[MUD-Dev] Neverwinter Nights (Was: The Future of MMOGs... what's next?)

[Valerio Santinelli]

From: <Daniel.Harman at barclayscapital.com>
> From: shren [mailto:shren at io.com]

>> That, or let players play whatever they like, which is an
>> interesting concept I wonder if anyone's tried yet.

> NWN isn't a tool for creating an MMORPG or MUD, its a tool for
> creating traditional PnP style modules that people can drop into,
> complete and then move on somewhere else. Since you, as the
> designer can set the level range of your module, it makes no odds
> if someone cheated to get their character to that level.

You are right. The main scope is to create online modules to
experience once. Like the adventures released by TSR for Dungeons &
Dragons. It's something like a port of this kind of adventures to a
computer game.

But there is more to NWN. People are already building servers for
persistant worlds. I am one of those and I'm confident that it can
be done with the tools that come with NWN.

NWScript, the scripting engine of NWN, is pretty good and very
powerful. At the moment you can virtually do anything you've already
seen in UO or DAoC for example. I've already implemented binding
points similar to the binding stones of DAoC. And I've made respawn
points like the ones in UO. The only problem I see right now is the
persistance of character's data.  In NWN you can assign local
variables to each character in order to track quests completion and
similar things. The problem is that when the server saves the
character, it does not save those variables. I'm confident Bioware
is going to add this feature in an upcoming patch. Once this is
done, you can be pretty sure that you will be able to make shards
like with UOX. And you get what the UO emulators are still
missing. You can link together servers and have people move from one
to the other.

I see NWN as the next step in user-created worlds, just like UOX3
was the first real step towards bringing user-run graphical MMOGs
with easy to create content.

> Unlike a lot of multiplayer games, its not about your characters
> level or equipment, its all about experiencing the
> module. Something I tend to lose sight of spending so much time in
> MMOs and MUDs.

Yes, basically it's like this. But you can completely rewrite the
rules of your online game and make them like in MUDs. It's all up to
the server builders.

--
c'ya!

Valerio Santinelli
tanis at mediacom.it
HateSeed Gaming Magazine http://www.hateseed.com/
My Lab http://tanis.hateseed.com/
In Flames Italia http://www.inflames.it/


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