136 réponses à ce sujet

[Lazarus Magni]

It sure seems like it. 

1)      Halting premium modules.

A) Actually this had little effect, since the community was already, and continued to produce equal if not better content.

2)      Shutting down the master server and the forums.

Again the community bounced back by putting out their own security systems and omnibus to access previous forum info. However the damage was done, and continues to be.

3) The apparent attempted shut down of the nwn vault, nwnconnections, and associated sites? The timing of these events just seemed way to coincidental to me.

C) Once again the community bounced back. Restoring these on their own as best they could.

4) Allowing subversive forum posts on the nwn 1 boards.

D) Allowing interests from other games (e.g. WOW) to exert their agenda on nwn 1 boards, constitutes complicity toward their agenda, and a willful abandonment of NWN 1.

5) Discontinued support from gamespy to the built in multiplayer functionality. 
 
It seems like the gaming industry wants NWN 1 to go away, and yet we are still here. We, the players (including developers, and PW owners) love this game. What I ask for is that the original developers acknowledge the amazing thing they put out, and hopefully gaming companies can see it as an opportunity rather than a threat.
 
The potential of unleashing your player’s/consumer’s creativity is unlimited. Let us exercise our creativity. Don’t just let us, but foster it. I am absolutely convinced it could be in everyone’s best interest (e.g. the players, the developers, and the gaming companies) if done correctly.

That being said, the community has an amazing capacity to keep this game alive despite the blows it has recieved.

Modifié par Lazarus Magni, 26 mars 2013 - 11:49 .

[NWN_baba yaga]

I remember Trent Oster words like he realy loved or still loves nwn and so I think many of the original crew members feel about this gem of a game. It´s part of their life:) But that Atari had an agenda against it is clear to me... with their announcement of nwn2 and their force against any official support or future development of it. They had nothing to lose from the premium module concept! The same fate shared nwn2 with the disastrous "support" for MoW etc.... they surely kicked some a** with their style of business.

But that EA and Bioware still keeps up these forums is very cool, they dont need to. And i dont want to bash them:D

I always wondered why many gaming sites promoted halflife mods on a regular basis but not some of the realy good and outstanding nwn mods. I dont remember any mod except the premium ones that got some attention. So for gaming sites nwn must have been a niche game for d&d nerds:D . And it is the most modable game (to me) till today...

Modifié par NWN_baba yaga, 08 novembre 2012 - 08:00 .

[PlasmaJohn]

Why do you keep refloating this tired theory every few months?

There is no conspiracy against NWN and there never was.  Its commercial support crumbled when the relationships between Infogrames (Atari), Hasbro and Bioware disintegrated.  The EA acquisition of Bioware made the latter's involvement officially impossible because NWN is a competitor's product.

That said, Bioware's support has gone well above and beyond the industry norm and EA has been uncharacteristically gracious by allowing these forums to remain.  We've gotten so much value out of the NWN platform that EA and Bioware don't owe us a thing.

I applaud your energy in trying to have certain issues addressed, but you'd have a better return if you use them to find somebody to help you with your technical issues.

[Lazarus Magni]

It just seems sad to me. There still has been no game like this produced since. And it is disheartening that such an amazing model for a game, which gives us players such freedom to express creativity, share, and experience collectively it in a multiplayer format, was seen as a bad thing by the gaming industry. When in reality, it could have been a very good thing for them.

[PlasmaJohn]

Lazarus Magni wrote...

... And it is disheartening that such an amazing model for a game ... was seen as a bad thing by the gaming industry. ...

Ah, now there's something I can relate to.  Almost all of the big publishers are publically traded and like every other "big" corporation they pretty much live quarterly report to quarterly report.  If they can't demonstrate that they're doing everything they can to extract a revenue stream from their consumers then they risk shareholder lawsuits.

They're all busy chasing WOW killers, shiny FPS derivatives and Madden $next_year. Things they know will sell millions of units to the 18-35 male demographic.

The addiction to quarterly earnings affects more than just the games industry and people are starting to realize the damage it's doing to corporate management.  Sooner or later it will end and the focus will shift back to making products and services that people want.  Until that happens innovation will be left to the Indies.

If you look around you will find a variety of NWN like projects but for the most part they're in perpetual alpha/beta state with no clear plan to make them end-user friendly.  ( I keep meaning to see what the Worldforge guys are up to www.worldforge.org/ )

Modifié par PlasmaJohn, 08 novembre 2012 - 09:34 .

[leo_x]

Betteridge's law of headlines

What do you propose as a way forward, Lazarus?  Or is this just an airing of grievances?  Bioware will _never_ revisit the NWN model.  Look at Dragon Age 3, they've moved to the Frostbite 2 engine which not only doesn't have a toolset, it's been actively hostile to any modding.  The question of whether or not Bioware is headed for the glue factory is itself an open question: Mythic, Victory Drop 'BioWare' Label.  I'm personally pessimissitc about any NWN Enhanced Edition, since the whole Baldur's Gate EE thing looks like a lead baloon to me.

I think an interesting question is, could the NWN community rally around an open source reimplementation (that didn't limit itself by the most poorly done aspects of NWN)?  People in the community have the skill, there is no question of that.  The question that remains: "Is it worth it?"

Modifié par pope_leo, 08 novembre 2012 - 11:15 .

[NWN_baba yaga]

I also think it comes down to what we as the community make of it. Since the support ended everything was done by us to keep it going or enhance it and that is a very good sign for a community. I focus on what we have achieved and not what others could have done better etc. We have proved over many years now that we dont seriously need anything other then our dedication and creativity.

[henesua]

pope_leo wrote...
I think an interesting question is, could the NWN community rally around an open source reimplementation (that didn't limit itself by the most poorly done aspects of NWN)?  People in the community have the skill, there is no question of that.  The question that remains: "Is it worth it?"

I agree that this is the most interesting question.

[Pstemarie]

Wow, NWN Conspiracy Theorists - might they one day become as famous (or infamous) as other Conspiracy Theorists?

[cds13]

I think that is marketing after all, maybe they didn't expect all of this success but are focusing their efforts in order to build games that can actually size with other software houses' creations. Simply they want us to buy their new games, I think

[SHOVA]

Conspiracy or no, the community is active, PWs are popular, New content is being made, and people are still posting here. NWN will continue to be here for along time, regardless of how many Conspiracy posts are made.

[PlasmaJohn]

I took a quick poke at Worldforge last night.  I was finally able to get it to launch, but it's still very rough.  It doesn't have a toolset but I think somebody's working on one for it.

While grabbing the files for it, Sourceforge suggested the Multiverse Foundation  That's interesting because the codebase was formerly commercial.  More toys to play with

[Lazarus Magni]

pope_leo wrote...

Betteridge's law of headlines

What do you propose as a way forward, Lazarus?  Or is this just an airing of grievances?  Bioware will _never_ revisit the NWN model.  Look at Dragon Age 3, they've moved to the Frostbite 2 engine which not only doesn't have a toolset, it's been actively hostile to any modding.  The question of whether or not Bioware is headed for the glue factory is itself an open question: Mythic, Victory Drop 'BioWare' Label.  I'm personally pessimissitc about any NWN Enhanced Edition, since the whole Baldur's Gate EE thing looks like a lead baloon to me.

I think an interesting question is, could the NWN community rally around an open source reimplementation (that didn't limit itself by the most poorly done aspects of NWN)?  People in the community have the skill, there is no question of that.  The question that remains: "Is it worth it?"

It depends on what you are talking about for a way forward. If you speaking about NWN 1 specifically: Bringing back the master server would be a start. There is a petition here for that, which has received nearly 100 signatures:
http://social.biowar...13928357-1.html
 
Bringing back premium modules would also be something. Not only would it reward player’s creative endeavors, but would be a way for continued revenue for Bioware from this game (the absence of which I firmly believe is the main reason for the current state of things over the last couple years, and especially the last year or so.) Additionally buying out a high quality and low cost hosting company, could be a means for further continued revenue.
 
I know, I know. They can’t or won’t do these things for this reason, or that reason, which we have discussed ad nauseam
 
Ultimately I don’t know if there is much of a way forward, other than just limping along as we have been. If there is, it would probably ultimately come from the community collectively (e.g. the 10 year anniversary NWPAD event which received absolutely no promotion or endorsement from Bioware.)
 
 
 
If your talking about a new game following in the NWN 1 legacy (no not franchise, I mean the precedent it set as a free to play, nearly open source, single and multiplayer game.) Much has been discussed by many people here:
http://social.biowar...13633358-1.html
 
It would take a few things.
 
1)      Learning from the lessons of NWN 1. Those being:

a)      Keep the franchise in your own house.
      Think about the long term goals, no just quarterly earnings as PlasmaJohn noted. In other words, think about the long term revenue potential and how this could be achieved. (There are a number of possibilities that have been mentioned: Offering a hosting service as good or better than commercial alternatives, and more affordable. Continued support of premium modules and endorsement/promotion of them. Official PWs [with out excluding player made ones]. And one that hasn’t… don’t be so quick to move on to a sequel. WoW hasn’t done it yet, and they are still doing fine, which proves, you don’t need to upgrade to a new car if your still getting good mileage of your existing one. Fear of, oh we have to capitalize off the franchise name while gamers still remember it was disproved by Fallout [e.g. look at how long it took between Fo2 and Fo3. And then look at what happened when it went from Fo3 to NV.]
c)      Adequate initial and sustained marketing… WoW still runs commercials for example. People might think how could you justify running a commercial for a 10 year old game… Well, those people I think are overlooking the allure of a game that can be molded by the player, and especially one in a multiplayer format (like NWN 1.) Even after all the expansions have been released and promoted, how do you think gaming consumers would respond to seeing an ad for a game that was promoting community contributed content? Like wow… Not only is the original game awesome, but it could be a creative outlet that is shared in a multiplayer format, and is endorsed my the original company.
d)      Probably the most difficult thing of all for a company. Recognizing that long term sustained profit, even if it is not on the level of WoW’s, is still profit, and still has worth.

2) ???

Modifié par Lazarus Magni, 09 novembre 2012 - 07:16 .

[PlasmaJohn]

I poked around the Mutiverse Foundation's site today and was reminded that there were technical reasons why I discounted the platform in the past. The core technology is Axiom which is a .Net port of the Ogre3d engine. Simply put, that makes it unsuitable for cross-platform compatibility.

*... resumes the never-ending search*

[Drewskie]

Atari did pretty much everything they could to stifle development of NWN1 by killing off the premium mod program. They very nearly even stopped Wyvern Crown's release, after the community/bioware had invested massive amounts of work in it. So it's a shame Atari didn't dissolve entirely when they filed for bankruptcy a fear years back, as it was much deserved.

I've very little respect for wotc either... refusing any nwn mod work to be done within the planescape or dragonlance settings, as if there were versions of these in the works, or on the market to begin with... Don't even know what they're trying to do currently. Looks like they're after the nostalgia buck, re-releasing 30+ year old 1ed materials.

[NWN DM]

Lazarus Magni wrote...

It sure seems like it. 

...

3) The attempted shut down of ... nwnconnections ...

Not sure where you're pulling all this from but it might be time for a safety wipe.

[Lazarus Magni]

In case you hadn't been paying attention over the last year or so, but many of the prominent NWN 1 sites (like the vault, and connections) were (and possibly still are) near (or over the brink) of collapse. Might be time to wash your own hands...

Modifié par Lazarus Magni, 10 novembre 2012 - 12:31 .

[MrZork]

LM, your statement 3) above clearly implies that there was an attempt to shut down some NWN sites, and you specifically named the Vault and nwnconnections. So, what direct evidence is there that someone attempted to shut them down? Obviously, such evidence would exclude unintended technical glitches which limited access or upgrades that took time to finish.

And, maybe there was such an attempt and I never heard of it. But, it would be wrong to conflate sites that suffer degraded functionality due to inattention or lack of upgrades with sites where a deliberate actor is actually attempting to shut them down.

[Lazarus Magni]

You are right, I have no direct evidence. Only a suspicion based off the timing of events. Only the site owners would be able to answer that. I guess I should have phrased 3 as a question, and I will edit it accordingly. My apologies Bioware. But I would still like to know, was there a concerted effort to kill this game off? And if not it would be great to hear someone from Bioware say:

Absolutely not, we still love this game, and are proud of it’s longevity and continued relevance, as well as the communities continued interest.

And give us some explanation for the wall of silence we have received from them since shortly after the master server went down, when they kinda just left us all hanging with promises of working on the issue which never came to fruition.

I really don’t think it’s too much to ask for a definitive decision regarding the MS, announced publicly or at least a long overdue update, and an indication from them they want to see the community remain strong, and continue. And don’t give me that, silence was the answer malarkey, or having these forums as an indication of their support (these forums are for every game they ever made, to not include NWN 1 would be really weird to say the least.) Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the forum access, heck my PW’s group is here, despite offers for free hosting from other sites. All I would like to see is an assurance from them that they still support our/their community, and are willing to be open and honest with us as to the status of things.

Modifié par Lazarus Magni, 11 novembre 2012 - 07:29 .

[NWN DM]

Neverwinter Connections ran for years with the "owner" essentially being 98% absent, only showing up when something went wrong. Finally (so the message was), he lost access to the host server and after 10+ years didn't want to go through the hassle of moving it.

So some other people took what was there and tried to make it functional again. That it's been a WIP for at least 15 months now, doesn't give me a lot of hope that it will ever return even at a fraction of the greatly diminished stature it once had... but the attempt is/was there.

Nothing to do with BioWare, Atari or any other incompetent/nefarious happenings involved.

[ehye_khandee]

NWN DM wrote...

So some other people took what was there and tried to make it functional again. That it's been a WIP for at least 15 months now, doesn't give me a lot of hope that it will ever return even at a fraction of the greatly diminished stature it once had... but the attempt is/was there.

No offense but there is some misinformation there that I would like to clear up. Moving NWC has been a WIP since slate spring of 2012 - work went on hiatus during the summer months for two reasons, we needed many users with many browsers and OSs to try out the parts we completed in 'Phase One' and because summer electricity is a dicey matter for our Lead Programmer who lives on the isle of Cyprus (a generation plant that produced half the islands' electricity was destroyed last year and the islanders use of air conditioning in the summer months puts the whole isle on roving brownouts (bad for computers and internet connections).

"Phase One" looked after the essential unique feature of the neverwinterconnections.com site : the game scheduling portion and the highly linked and essential listing of NWN and NWN2 servers. Phase One was completed successfully before the power became too awful in the early summer.

Erin and I are presently reviewing all the feedback we recieved during the summer hiatus and are preparing to begin 'Phase Two' which will include scratch-coding and re-connecting the old forum and several other features, some of which are NEW (details TBA).

We look forward to restoring the remaining functions of neverwinterconnections.com in the next few weeks. The site in its current condition is available at:

neverwinterconnections.com

Anyone interested in helping us with debugging and testing NWC please see:

social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/199/index/10808444

Be well. Game on!
GM_ODA
66.232.100.90 cep2.1+

playnwn.com

[kamal_]

In the nwn2 forums, the new people running neverwinterconnections.com put up a thread (thread by nwn1 PW runner ehye_khandee)
http://social.biowar.../index/12655490

I can't find them, but there were also threads by ehye_khandee explaining what happened with neverwinterconnections.com

[HipMaestro]

It's systematic dismantling if you are referring to the normal obsolescence process that legacy games encounter in the egaming cycle.  NWN has stretched that cycle farther out than could have been realistically expected.  Considering the community has been flying solo for so long without a binding agency to set a unified direction, its peristence in any form at all is remarkable.

Just like in RL, when there are fewer participants available, the responsibility to continue the same degree of service falls on a scant few, who if they become absent for any RL issues, their efforts (or lack) are conspicuously noticeable by whatever is left of the community to observe the consequences.  Those members commanding these legacy stations are the most devoted and enthusiastic NWNers left since the game and its resources are no longer deemed a marketable commodity by the game ownership and has received no support for many years now.  I am constantly amazed at how the community continues to shoulder the weight of continuing service regardless of personal extenuating circumstances.

On the positive side of the ledger, name any game that has persisted with any level of significant interest after 10 years and we can forward the award over to them.  None occur to me off-hand. 

[Shadooow]

Why is absence of master server any issue? Due to this, nobody needs to buy this game to play it anymore so this could actually increase players playing NWN hehe.

Also, what do we need Bioware for anymore? We have skills to make amazing content. There is just a small problem that the NWN community is not able to agreed on what should be and what shouldn't be. My attempt to further patch this game is clear evidence. Not only this project took no support from NWN vault, NWNWiki, CEP or whatever, it has been and still is slandered by the PW admins out there. Neither NWN wiki provides correct informations, seems like The Krit is systematically writing falsehoods.

So this is imo the main problem in this time. We can make even the fourth expansion, but the community never agrees whether it should look like CEP2 or like Project Q. What should be the standards and what shouldn't.

Nobody cannot really stop us and future players from playing this game. Why you need support of the bioware to play/host your module Lazarus is mystery to me.

Modifié par ShaDoOoW, 11 novembre 2012 - 10:26 .

[ehye_khandee]

Shadooow, You will note, the community did not come to any concensus for the production of ANY nwn expansion. Choose your own route and stop worrying what others say/do. Ducks do not march goosestep, ya know?

Be well. Game on.
GM_ODA