Rogue Dao Studios was founded by Mark Montgomery and a few friends from the now-abandoned (But technically still running) Planescape server Gatecrashers (Mark's alias was Lysander, a few of the other notables were Fractal, Gonzo, a few others. They've all since left the project), with the intention of being NWN2's version of the City of Doors Initiative.
M.M. really went out of his way to make the project seem professional, they hired people with professional skillsets, sent out press releases to major gaming-news publications that were so glossy and polished that PC Gamer actually/erroneously reported that their 3 part Planescape trilogy was an official NWN2 expansion (PC Gamer's factchecking department leaves a lot to be desired, if you, for example, have been following the coverage of the latest WoW expansion).
The website was lovely, the forum was bustling, the developer diaries were regularly updated with gorgeous samples, the team consisted of dozens of people, from modelers to riggers to writers to area builders to composers to voice actors.
The project attracted so much attention that M.M. got hired to work for Obsidian Entertainment. Last I heard, he was doing area design on the now-canceled Alien game.
He was very much the driving force behind the project, the engine of will that kept the whole machine smoothly rolling along. After Lysander left, things slowed to a crawl. Developer diaries began to dry up, signs of progress began to vanish.
Eventually all the founding members left. Some thought the project was going nowhere, some didn't like the new management, some were disgusted by other things. Rogue Dao went into a dry spell of sorts.
The studio/modding team encountered a revitalization some year or two later. They swore up and down that they were still hard at work and the project wasn't dead. The forum activity dried up. Another year passed. They swore they were still working, and posted some screenshots of "new" content to prove it.
None of the new content was actually new, though. It was all stuff the founding members had already made before leaving and had never shown to the public. The new screenshots renewed interest with the general community but it worried me since they hadn't actually shown any progress.
A while later, they finally released some content and a beta version of the first module to the vault. It's available, and you can play/download it.
For the most part though, they're definitely vaporware. Nobody mentions the other two modules of the initially planned trilogy, and the quality has gone pretty sharply down since Lysander left.
They do deserve credit for releasing what they have, which is more than some studies ever did, but it was too little too late, especially considering the early hype. They're technically still active, and I'm sure if you went on their forums you'd hear many vehement, enthusiastic claims that they are more active than ever, but I would take that with a grain of salt. The current studio, as I understand it, has few-to-none of the original team, and yet they claim credit for the original team's work and accomplishments. That doesn't sit well with me.
As to whether they'll collaborate with you for NWN1 stuff, I can't say. I haven't been affiliated with the studio for a long, long time.
-ValynDyral
Modifié par Eradrain, 20 juillet 2010 - 08:58 .
