Neverwinter Nights Forum News (Nov. 8, 04)

Remove all ads!

Here are today's Neverwinter Nights forum highlights, collected by NWVault. Please take into account that these are only single parts of various threads and should not be taken out of context. Bear in mind also that the posts presented here are copied as-is, and that any bad spelling and grammar does not get corrected on our end.

Rob Bartel, Senior Designer Live Team

How many modules in the works?
We've got a bunch of additional modules in the works, both internally and externally. Keith and I are working on a pretty large-scale, exciting one right now. That said, it will take a little time to work out the kinks in the system and evolve into a finely tuned content delivery machine. One of the main hurdles we face right now is design manpower, as Keith and I have been pretty swamped with polishing up the three launch modules in time for this Wednesday's release. It's a bit of a Catch-22 because, until we can prove that there's sufficient demand for these premium modules, we don't get the new designers (and web guys and programmers and artists and... you get the picture) that will allow us to meet that demand.

Demo?
Yes, our tech guys have implemented the encryption system in such a way as to support playable demos. For this initial wave, however, the demo consists only of a brief movie directing viewers to the online store, as we weren't in a position to risk anything fancier at the time. We'll try to be a little sexier with our future modules.

Ahhhh!!!! Percentage Immunities!
On a semi-related note, I actually went in and edited the hide item properties for some of the low-level wizards' familiars to remove the damage reduction property. As the beta testers discovered, it was making those familiars pretty much invulnerable to the 1 hp of damage that the bulk of the initial enemies in Witch's Wake put out. Giving such a property to a player character would have made them similarly immune, even at the lowest power levels. So, from a testing standpoint, percentage immunities definitely won out.

RPGVault ShadowGuard first view
To my knowledge, BioWare doesn't edit its promotional screenshots after the fact. We do make an effort to put our best foot forward, however. This may involve showcasing content that we know will be of particular interest to our fans or focusing on high-contrast, high-color shots that will be thumbnail-friendly. If, at a certain point in development, particle effects aren't functioning right or some of our tiles only have temporary textures, we'll obviously avoid screenshots containing those elements. There's nothing particularly Machiavellian about it - just a committed effort to maintain high quality standards in our marketing just as we do in our games.

paying

---

Any plans to extend support to American Express cardholders? I prefer to use my AmEx online.

---

Not at this time, no. We are trying to keep our options open, however, so we have the freedom to extend the methods of payment we accept in the future, should that prove desirable. Recognize that each type of payment we accept increases the overhead costs associated with our store and complicates the payment processing that's required. If we feel that the benefits of supporting a particular payment method outweigh the costs associated with it, we will certainly consider it.

Premium Mod Content - Who gives it the OK?
None of the initial 3 modules take place within the Forgotten Realms or any other licensed setting. That said, all three modules faced three levels of scrutiny: BioWare's, Atari's, and WotC's. WotC was very happy with all of them and, in the case of these three modules, all they requested was a minor name change for one of the ShadowGuard characters. Atari, on the other hand, gave us a lot of feedback, focused primarily on bug-related issues (their QA team gave us some excellent support on these modules). Changes to core content took place primarily at the BioWare level but never because we felt something was too risque. It was more a question of addressing weak points in the stories or making some underlying rules tweaks to improve the gameplay. All in all, it was a very constructive process and bodes very well for these premium modules going into the future.

Sub Races
Yes, and also note that the Favored Classes are just recommendations based on the likely stats for a character of that subrace, unlike official Race-based Favored Classes which have in-game implications for multi-classing and XP. Note as well that true Sylvan elves do have Ranger as their Favored Class. It's the sylvan half-elves who tend more towards the bardic life, perhaps because they don't feel that the woods are fully their home.

What to play first... and with what character?
For the record, I ran a little test the other day and took my subrace-enabled character from Witch's Wake (a Sojourner Half-Orc cleric - not a subrace/class combo I'd recommend, by the way) into the Kingmaker module and, voila, the subrace stayed intact. So, for those of you who like to tweak things around like that, subrace hides ought to be a workable solution. I admittedly haven't tried it with ShadowGuard yet, though.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Sub Races

---

The additional subraces are fun, but sometimes a bit weird.

---

I think that's inherit to the Witch's Wake setting ... it's a weird world

So wait a sec, we have to pay for another module to get WW?

---

Will we have to pay for WW2?

---

yes