Neverwinter Nights Forum News

Remove all ads!

(Originally posted by chevalier)

Here are today's Neverwinter Nights forum highlights. 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, Co Lead Designer

Community expansion pack: The Live Team is very excited about the CEP and we're doing everything we can to showcase it and give it the high profile it deserves. For the record, however, the CEP is not a part of our proposed Digital Distribution project and BioWare is not directly involved in helping to create or distribute it in any way. I assume it will be made available through the Vault like everything else and it will not cost anything to download. BioWare is exploring the possibility of some form of Live Team revenue model for the future but this is not it. Phew! There, I got that off my chest. A huge thanks to the CEP team and all of the builders whose content is being showcased! All the best with your coming launch.

Further:
The CEP Team has maintained very high quality standards and worked hard to ensure that all of the 2da's, texture files, and back-end stuff plays nicely together. This is very much a 'best of the community' pack and the vast majority of it meets or exceeds the standards set by official content. While the CEP is a community initiative rather than a BioWare one, don't let that stand in the way of some really amazing content. Download it once it's available and put it through its paces. I think you'll be very pleasantly surprised.

Witch's Wake:

Quote: I was assuming that the 1st WW would CONTINUE to be free. If they decide to start selling mods of it, the possibility exists that they could yank the free version....but I doubt they'd do that.

I've been busy making a Remastered version of WW1 that brings the series up-to-date with the latest expansions, addresses some bugs, and adds in some goodies like database functionality, etc, that weren't available at the time of the original's release. WW1-Remastered will continue to be free but may be used for promotional purposes (i.e. "Buy a DD module and get WW1-Remastered free!"). To my knowledge, we have no intention of removing the original WW1 from circulation.

Witch's Wake 2: Trust me, I'm chomping at the bit as much as you are. WW2 is in development, however, and I'm pretty excited by what I've got planned for all of you.

NWN EULA: On a purely technical / legal level, I believe that the EULA grants BioWare ownership of all NWN mods. In short, that's what our lawyers make us do to keep us from getting sued for gazillions of dollars and sent off to jail in the far reaches of northern Alberta... Wait a minute - ::consults map::

On a more practical level, we'd be really stupid to ever actually handle things as such. BioWare's continued success (and the success of any potential DD initiative, especially) depends on the relationship we share with you, our fans and customers. If we abuse that relationship, we can kiss that success goodbye. I know that's kind of a wierd answer to a very normal question but I think it's a fairly accurate portrayal of our corporate philosophy here at BioWare, all the same.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Harm: It is unlikely that there will be any change to harm, as it is implemented correctly by the D&D 3E rules and server operators and builders can easily modify the spell to suit their campaign's needs.

Community Expansion Pack: That's pretty much dead on. We can't distribute community content because there is no way for us to guarantee that every single model or texture used in this content has been created by the person who submits that content. It's a legal minefield and in a world where people sue companies because they didn't think about putting a warning on that microwave or toaster that you shouldn't use it to dry your favourite pet - you can't take these risks. I am sure that the people in charge of the CEP project have done as much as possible to ensure that only original work ended up in CEP, but that's just not enough from a legal point of view. Period.

As for CEP being worthless when not distributed through the online updater - I don't think so. CEP is far more than just another combo hakpak, it's a content addon that certainly got more QA than any other community content so far. All content in it has to meet strict quality guidelines and I am sure the CEP team will maintain it and update it when a new patch comes out - that's more than you can say about your usual hakpak. All this will probably lead to a very wide acceptance by the community and thus enable module builders to use a wide range of custom content without having to worry about their players being able to get the right hakpaks together to play their module. BadF00d, if your still not see a use in CEP over the usual combo hakpak, consider this: Think about the time and technical knowledge you need to put so many different pieces of content together in a hakpak and make them play nice - that's far beyond the reach of your average module maker, in fact it's probably a multi man month job of work.

NWN support: There have been plenty of those requests, but as it stands, there are no plans do do a third expansion for NWN. There are plans however to continue support for Neverwinter, which have yet to be announced.