon]

               On this note, I was wondering what people think about the relative health of the NWN and NWN2 communities.  It seems NWN forums get more action, and more people are playing NWN online.  Clearly there is far more community content for NWN.  All this seems to indicate that NWN will outlive NWN2.  But I'm just one person and I was wondering what people who are more plugged into the community think.  I have both games and I'm always changing my mind about which one deserves my attention.  I can't go on like this, LOL, I need to be able to focus on one or the other once and for all.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Bondari the Reloader]

               Firstly, this community, whatever its size, is awesome. I, like the OP, was too young when the game first came out to be heavily involved in the online community, though I did lurk around the old forums a bit. Even with the drop in activity, the ones who still frequent this forum are always ready and willing to answer questions, usually within a day or two.

I think the toolset is a big factor in its continued longevity, and I don't think it will be replaced any time soon. I'm an extremely novice module builder (basically, anything Lilac Soul's amazing script generator can't do, I can't do), but it's an easy enough tool that I can make a simple adventure without too much stress. I think another thing that helps (for me, at least) is that the game is fairly text based. What I mean by that is that a lot of the dialog has to be read, even in the semi-voiced OCs. Compare that to a more modern game like DA:O that's fully voiced. I've never tried to mess with the DA:O toolset (mainly because it's a separate download), but assuming you could write textual dialog without voicing it just wouldn't feel right in that game. I think as games move more towards being like interactive movies rather than interactive picture books (hopefully that analogy works) it will become harder for a user-friendly toolset to exist. (If anything I've said here is wrong, please feel free to correct me. This is kind of a speculative topic, so I felt free to speculate a little.)

Bottom line, since ten years after this game's release we still have a community this active, I think NWN will be fine for the forseeable future. '>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_BelowTheBelt]

               If the community stays active and involved with events like this:
NWPAD Celebrates NWN's 10-year anniversary
We'll be around for many, many more years. 

Get involved and get the word out.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy__Guile]

               

ffbj wrote...

It's fun to reminisce about this amazing game.  Whether it be the campaigns, pw's, modules, or the great work so many have done to make this a historic and monumental game.

Aye, I'm with you ffbj on this one.. '>

---------------------------

I think what turned many builders away was "burn out", if you really want to break it down, it's A BOAT LOAD of work to make a decent size module, after you make 2-3 of them you will lose the heart to continue on...  At least that's my perspective on it...

I found myself wanting to almost quit the game after running into a bug that I was sure I had correct, I got frustrated, and the frustration led to other feelings...  I believe one of the reasons why people leave the game is frustration too, even feelings of failure.

I've seen a lot of jealousy fly around, a bit of utter hatred, and even quite a few player stonewalling other players on servers.  Indeed, there are many bad apples left in the game that are still there...  Mean people who don't like noobs at all, part of that will stifle the community from ever growing again...

If NWN has a chance to come back, it's going to take some friendly nice people gathering together to work together as a team, if you don't have a strong team, the mission will fail, that's pretty much a guarantee...

We can look at Higher Ground as a great example, they had a very strong team, and because of that, they delivered a very high quality server / module..  After looking at the module in it's infancy, I didn't think it was going to last, but the team that came together was astounding, so it flourished, though some big members left...

I don't know much about the history of Higher Ground, but one thing I do know is, if the community doesn't pool together, then NWN will grow stale and die....  I tried to rally a call for quality & collaberation, but that wasn't recieved well at all.  We need NEW quality Server & Offline Modules, not the same old ones, we need a big quality team to come together to make something huge, bigger than Higher Ground even.. '>

I'd like to see what's left of this community come together to make a big server, huge in fact, maybe 100+ Meg Module?  It wouldn't be that hard if everyone focused on building quality adventures & balance was fair to all classes...
               
               

               

                     Modifié par _Guile, 15 mai 2012 - 02:34 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Zarathustra217]

               To an extent, it's quite disturbing for me to think that I've occupied myself with this game for ten years now. But I doubt there is any other game out there that can provide the creative stimulus that NWN does. Personally, my first years were dedicated to custom content, but it was actually the possibilities for true online story-driven roleplay that have done most to keep me. First on other PWs and later one I took part in initiating myself - the one I still keep working at honing and improving just about every day.

There has been many times where I've felt certain that soon, both our community and the NWN community as a whole would die out due to the game's age. But for us, it has - surprisingly - only moved toward more activity. In fact, recently, I did a count revealing 1100+ unique CD keys coming by our server over the last 3 months which is probably our highest count ever. It still continues to perplex me.

A major factor in this, I suspect, is gog.com - quite many of our new players have actually never played NWN before joining our server. And in a sense, I think that is actually the key to keeping NWN alive: to gain a continuing influx of players to the NWN scene.

What I think is important to recognise here is that the game now appeals to a player segment that might not have been the typical kind of player when the game was first released. It is clear that NWN can't compete with other games in terms graphical (but not necessarily aesthetic) quality, but that the game is nonetheless still able to attract players is assumably due to it's other strengths and unique opportunities. There's not that many hardcore gamers left I imagine, but instead, the game's main audience is those looking for rich and varied storytelling and the opportuntiy for highly specialised online play and roleplay.

The logical consequence is that we could as a community very likely benefit from doing more in promoting NWN toward that segment - the roleplayers and fantasy-fiction-fans as a whole. I recently saw the documentary "The Dungeon Masters" and noticed someone describing WoW as the game that comes closest to playing tabletop PnP. Say what you want about the people in that documentary, but it still suggest that there's a large amount of roleplayers and fantasy fans out there that are oblivious to the wonders of NWN.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Zarathustra217, 16 mai 2012 - 08:52 .