Neverwinter Nights Forum News (Oct. 30, 04)

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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.

Jay Watamaniuk, Community Manager

A comment and a question.
I will one up that by saying that I would be surprised if Dragon Age did not make use of the store in some way. With the amount of resoures spent on getting the doors on it opened I expect we will find nifty ways to use it.

Hour of Gameplay.
Due to the ninja-like reaction time of certain other community members I have nothing to add. Khaaaaan! I agree that RPG fans are used to a much longer game and that idea will be covered when one has reached the end of the series. For example I have no idea how long the WW series (and I do call it a series) will be but I expect the price vs gameplay + new content will be well worth it. Again, as with the price discussion going on here it it up to players to decide if they are worth it. I expect the initial reviews will be able to point people in a direction. I will add from my completely non-objective point of view that having played some truly excellent community modules and the modules that we will be selling the differnce in QA, VO and standard is quite apparent. It is not that the store modules are more creative than a community module it is the fact it has had professional attention at every level.

What to do with BW new income?
I guess I have a different view of the money that actually comes in the door after contracts with our various publishing partners are met. First, I would be pleased to see some return on the massive investment of cold hard cash that the store project has cost thus far. You must remember that projects like these do not spring from the earth ready-made. It has been the closest thing to the development of game I have been directly involved with without the big marketing push to ensure sales. I must say it will be nice to see what the sales figures are like, whatever they may be, for something that has been part of my day for the last 14(?) or so months. So although the fancy-boy coffee for China sounds groovy- I want to see the trust that the guys who run this company placed in the web and marketing teams to make this work justified. And that, as Mr. Trump says, is the real deal.

Rob Bartel, Senior Designer Live Team

Bioware's official PW? (maybe off-topic)
For the record, I have prepared a design document for a potential NWN-based semi-persistent world that, if developed, could be distributed as a BioWare Premium Module at some point down the road. The idea would be something similar to the 'Land of Nordock' module in that it would be available for anyone to host rather than being restricted to BioWare-run servers (though we could still choose to run a small 'official' server). That idea is presently on the back shelf as we have higher-priority modules that we'd like to make first. If there's sufficient interest and demand for such a module, however, it's conceivable that we could take it down off that shelf and proceed with it. Persistent worlds are not officially supported by BioWare at this time and we have no interest in creating a large MMORPG along the lines of EverQuest. It's clear, however, that there's at least some degree of interest in this kind of functionality within the BioWare community. If this notion of premium modules is successful, perhaps it will give the Live Team sufficient breathing room to start exploring these ideas in greater detail in the future.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Additional Content For These Mods!

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"Rob has said previously that a full tileset would be beyond the scope of the Live Team but hopefully a few reskins, microsets or new groups/features aren't out of the questions. Plus you have to wonder what DLA spent all summer doing ... "

Of course, that's when what the Live Team was doing was free for us. Now, with these pay to play mods, said Live Team might have the dough to cover stuff like this.

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Depending on how well it goes, yes, that's a possiblity.

Great idea but just a tad TOO expensive

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Speaking of professional speakers... Better no speakers than bad speakers!!! I hope bioware doesn't synchronize these modules to german. I know the german version of NWN. These speakers have to be professionals, because an average person probably whould make a bad synchronisation, but to make a synchronisation as bad as the german NWN, you need long years of hard training:evillol:.

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I'm german and I have suffered the german versions of many games in the past, so believe me, I am poking people with sticks here when localization starts on projects. That said, I have heard some of the VO for the german version of Jade, and it's really promising But back to topic - there are no plans for localization for these modules as of now, cost is prohibitive. If the whole thing goes really well, I'm sure the Live Team would reevaluate that decision.

Hour of Gameplay.
My take: If you buy adventures/modules for pen and paper D&D, you also have the choice between the "Temple of Elemental Evil", "Desert of Desolation", "Dragon Mountain" and "Castle Grayhawk" kind of ultra mega huge module, not unlike an expansion pack - and you can buy smaller, more focused adventures as well (i.e. the later DL- books). Some of the smaller ones would be stand alone, other would connect in a great campaign. The larger ones are/were (it's been a while) around 30-50$ depending on contents, size, etc, the smaller around 5-15$ and especially with 3/3.5E, you can buy a lot of shorter modules directly from the authors via the internet as pdf. The premium modules use a similar system - they are not as huge as HotU or SoU, but they have offer decent gameplay hours for their price, plus replayability.

That said, there is an unhealthy fixation on "gameplay hours" in the industry, unhealthy because this is a very subjetive term. I needed around 80 hours to play through KotOR, my brother could do it in 50, and some people in QA can do it in 15 or maybe less.

More:

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How do game developers/publishers/marketers/whoever determine how many hours of play the game will have? How was it done for NWN/SoU/HotU?

I suspect there's not a well-defined process...but, maybe I'll be surprised.

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You can track the hours people in your company / qa / focus testers need for the first playthrough and then average this. But there is no well defined scientific process for determining gameplay hours.

This is what we wanted right?

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I must say that I am totally happy with it yes. My only concern is in the protection too. Say if the whole project is doomed to fail and BW takes the authentication server off line then I wont be able to play Kingmaker anymore booohooohooo (and now I hope its really that good as I hope)

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It's the same server that powers NWNs multiplayer games. We would not take it down as a result of this project failing.

Stanley Woo, Quality Assurance

My two cents too!

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1) The fact that I need a LIVE internet connection for me is a problem. I am (or try to be) a very secure person and my main gaming machine it not connected in anyway to the internet. I would much rather have a cd-key or some other off-line solution to work for these.

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As was posted in a couple of other threads, internet connection is only required inasmuch as it is required for multiplayer NWN games: connection everytime a module is begun or loaded only.

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Quote: 2) This one may be more important. I have learned much of my module building from not only the knowledge of the community, but also by the examples given to us through the OC and expansion modules. NOW before anyone deals the piracy card I want to say I understand the whole reason for these security issues and my intent would never be to pirate these mods. I just believe that many people purchase NWN to use all its resources and to limit them by offering something to buy that you can not open in the toolset to LEARN troubles me.

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As was posted in a couple of other threads, we may be distributing (for free) some of the new content via the regular channels like BioWare Wednesday.

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Quote: Now for the positive (I think). I hope that these modules do sell for Bioware because otherwise our support may drop due to cost it continued support. However at least for me at this moment it time, and features being limited as they are, I can not justify the cost or money without the features. Thanks for letting me rant.

AWAS

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Thank you for your comments, Awas. I hope you will eventually be able to pick up one of the modules. They're great!

Who came up with the name ShadowGuard?
I see names these days trending more towards the "Noun of Place" format: Shadows of Amn
Tales of the Sword Coast
Knights of the Old Republic
Jade Empire: Seventeen Traces of Boise, ID
Dragon Age: The Colour of Georg's Pants

 

Have they started working or something?