Neverwinter Nights Community Manager Attempts To Calm Fears News

With the release of the highly anticipated follow up to Bioware's Neverwinter Nights just months away in September, the game's community has been growing in concern over recent months. Beginning with exit of Lead Designer Ferret Baudoin in March, anxieties have continued relating to the future modding possibilities of the first Neverwinter Nights title.

In response, both Atari and the PR & Community Manager for the US Forums have issued statements about the situation.

Assumed to be Community Manager Shane K. DeFreest, the anonymous statement from the "PR & Community Manager for the US Forums" says:

"First of all, Atari has not said you can't make custom content for NWN1. The community can keep making custom content, new modules, persistent worlds or whatnot for NWN1 for as long as it likes. However, there comes a time with any product that you stop selling it or take it off the shelves, so to speak before a new edition ships... Traditionally there is a transition window where nothing is produced for a few months in between editions."

"NWN1 has had an extremely long lifespan. But at some point when you know there is something new on the horizon you have to stop producing official content. Typically these down time windows are about 5-6 months if not longer. To stop producing old official content with only 3.5 months before a new edition ships is really very reasonable."

"The publisher isn't saying you can't keep using the old edition, or having fun with it, just that the time has come where production on official content supporting it has come to an end... The bottom line is that at some point "official" content for every edition of a game has to come to a close."

"NWN1 had a great run! It was revolutionary, inspiring, and an amazing game all around. In it's own way it's been just as revolutionary as D&D itself was in the 1970's when it came out. But like first edition D&D it has to have its curtain call at some point, and that time has finally come."

Backing up the lone voice of officialdom, Neverwinter Nights 2 publisher Atari has also made a comment on the situation:

"Obsidian has spent painstaking time both improving and adding to the functionality of the Neverwinter Nights 2 toolset, which will ship with the game. In addition, Obsidian has added a fair amount of backwards compatibility into the Neverwinter Nights 2 toolset thus allowing mod developers the ability to convert significant portions of their Neverwinter Nights creations directly into the new Neverwinter Nights 2 toolset."

"The vast majority of Neverwinter Nights mods in development are by the mod community, and the current and future development of modules, conversions or add-ons planned for Neverwinter Nights will continue to be supported."

"Atari understands the importance and popularity of the mod community, which has supported the Neverwinter Nights franchise for years. Atari remains as committed to the franchise and the growing members of the community as ever and we've still got quite a bit more news in-store for everyone between now and September."

The statement ends with, "Our goal is to make Neverwinter Nights 2 one of the most compelling RPG experiences seen in years by also making it one of the most mod-friendly games ever."

So there you have it, Neverwinter Nights will continue thanks to the mod community, and its sequel will offer backwards compatibility for mod developers. Hopefully the two statements will help to reassure the Neverwinter Nights fanbase as the release date to Obsidian's follow up races towards us.

TVG spoke to Obsidian Entertainment's Feargus Urquhart back in April 2006 about Neverwinter Nights 2, and you can read that and our coverage of the RPG here.

We'll have more on Neverwinter Nights 2 shortly...