30 réponses à ce sujet

[simomate2]

Just curious to hear your opinions! It makes me sad that I was never part of Neverwinter Nights golden era. I mean, I did first play the game, I think 6 years ago. But I was 10, I only played the offical campagin. I never really grasp the full capabilities of NWN back then, in fact, when I did open up the toolset and had fun playing around with it, my Step Father made me turn off the computer.
Quote: "This is how you mess up computers." Replace mess with a vulgar word...

Its pretty weird that he thought that though. He was the one who got me into NWN, but all hed ever played was the original campagin. Did he not realise that the campagin's existance was only to show off what the toolset was capable of? I mean, even on the back cover, it said this game was revolutionary... basically because of the toolset. And in gave it so many opportunities, so many doors were open and the large community of NWN custom content creaters grasp these. 

"Some games are memorable, but years from now, people won't just remember Neverwinter Nights--they'll also still be playing." - That was writtern in 2002. That was in a gamespot review and well... he was right! Its been ten years and people are still playing and expanding the game! But... for how long?

I really wish this game could last forever, but it won't quite obviously. Nothing can last forever, but its sad, knowing that NWN has not... and never will reach its full potential. I really wish that this game would be given into the hands of the community, free to download. It sort of has been given to us, they discontinued it ages ago. But, though this will never happen, I want to some how get more members to our community. I mean, we do occasionally, but I want more of them...

Ahhh.... wishful thinking.... ah.....

/Rant

What do you think? How many years have we got left? 

[HipMaestro]

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.

On the positive side, though, you yourself are part of the most devoted, die-hard faction which the game produced.  I consider it a priviledge, myself, to be part of that shrunken community thus far.  I also came relatively late to the forums only about 5 years ago or so (OMG... looking at the calendar now... much longer than that... *gasp*) and believe it or not, there was a time that a topic posted in the AM could be off the screen by the PM (ppl were "post-happy"!).  Most of the action occurred before v1.69 was released and there was constant debate about every aspect of the game imaginable.

Unfortunately (for you and other NWN fans), what you are witnessing is the tail-end of an astonishing game's natural life span... a general erosion that spiked some interest briefly when it was made available by download.  The enthusiasts are now 10 years older, so using your own age as a metric, think of how things may change going from 16 to 26 and you may more easily grasp how unique this community really is to sustain those monumental changes.

The only event that (IMHO) would spark even greater activity would be if EA decided to release the source code.  I wouldn't hold my breath on that hope, though.

Not sure if what we are experiencing even now would be considered of "decent size".  Not when one was there when it was really active.  I miss a lot of personalities that never made the move, so for me anyway, it is not adequate . But that is just my own perspective.

Modifié par HipMaestro, 20 avril 2012 - 04:07 .

[Gorath Alpha]

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.

[PlasmaJohn]

EA has nothing to do with the source code. That's all Atari. Even if they were willing they couldn't because there's just too much "owned" by external sources like Hasbro/WotC.

How much time left? People will continue to play NWN until there is a true successor multiplayer CRPG with a tool or tools to easily create and add content without forking over multiple thousands of USD for proprietary tripe like 3DStudio and Granny3D.

[The Amethyst Dragon]

Introduce the game to your kids, grandkids, nieces, nephews, neighbors, etc.

Got a D&D group you used to play with, but everyone is now bogged down with childrearing or moved away? NWN is as close as you can get to PnP without actually sitting around the same table.

Got friends that played the game when it first came out and then they moved on? Show them some modules that use newer content that brings the game more up to date visually.

Got a girlfriend/boyfriend that wonders why you play all the time? Have them watch over your shoulder for more than a minute or two. Maybe they'll be interested in trying it out.

Say "Why, yes, it is an older game, but look how much you can do with it, and how many thousands of hours you can play it without forking over more than $10 one time."

I'm hoping this game keeps on running for many years to come.

The ability for independent folks to actually run the multiplayer servers means the community isn't reliant on a company keeping up a game that is no longer very profitable. The incredible toolset means creative folks can keep using it to tell new stories. The community (even slowly shrinking) means there is support for players, builders, DMs, and content makers. Oh, and the free to use content tools available means new things can always be made for use in-game.

[Knight_Shield]

Oh and dont worry about setting up a server or future hardware not running the game.
I have tried different setups .
You can use a linux OS which the game runs on or easier install on linux with wine.
I have also run it in vmware player but this you would need an old copy of xp.
Im just saying there are many options and cost is low to run a server.
I have a levelup server on virtual machine for $50 a year.

Oh and dont let me forget if you get stuck ..there is a communnity here that can get your problems solved.

[henesua]

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.

[Drewskie]

Til something comes along which can replace it which will probably never happen.

[ShadowM]

Everyone above pretty much summed it up, NWN1 just has the perfect balance between ease of use and ease to modify things and a deep hole of learning that not intimidating. Will take you 10 years to learn it all, but all though years you will be having a blast like I have. Here to another 10 years!!

[ehye_khandee]

They can have nwn back when they prize it from my cold dead hands.

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

[simomate2]

Say "Why, yes, it is an older game, but look how much you can do with it, and how many thousands of hours you can play it without forking over more than $10 one time."
.

Well, none of my friends have even heard of Neverwinter Nights to be honest, those that I tell, they usually dismiss it with "That game looks ****". Really annoys me because I like old **** looking games more then most of the new games. New games are becoming casual, easy and boring with every game, there are a few rare gems however.

I did, however, manage to convince my best friend to buy it.  Not sure if he'll like it yet for apparently he "doesn't like RPGs" even though he has hardly even tried an rpg. Ah I suppose its like how he "doesn't like Zelda games" when he didnt even realise the main protangonist never speaks....

[Empyre65]

Doom (1 and 2) is even older, and it still has a good-sized community.

[HSeldon]

I know I'll be playing this game for quite a while, as long as the hardware and operating systems support it. Unless a true successor comes along. I don't take the time to learn new games all the time and when I find a good one I stick with it. Between this game and Steel Panthers my gaming time is pretty much used up. Even if some day there are no more good PWs to play on, there is still a lifetime supply of great modules at the vault.

[rogueknight333]

People are still playing even older games (just check out the Baldur's Gate forums right below NWN's for one example), so I think we can expect some sort of community to stick around for a good long time, particularly given the lack of any newer game that offers anything like the same advantages. I stay with NWN because it allows me to do things I could not do, probably could not come close to doing, with any other game.

To be sure the current NWN community is sadly reduced from what it was in the game's heyday. I find it a bit depressing, not to mention a little mystifying, how many gamers seem to feel some sort of obligation to always move on to the latest thing, regardless of its quality. Why are so many people willing to pay top dollar for a game simply because it is new, while older games available at a fraction of the price are superior in so many respects? This does not strike me as especially rational behavior, yet it is clearly what a great many people are doing. I do not know whether it is the lure of the "shiny new toy," the desire to play what all the "cool kids" are playing, the hype and advertising that newer games benefit from, or simply that having top quality graphics is in fact as all-important as the producers of such hype want us to think. Whatever the reason for this phenomenon, NWN has suffered from it, and it would be nice if something could be done to counteract this way of thinking, not only to restore a little bit of what the NWN community once was, but also to put some financial pressure on the game companies to finally make a true successor to NWN. Though I fear that the emergence of such a successor is an impossible dream.

[Karvon]

Second much of what's already been posted. The game's just got so many different options and angles, it's hard to exhaust them all. While I prefer DM'ed campaigns myself, I do delve into SP mod's every now and again during longer vacations - especially when my SO is out of town on business and there are a lot of gems on the vault - hundreds of hours worth. As a matter of fact, working my way thru rogueknight333's Swordflight series atm; and enjoying it immensely.

The king is dead, long live the king

Karvon

[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.

[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 .

[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!

[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 .

[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.

[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 .

[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.

[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

[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 .

[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 .