NWPAD - June 18 - July 3, 2012

[Legacy_BelowTheBelt]

               It's HERE!!!  NWPAD is officially launched with events occuring throughout the PW community to celebrate the 10th anniversary of NWN.  Now through July 3, participating servers (see below) are hosting special events to memorialize this milestone achievement!
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EDIT:  The thread has gotten quite long, so this space will be used to consolidate comments/official updates

1)  NWPAD Dates:  June 18 - July 3
2)  NWPAD website:  www.nwpad.weebly.com for all your NWPAD info needs (how to participate, where to participate)
3)  At least 12 worlds are currently signed-up to participate, but there's always room for more!!  Get your world on-board.  Participation requirements are minimal - let us know that you're involved, then schedule an event...any event...in celebration of NWN's 10th anniversary.  That's it!  If you want to do more, like support the World Walker Challenge, great!

List of participating worlds:
Arenthyor
Dalakora
Netheril Rising
World of Aenea
Aventia 3, Merged- Unlimited Levels
A Wombat Loose in Nordock
City of Dohral
Ravenloft - Prisoners of the Mist
World of Caenyr
Come to La-La Land
Escape From Undeath
Star Wars: Contrition

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Guess what?
 
NWN is turning 10!  According to Wikipedia (the end-all-be-all-source-of-indisputable-truth) the original version was launched in the US on June 18, 2002 and on July 3, 2002 in Europe.  Wow.  To be here, still playing the game with the community as strong as it is, the players still playing, and the developers still developing is a testament to the revolutionary game that we all love.

Juxtapose that milestone birthday with the PW community's need to retain said community, players, and developers in the face of ever newer hardware/OS systems and newer games.  We need to retain as many of those that are still left.

To accomplish this, I propose the following:
NW Player Appreciation Days (NWPAD) 
Dates:  June 18 - July 3, 2012

What is NWPAD?
Glad you asked.  NWPAD would be a community-wide celebration of the most important component of our community:  our players.  The idea is that participating PWs would host events throughout those days (2 weeks +1 day) in celebration of their playerbase and encourage new players to visit.  This could be through hosting "social days" where players can just lounge about enjoying each other's company to special roleplay events for veterans and new players.

As a special cross-PW event, I'd like to propose that we have a player challenge, such as an around-the-world-in-80-days event where players need to acquire a piece of information or a code (gained by "checking-in" with a PW's admin/DM).  Players who achieve a certain number of these codes could redeem them for valuable cash and prizes in the participating world of their choice (e.g. XP, gp, or items of proportional worth in-game).

Ultimately, the goal is to let players know how much we appreciate them taking time out of their lives to live in our worlds.

Those who are interested can form a subgroup to determine the specifics.

So, who's in?
               
               

               

                     Modifié par BelowTheBelt, 18 juin 2012 - 07:38 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_ehye_khandee]

               We are at present busy working to bring neverwinterconnections.com back online. Once we are done with that task, I would be very interested in helping you arrange this.

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

               
            

[Legacy_BelowTheBelt]

               Excellent news, GM_ODA!  Can't wait to see the new and improved neverwinterconnections.com.  In my mind, that's like a marquee endorsement '>

I will be sketching out what I propose as the details of involvement, but would love some help and other minds to bounce ideas off of.  Any PWs interested in joining, please either PM me or post here.  Additionally, any community members interested in helping to facilitate the event, please let me know.

This could be a milestone event for not only our existing community, but also draw back previous players and even new ones if we do it right!  A couple of initial ideas are to reach out to Bioware and Steam to see if they're interested (along the idea of promotional support and help extend the support through their PR/social media channels).  It's not every day that you get a game that turns 10 and is still actively played.

Let's get behind this asap and make it knock rocks!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Wall3T]

               count me in! im a player and a modder so i will fully support this! just tell me more of what we need to do and ill see what i can do
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_acomputerdood]

               Dalakora (dalakora.com) will participate in this event.

my first thought after reading the outline of what you were planning was instead of just "checking in" with a DM on the module, that i would "hide" an item/placeable/something somewhere on the server for a player to find.  we run easter egg hunts a lot and they're quite well received.

anyway, i thought it would be placed somewhere that's findable for a new character, maybe only an hour or so of "work" to get to it?  it would be good to encourage participants to invest an hour or two into a new server to really get a taste for it.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Mystic79]

               We have just recently finished building a pw server Netheril Rising and would be happy to participate in this event. So just let us know what we need to do or what help you might need and we will do what we can.
If you need to have a chat about details or anything we can be found at #netherilrising on the darkmyst irc server. Or see our forums at www.netherilrising.com, look forward to speaking with you all.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_BelowTheBelt]

               oOKyeOo, acomputerdood, and Mystic79: Welcome to the team, guys! Thanks for joining up with me and GM_ODA.

The most important thing right now is getting as many people involved as possible. So, your task is to help solicit any and all community members to join the movement. We don't just need PW admins and DMs (though we do need them - as many as possible), but we also need the players, content creators, developers...the entire community to be involved.

Why? While the 'events' will be primarily for the players, the true benefit of NWPAD will be to increase awareness of NWN1, strengthen the existing community, and drive new players. If this happens, everyone benefits - the life of the game is extended, the PWs get more players, the demand for custom content increases, more single-player mods get played, and there's more community discussion. In short, this is about using the 10th anniversary of the game to launch a PR offensive that culminates with the celebrations during those 2 weeks.

How will we do this? By leveraging our individual networks (facebook, websites, blogs, twitter accounts, myspace pages, etc...) to make NWPAD and Neverwinter Nights as visible as possible to the people who are most likely to be interested in the game. 

I've set up a project page here to discuss and formulate just exactly what NWPAD looks like and get us coordinated. But, the immediate need is to raise awareness among the existing community and get people signed-up and committed to supporting the idea.
Project Homepage
Project Discussion Board

As of now, there are only 4.weeks to plan and launch the awareness-generating activities and 6 weeks until the event. There's no time to lose! If you're interested, please let us know!
               
               

               

                     Modifié par BelowTheBelt, 05 mai 2012 - 06:36 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_BelowTheBelt]

               The one, the only, NWN Podcast will be interviewing the NWPAD team this week for a show to air later May/Early June.  If you are interested in participating in the project or the podcast, please see the Project Discussion Board.
Project Discussion Board

Still looking for players, developers, and PWs to join the cause!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy__Guile]

               Outside of attracting Players / Builders to this website, I don't see the success of this thing being big....  Good Luck Anyway though!

Happy 10th B-Day NWN!

And a great huge thank you to all of the Builders & Scripters Out there!

I hope you guys can pool the community into one website that isn't Bioware's, since Bioware pretty much abandoned us anyway.. '>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par _Guile, 08 mai 2012 - 03:35 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_BelowTheBelt]

               If we don't get more community involvement, this will fail, indeed. However, I prefer to think that, given what this community has accomplished in pushing this game forward beyond what the engine was ever designed to do AND with the longevity of the community (which speaks to the passion of the community), there is NOTHING we can't accomplish if we speak with a singular collective voice.

This is something SMALL for PWs, builders, developers, creators, etc... to each individually add their voice to not only reinforcing, but BUILDING the community.

To do nothing is to accept the premise that the community's fate is foretold (that's kind of ironic given my PW is built on the premise that your PC is guided by the Fates...heh).

As Patrick Henry said in 1799, "United we stand. Divided we fall."

C'mon all! Show some support..feedback...anything!!!!
               
               

               

                     Modifié par BelowTheBelt, 08 mai 2012 - 07:38 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_BelowTheBelt]

               As a thought-starter sample for how simple it is for a world can support/participate in the events of NW Player Appreciation Days, Here's a list of how we're doing it on Arenthyor.

Here are the events that Arenthyor will be running: Arenthyor NWPAD Events
Here's a blog post we wrote: Blog Post 
Here's our forum post:  Forum Post
Our website includes headline drivers on every page to the event:  Arenthyor Homepage 

As you'll see, the message is fairly consistent

In addition, the team (kudos to acomputerdood!) is working on a placeable chest that can be dropped into your world to support the cross-world event.  We're also working on a placeable sign that can be dropped into your starting area to promote the event.  Details to follow.

We also sent out a twitter message with the hashtag #NWN.  If you have a twitter account, please start sending relevant messages about NWN and NWPAD with that hashtag.  Let's make NWN a trending topic on Twitter!  If you dont, well, it only takes about 5 minutes to create one.

Please commit your world to this important community event!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Lazarus Magni]

               The upcoming 10 year anniversary of a game that has given us all so much enjoyment is certainly worth celebrating. I am not sure what involvement Av3 would have in this event (I am not even sure exactly how it is supposed to work), but I say cheers to the idea, and thanks to bioware and the nwn community for years of enjoyment.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_BelowTheBelt]

               Lazarus Magni - thank you for your comment and I appreciate that it may not be 100% clear how to participate and what would be required.


So, to make it perfectly clear, a PW's involvement is simple:


1)  During the dates of June 18 - July 3, run DM-led events for your players.   You're probably already doing this.  The difference is that (see my post above), you schedule them and let players know that these events are coming and will be part of NWPAD.  How many events and the type of events are completely up to you.  If you look at my events page, you'll see a mix of OOC social events, RP quests, and Games are planned.

2)  Consider participating in the cross-world event.  What is that?  Well, its something designed to get you new players.  How?  By incentivizing players to visit multiple worlds to "check-in".  We've created a placeable chest and 2 scripts that when opened, gives a PC a random code item (based an existing palette item) and writes their info to a logfie.  We'll collect this data from participating worlds at the end of the event and rank players with the highest number of 'check-ins'.  Those who exceed certain threshold number of checkings will be able to redeem a "prize" at the participating world of their choice (something appropriate to your world:  gold, xp, subrace approval, item, etc...) 

3)  Help get the word out.  Getting new players for your world means letting as many people as possible know about the event and sparking their interest.  What does this mean?  We will outline a very specific plan about what our key messages will be, how to distribute them, and when to distribute them so as to make this as painless as possible for you.

4)  Let us know that your world will participate so that we can help promote your world.  The PR for this event will be beginning a couple weeks in advance of the actual event (so in early June).  If you want your world to get some free publicity, commit asap as we develop our messages.

That's it and yes, it's that simple.  At the very least, you will be strengthening your existing playerbase by taking the time to thank them for playing on your server.  At best, we will attract new and lapsed players back to the game, which will help ensure the longevity of the community.  There is no downside.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par BelowTheBelt, 10 mai 2012 - 03:27 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_acomputerdood]

               

2)  Consider participating in the cross-world event.  What is that?  Well, its something designed to get you new players.  How?  By incentivizing players to visit multiple worlds to "check-in".  We've created a placeable chest and 2 scripts that when opened, gives a PC a random code item (based an existing palette item) and writes their info to a logfie.  We'll collect this data from participating worlds at the end of the event and rank players with the highest number of 'check-ins'.  Those who exceed certain threshold number of checkings will be able to redeem a "prize" at the participating world of their choice (something appropriate to your world:  gold, xp, subrace approval, item, etc...) 

i've created an .erf with an advertising sign, prize claim chest, and a script to give out the code entries.  download it here:

http://www.dalakora....loads/nwpad.zip

just plop in the sign into the high traffic areas to inform the players about the event.

then, during the event timeframe, put the treasure chest down (either dynamically through the DM client in a new spot each day or statically in the toolset) and let the players have a treasure hunt for it.  opening the chest will spawn a prize claim code for the PC that they can take and keep as their own.  it also logs who found what and in what area to the standard log file.  these log entries will then be used to correlate in the cross world event.

alternatively, you can develop your own method of handing out prize claim codes.

after the event, you'll also want some mechanism to give out the actual prizes - i'll post how i'm going to do it on my server as soon as i figure it out myself  '>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <taking a hit...>

BelowTheBelt wrote...
1)  During the dates of June 18 - July 3, run DM-led events for your players.   You're probably already doing this.  The difference is that (see my post above), you schedule them and let players know that these events are coming and will be part of NWPAD.  How many events and the type of events are completely up to you.  If you look at my events page, you'll see a mix of OOC social events, RP quests, and Games are planned.

This is such an important part. DMed events totally rock the whole NwN universe. Seriously consider doing this, even if it's something new to you.

2)  Consider participating in the cross-world event.  What is that?  Well, its something designed to get you new players.  How?  By incentivizing players to visit multiple worlds to "check-in".  We've created a placeable chest and 2 scripts that when opened, gives a PC a random code item (based an existing palette item) and writes their info to a logfie.  We'll collect this data from participating worlds at the end of the event and rank players with the highest number of 'check-ins'.  Those who exceed certain threshold number of checkings will be able to redeem a "prize" at the participating world of their choice (something appropriate to your world:  gold, xp, subrace approval, item, etc...) 

Man! This was one of the biggest things were were planning on the old Nexus - A cross world event called "The Velvet Sky" that involved the entire Gemworlds. The idea thrills me, and I really would like to see participation and post-mortems.

Anyway, I'm quite interested in where you guys are going...

But is "incentivising" a word? ;-P

<...of prime Captain Black tobacco>