Talk:Neverwinter Nights

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VG To-do:

Could you explain what Aurora and Prestige mean? Might they rate their own articles? RickK 03:46 20 Jul 2003 (UTC)

The Aurora toolkit is the name of the program used to make new modules in NWN. It has its own article, Aurora toolkit, to my knowledge.

I moved Aurora toolkit to Aurora toolset, since toolset is the actual term used by BioWare. Also, that page seems redundant as most of the information is actually right here on this page.--Goododa 07:39, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I made mention of the fact that C scripting is necessary to make full use of the Neverwinter Nights toolset, and that this is a problem for many people who *want* to create unique and large modules with good flexibility but are unable to because of unfamiliarity of C and lack of educational funds, prior computer literacy, and useful instruction in C scripting. I hope this is not considered an unbiased statement, but it could be edited to make it less biased.


Corrected a few facts about the second expansion (Only the first chapter takes place in the Undermountain, characters of level 12+ (and not 15+) are accepted.) --Random visitor.

Contents

[edit] "Original" NWN

How about we create a separate article about the original DOS-based game? It's too important to simply be a footnote. --Victor 11:19, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Add it as a seperate section for now. If it expands to the point that it has enough content that justifies it having its own article, we can break it out then. Here is some info on it (if you need it): MobyGames on the 1991 DOS NWN. — Frecklefoot | Talk 14:37, Jun 9, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] ORIGIN

I just removed this section from the article:

ORIGINS- Neverwinter Nights was oringinally a MMORPG on AOL near version 3.0 in 1991-1992. (when a month of AOL costed $11.95 for 5 hours, and $5.95 for each additional hour)
it played like many of the other sprite based games of the time, and suffered from baud lag. as 2400 baud modems had just come out and many user were still using 300 baud, and the lines themselves in over half of the US could not even support 2400 baud speeds.
"The original Neverwinter Nights is credited as being the very first "massively multiplayer online roleplaying game." It was designed by Stormfront Studios, who also had designed the "Gateway to the Savage Frontier" and "Treasures of the Savage Frontier" CRPGs for Strategic Simulations, Inc. AOL hosted the original NWN from 1991 to 1997."
http://nwn.bioware.com/players/profile_resurrection.html

for several reasons:

  1. It's not wiki-formatted and was inserted at the very end of the rest of the text.
  2. It refers to a different game, that probably just had the same name as the game in the article.

Neither of these reasons is grounds for removal, however. A copyedit can solve those problems. But I have no idea how this game is related to the game in the article. I have no idea if it is the ancestor of the game in the article or just shares the same name. If someone wants to take a shot at fixing it, noting how it relates to the current game and slapping back in the article, please do so. — Frecklefoot | Talk 15:05, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

I am familiar with it somewhat, but never played it. AOL basically had a slightly graphical MUD by the name of Neverwinter Nights. It wasn't a prequel or anything else, although they both contain similar D&D elements. I think it probably deserves its own article if anything. Not here. Maybe anecdotal mention. I believe AOL shut it down after a small time anyway--must have been real old because while I was playing the old goldbox TSR games, I saw an advertisement for ORIGIN but it was no longer running.Yeago 03:25, 25 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I took a crack at reconciling the various points here and filling in the missing data. The current NWN is called that because the original NWN ran for almost seven years, for several years was the biggest revenue generator among all AOL games, and had a fiercely loyal audience. Greg and Ray at BioWare spent the money to buy the name so they could adopt that audience, disenfranchised by AOL closing the game, as the foundation for what was a different sort of multi-player D&D game. The strong emphasis on the game player community -- where the original NWN broke a lot of new ground -- is the major stylistic link between the games, and may be what influenced the decision to build on the NWN tradition. (The BioWare and Stormfront leadership teams are friends, but that was a coincidence that came later.) NWN was not the first MMORPG, but was the first MMORPG to have graphics, as primitive as they look to our eyes today. See what you guys think of the draft. Coll7 03:55, 6 Jul 2005
I have posted the draft revision, which I arbitrarily limited to about 500 words. Could stay here or be a stand-alone. Suggestions most welcome. Coll7 05:15, 6 Jul 2005
While the games are not related in any way (ie different company, different project, different focus etc), they are both based in the same setting and location within the Dungeons and Dragons universe (ie the city of Neverwinter in the Forgotten Realms). It does put it in a grey area as to whether it is an origin, as it depends on what the definition of "origin" really is. Are we talking about the computer games which this game evolved from? (In this case you could claim that Baldur's Gate was the origin for Neverwinter Nights because the Aurora Engine was an evolution of the Infinity Engine that was used for BG), or are we talking about the content which was evolved into what we see today (In which case several games, inlcuding the old SSI games could be considered the origin as they we previous games based in the Forgotten Realms). Enigmatical 22:53, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I would think that the original AOL version of NwN is worth mentioning, since Bioware bought the name in order to lure pre-existing fans of the original. I wouldn't list all aspects of the original other than they are different games & Bioware only wanted the name. -Rayne 13:01, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Whitespace

I can't seem to fix the whitespace on this page without distorting all sorts of things. It's right below the "Description" category. If it helps, I'm running fullscreen IE6 1024x768 resolution, so I'm sure lots of people are seeing it.

The whitespace had to do with the images actually being placed in the sections. I moved them to immediately after the Infobox to allow everything to be properly spaced. -Rjo 18:15, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
Your change made the images bunch up at the top. I dispersed them throughout the article to prevent this. This is preferable anyway; it beautifies the rest of the content. :-) — Frecklefoot | Talk 20:41, August 4, 2005 (UTC)
I had not noticed that because the images were already bunched at the top for me at my resolution. Having them back in the subsections still causes IE to improperly display, so I've moved the first image to be left aligned as a semi-solution. Perhaps if someone knows of a better way to prevent IE from messing up the display, they can step forward. -Rjo 07:01, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
I spread out the images more, which should prevent the bunching you're seeing. It's not an IE problem. The problem must be that you have your browser+monitor set to a very high resolution. Any browser would "bunch" the images with so much space to fill. — Frecklefoot | Talk 14:04, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Character Articles Merge

There are several separate articles existing for a number of very minor characters from this game, which have no notability outside the game and very little detail exists for them to warrant their own articles. I've proposed to merge them in to here, possibly in some characters section. -- Lewis 14:56, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm against a merge because this article is already quite long. I suggest merging them into a separate "List of Neverwinter Nights characters" article, per Wikipedia:Notability (fiction). --Muchness 15:04, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
That's a good point, I agree, a 'list of' article would be more appropriate. -- Lewis 17:26, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Feature Article Status

I would like to see NWN make the feature article section... what would that require? --Shayan g 08:05, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User Categories to support Neverwinter Nights

For those who are interested you can now associate yourself with NWN in the following way:

  • Add {{User Neverwinter Nights}} to your user page to indicate you play Neverwinter nights --> BROKEN Lilac Soul 07:18, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Add {{user nwscript}} if you can use NWScript
  • Add {{user nwscript-1}} if you consider yourself a beginning NWScripter
  • Add {{user nwscript-2}} if you consider yourself a intermediate NWScripter
  • Add {{user nwscript-3}} if you consider yourself a advanced NWScripter
  • Add {{user nwscript-4}} if you consider yourself a expert NWScripter

Enigmatical 23:35, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Request for add'l content re: DnD 3rd Ed. rules vs. NWN

I don't play enough tabletop to be able to do it, but I would like to see a comparason and contrast of what elements of the NWN engine had to be adapted in order that the game mechanics could be satisfied. For example, I know that "parry" had to be added, but I don't know why. Will 23:45, 30 May 2006 (UTC)


This isn't an easy thing. Some rules were changed arbitrarily not because the game mechanics could not be satisfied but because Bioware made their own decision they wanted it different. Of course all changes were ratified by WoTC, but many features added were purely for their own benefit.

I can provide multiple examples of this, where the system was needlessly fudged or screwed up for reasons only the developers will ever know:

  • Not being proficient in a Weapon denies you from even wielding it, arbitrary decision just because it was easier I believe
  • Not being proficient in a type of Armour denies you from even wearing it, same as above
  • Exclusion of skills such as Sense Motive even though it counters Bluff (which was included) because they could not see it getting enough use. This contradicts several other skills such as Persuade (see below) and even Bluff where its use is directly related to developers putting it into dialogs
  • Corruption of the Diplomacy skill to be turned into Persuade
  • Total exclusion of Prestige Class spell lists, again probably because there wasn't enough time to do them (And they are still not done in NWN2 I believe)
  • Magic Missile single target only. Who knows why, other spells such as the flame arrow allowed for multiple targets but MM was left as a single target.
  • Monster Summoning spells were totally cludged to only summon 1 creature type per level. Community quickly made proper summoning tables
  • Lore skill used in place of Knowledge skills and being given to all classes as a class skill.

Rules which I can tell you have changed as a result of transferring Pen and Paper to a computer medium are as follows:

  • No Bleeding/Dying rules implemented because the rules require several hours of time. Obviously this is not feasibly in a computer game as you dont want to sit there and watch your character on the ground for 10 minutes
  • Resting and Recovery rules changed. Again if you had to wait 1 day for each 1 HP to recover you would wait forever so resting was turned into being instantaneous and thus effecting the instantaneous recovery of spells etc
  • Various other spells like Time Stop and the like were modified to reflect the difficulty in a computer environment.
  • Some Prestige Classes misssed certain benefits which were difficult to relate to a computer environment
  • Languages were excluded due to the difficulty of implementing them on a computer. Who wants to read jibberish all the time because you cannot understand the language
  • Restrictions on how your character looks obviously due to computer limitations
  • Exclusion of aging rules as adventures are generally considered to be over within the current age period of the character
  • Identification of magic items simplified and once identified anyone knows what they are. Done purely due to the difficulty of implementing any other system on a computer
  • Potions automatically identified for simplicity. No tasting required
  • Crafting was only marginally implemented due to its sheer complexity. This is being addressed in NWN2
  • No horses due to their complexity, this *was* going to be addressed in NWN2 but has now been dropped
  • No Swimming/Climbing/Jumping due to the limitations of the engine and difficulty in full implementation
  • Parry, Discipline and Taunt (I think) were added to boost the fighters lack of skills now that Swim, Climb and Jump were cut out
  • No Profession skill implemented as they didn't see a significant use for it
  • All feats which regarded skills that were not implemented were also left out
  • Restriction to only being able to select 3 classes (No such restriction exists in D&D but it becomes increasingly difficult to program the more you would allow)
  • Removal of alignment detection spells (Not sure why)
  • Familiars did not match in any way to their DnD counterparts (ie no skill bonuses from familiars)
  • Sub-races were not properly supported (You could try to script them but it wasn't easy and there was no restriction to stop you having a white skinned drow)
  • Exclusion of Escape Artist and Use Rope presumably because neither rope or binding was featured in the game


If anyone wants to add to these lists then please feel free. Enigmatical 01:11, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd suggest ignoring those lists, as the writer obviously is lacking in knowledge. Too tired to fix 'em right now though. 62.197.171.119 15:47, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Then have some sleep, grab a coffee and do me the decency of "correcting" my lack of knowledge. Its easy to say something, harder to prove it. Enigmatical 22:34, 13 June 2006 (UTC)
To my tiredness sleep hardly helps - but to begin with, the prestige class spell lists weren't possible in the phase they were implemented in (no true knowledge about this here either), Flame Arrow does NOT allow for multiple targets (only DoMissileStorm spells do, and you can't select the targets with those) (and thus would be a medium difference, seeing only PS:T allows for multiple targets and it does it by pausing, something unacceptable in a multiplayer enviroment), Bleeding/Dying/Resting are scriptable based on the module (which means they're things in the module, not NWN itself), Parry and Discipline go into the "WTF is this total fuckup about?"-category, potions aren't automatically identified (but use the magic item identification system), the missed prestige classes were due to all the work involved (you can still get almost all by installing the PRC pack), Horses... well, that'll change... yadda yadda yadda yadda [insert more text without paragraphs]. I'm sure ATheK will correct me if he looks here. 62.241.248.211 18:21, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Well of all the points I mentioned and all the answers you gave you covered less than 50% of the list and in some cases it was purely "subjective". The person asked for what the differences were, not "what differences could there be if we wrote our own scripts or used the HCR ruleset, or we use the PRC hak or various other haks". The blueprints for potions were already identified and thus unless you specifically created your own potion and set the checkbox to make it unidentified then it was "automatically identified". It totally ignored the DnD 3.5E rules on identifying potions which required testing. So please... you show less knowledge on the subject than you think. Go get more sleep. Enigmatical 22:27, 15 June 2006 (UTC)
Well, NWN is not just the OC's. If there was the distinction made between "Neverwinter Nights" and "Neverwinter Night's Original Campaign", it'd be much easier to say what's different. Besides, if I cover almost 50% of the list, that IS a good reason to say the whole list should definately be checked. 83.102.88.134 19:49, 16 June 2006 (UTC)
Actually your suggestion was to throw the lot out because I didn't know what I was talking about. You covered less than 50% which means you couldn't even substanciate your claims and even now still cannot. More sleep required. Enigmatical 23:01, 18 June 2006 (UTC)
If I was suggesting throwing it out, wouldn't I just have edited it out? It DOES require significant fact-checking, and thus should be ignored by anyone actually looking for facts. Now get a brain and quit trolling. Taza insane 14:24, 20 June 2006 (UTC)
Discussion ends here, all that followed was repeating of the same points Taza insane 14:23, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Help

I tried to add a reception section and a link to a Gamespot review, but when I did, it caused everything below the reception section to not show up. Look at my edits in the article's history to see what I mean.--Rouge Rosado 23:17, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

The slash in your end ref tag was in the wrong place. It was like this: <r/ef>, but should be like this: </ref>. Icey 11:26, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. It's working now.--Rouge Rosado Oui? 16:36, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] prelude

I don't remember any members of the undead appearing in the hall- they only appear later after you get close to the guy that levels you up.
Signpostmarv 04:10, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps you played online @ a modded version of the Prelude???
-Rayne 13:22, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Multiplayer

Perhaps I'm just dense, but this bullet point seemed needlessly obscure and completely unexplained:

"These exploits were gradually eliminated as NWN version patches crept past v.1.28. Today, very few exploits exist at all. However, Zurc's legacy is upheld by the makers of Leto, a scripting tool created by Team Leto led by Dragonsong."

Who is Zurc? What was his legacy? Did I miss something while reading this article?Lee.crabtree 19:59, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

looked like gabble to me; I removed it chrisboote 14:47, 10 October 2007 (UTC)
As a long time player of the game, I think I can clarify on this matter. Way back when the game was in its prime, there was a certain guy by the name of Zurc Blackstar. Utilizing a number of tricks that took advantage of erroneous values hard coded into the game, he made hacked equipment for characters widely available for anyone to use. He was, in essence, a legend of sorts among the area server community. His stuff is probably still floating around to this day, although the uber arena servers were never really the same after the release of Hordes of the Underdark. It should be of note that his equipment was used not only for fights on arena servers, but also attacks on roleplaying servers where said hacked equipment could end up killing everyone on a single server. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.189.44.48 (talk) 05:06, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
It's true, I knew Zurc (Player name). Actually he and a few others were pretty notorius for bypassing legit/legal setting screens, hacking items & being able to crash servers on demand. Zurc indeed left a legacy, especially with the hacking/modding servers.
Rayne 13:20, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bloodspell

Maybe a link to Bloodspell is appropriate? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.167.93.225 (talk) 10:23, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Manos references

On August 29 last year, I added to the article that it has a couple of references to Manos: The Hands of Fate, but this was deleted. Why? It seems likely. User:Gmeric13@aol.com —Preceding comment was added at 23:47, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

I think I recall finding a book in the game that had that title... But I can't remember if that was in a customized online mod or in the single player campaign... -Rayne 13:45, 29 January 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.208.93.60 (talk)

[edit] Since When was it 72

Im fairly sure the max that can be on a server is 64, not 72 as it is stated in the article, I shall change it to 64. From what I know, there was a server at once time, where the server admin altered the server app to post the max value of 64 as a higher number, eg 99. He did this via memory editing programs such as cheat engine. But there is no evidence to suggest that his server actually handled over 64 players, since no one logged in, I would assume, that the server would still only handle 64 max, and that it was only altered to appear like more than 64. Baaleos (talk) 08:53, 30 April 2008 (UTC)