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Hordes of the Underdark Goes Gold
MattW writes "Bioware announced that Hordes of the Underdark has gone gold. This is the second expansion pack for Neverwinter Nights, and the first to be developed in-house by Bioware. It's also the first CRPG to feature 3rd Edition epic levels. Looks like it will be fun. Some of the biggest requests from the custom content community are in, like custom talk-tables, that should allow for a much better level of customization for the game." I can't say enough good things about the Neverwinter Nights titles, but if this game is anything like the last couple, it's going to steal a lot of my time. I hope I manage to make it home for the holidays.
still waiting for something that truly replaces tabletop
You're going to be waiting for quite some time. The problem lies in the fundamental openness of a tabletop game and the lack of the same in computer games: You can't do anything the designer didn't think of or didn't want you to do, and part of the fun of D&D is the creativity it requires to win on some occasions. Often you end up bypassing a trap or monster easily because you thought of something the DM didn't. (example from one of my D&D games) Suppose you're facing extremely fast but not very intelligent enemies, wrap a rope around their necks when they stop and hold on tight. When they take off again, pop goes the weasel. Until you can tell a computer game "I wrap a rope around its neck" and it correctly interprets and responds appropriately, no computer game will replace D&D.
Hoards allows up to 40th level attainment. That's too high. D&D, both the board game and the various computer rpgs is best at low to medium levels. Temple of Elemental Evil is a great example of this. The first half of NWN was great but once your characters get above 12th a lot of it becomes tedious.
For the single player game, BGI/II/ToB are hard to beat, but compared to live action NwN multiplayer on a good server with competent players and a well designed module, well it just isn't anything like NwN at all. NwN really has transcended to a new kind of game entirely. Think along the lines of counterstrike, except playing in Co-op mode, with the NwN engine, and a hodge-podge group of character classes. You should see the fireworks when you put a wizard, sorcerer, cleric, and a couple fighters together in a group and get in a decent sized battle. It is just amazing.
Clickety Click
0. If you've never played check out www.bioware.com and download the free demo trial to see if it's your cup of tea. 1. Buy the Gold Edition. (you get the original and the first expansion) 2. Install it and patch it up to 1.32. (Use the operating system of your choice)(With the patches it's stable, without the patches it runs like something from Evil Bill. Early criticism of the stability was well founded but it's stable now.) 3. Do not waste even one second playing the official campaign (even if you were the kind of kid that followed the instructions with your Lego set and then put it away.) 4. Knowing how to play pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons will help but you may find it easier to go to www.gamefaqs.com and do a search on "Neverwinter" 5. Log onto the muliplayer and look for a good persistent world. 6. Get the hak packs and custom content from http://neverwinter.ign.com 7. Set up some games with other people at http://www.neverwinterconnections.com 8. Get a dedicated server and bandwidth. Create your own persistent world with the toolset. (The scripting language is trivial to learn if you know c.) -- See you online! Coral Reef
But it takes way too long to put together a quality module, on the order of hours of work:minutes of gameplay.
It takes time to program computers. Until a computer can be creative, you're out of luck.
And when that happens, we're all out of a job. Only hire a human when the job's so menial that it doesn't make sense to buy a computer.
One of NWN goal's is to put content creation in the hands of the players. Granted, you have to be a pretty hard-core fan to spend time creating content rather than playing but then NWN is more directed to trying to capture as much of the feel and flexibility of PnP D&D as possible. This includes the ability to mod the hell out of it. Try doing that with BG. I'm not sure why you think that doesn't go far enough. NWN and Morrowind have spoiled me - I now hesitate to buy any PC game that does not have built in modding capability. Lack of story-line? Whatever - I can create my own and that's the whole point of NWN. If this isn't your cup of tea, then well... sorry, you didn't like it. But I would strongly encourage you to see the game for what it is meant to be rather than compare it to something it wasn't intended to be, and head over to NWN Vaults to try some of the userland mods created by strong story tellers with Waaaaaaay too much time on their hands.
I can't imagine why'd you 'step down' to NWN when you could use Morrowind instead, unless you want your game to be specifically D&D-based.
Multiplayer?
as much as I enjoyed playing NWN, it's still just a souless video game.
Recently, I picked up playing pen and paper D&D. It's unimagineably more fun. Less repetitive, more focus on throught and problem solving, and more dynamic overall. That, and imagining a world in your mind is many times more addictive and involving than one on a screen - especially if you envision the world differently than the game creators made it.
I can't say I've played many video games at all in the last while. Especially fantasy RPGs.
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