Neverwinter Nights Forum News

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(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.

Georg Zoeller, Designer

Shadows: When running of batteries, your notebook switches to power preservation mode, usually slowing down your CPU (at least if it's equipped with Intel Speedstep technology) and probably the performance of other components of your machine as well. Shadows are pretty expensive in NWN (especially when turning the option to max shadows) as your computer has to track the shadows generated by to 8 lightsources

Item crafting: It really depends on the setting you are playing in. Like many other features, we added item crafting because it was often requested by the community and not necessarily because we needed it for the official HotU campaign, where it isn't too useful - with the exception of appearance modification and dye options.

Craig Welburn, Live Team Programmer

Inventory bug: Our stance on this issue as has been stated before, is that its a bug (and a highly annoying one at that). The bug has been fixed internally and the fix will be in the upcoming patch. Out of curiosity, what did you think our stance on it was? You can work around the problem in the meanwhile, by always closing containers by clicking on the "close" button before closing your inventory. The problem occurs if you close your inventory by pressing 'i' or esc while you have a container open. If the problem occurs to you, closing your inventory and reopening it "should" make your items reappear.

David Gaider, Designer

Expansion Packs:

Quote: This boggles my mind as how can the SIMS have 7 expansions packs and yet my beloved NWN have only 2

Well, if you check out the sales charts you'll see that half of the top 10 PC game sales is STILL full of the Sims and its various expansions. That makes the Sims a sales phenomenon... you really can't compare it to NWN. As for future stuff, we say "at this time" because we don't want to close any doors for ourselves. Why say definitely no? As far as supporting NWN goes in the future, Bioware has always said it's committed to supporting the game until it seems unreasonable to continue doing so. HotU sales figures aside, there's only so long we can support continued efforts (longer if the download scheme works out, as then the Live Team has sales to justify its existence)... but keep in mind that an active community has a certain amount of worth to us, too. We're not going to drop NWN all of a sudden if there is still an active community interested in it. One should not have the same expectations as one would for a massively-multiplayer online game, however... there's not going to be lots of content or quick patches rolling down the aisle anymore, but that does not mean we've lost interest ourselves.

Further:

Quote: What do MMOGs have to do with quick patches or content rolling out the aisles? All too little, that's what.

What I mean by that is that MMORPG's have a constant income and can afford to maintain a large team that patches constantly and adds new content. Indeed, paying money each month one might very well demand that this be the case. I simply think that we have supported NWN (outside of the expansions) at a similar level, sans monthly fee, and that has fostered an unrealistic expectation in some folks that this can or should continue indefinitely. At the same time, however, this doesn't mean that the lack of a regular income means we'll just jump up and abandon ship. "Heck, no loot to be had here! Let's move on to greener pastures!" You don't spend as long as we have on NWN without loving it lots.

Further:

Quote: Well then, what are you up to these days, Dave? Keeping an eye on Georg?

Working on a new project, of course, which is oodles of fun. Georg is on Jade Empire and doesn't need me to keep an eye on him, I'm sure.

Quote: Now that winter is waning, I'll bet your car is covered with road salts and is going to need a serious washing soon - so there must be another big project on the burner by now, eh?

My car is filthy. They toss buckets of sand on the road here for traction, along with the road salts, so that makes for a pretty icky situation. Naturally the new project keeps me busy... at everything but cleaning my car, unfortunately.

Further:
Actually, just because a game isn't at the top of the charts doesn't mean sales don't exist. As I recall from the last time I heard figures, both BG and BG2 still enjoy pretty brisk sales. At any rate, my understanding is that it takes a quarter or two before detailed figures are available. You could probably judge how well something is doing by the end of its first.