Hello, my friends. This is mostly a cautionary message for PW builders based on some questions that were asked in the chat last night. Of specific note was a question asking if we had run a module with 300 areas in it.

The answer is not only "no," but "not even in our dreams". It's true that the average gaming rig is a lot beefier today than it was when the original NWN was released. But the complexity of our areas -- both interior and exterior -- is dramatically greater. One consequence is that a NWN2 area tends to have a hefty memory footprint. This is especially true on exteriors, where super texture-layered height-mapped terrain is stuffed full of trees, bushes, and high-detail buildings. We are still in the process of optimizing our data and beautifying areas intelligently, but we're typically looking at 6-9 megs for a mid-sized NWN2 exterior. On the extreme end, big areas run upwards of 20 megs.

This might not seem like that big of a deal on machines that often have 1 or 2 gigs of RAM, but when you throw in ten of these suckers and a bunch of interiors that are all part of the same module, you are on a highway to the proverbial danger zone. Combined with the game's overhead for doing everything else, it's a lot for a server to deal with.

For people playing our "OC" and building adventure modules, none of this should be a big concern. You can chop up your modules into whatever size you want and people can just deal with lugging the party around. For PW builders this may cause logistical problems for how large your modules can be. If you were planning to have a series of areas running continuously from Baldur's Gate to Lathtarl's Lantern (a personal favorite), you will need to have a server forged by the hand of Bane himself. Or maybe twelve 30th level arcanists. Either way, it's a big deal.

I know this is probably less encouraging news than, "Yeah, we're running 500 areas in a single module!" but I figure that letting everyone know now is better than letting you figure it out through trial and error after the game comes out. Lest this come off as a tepid, eye-roll-inducing "temper your expectations" message, let me end with clarity:

NWN2 areas take up a lot of memory. The exteriors take up even more memory. If you are planning to have huge chains (10+) of large exteriors and interiors linked in a single module, it's not going to run smoothly on current hardware

We would lose far more potential interest in the game by limiting our graphical capabilities in the interest of allowing huge PW modules. The average (or even above-average) person doesn't look at a low-quality screenshot and think, "I'm glad they kept the level geometry and textures simple so we can have huge persistent worlds!" They look at it and say, "This looks nowhere near as good as Game X*, it sux lol."

Realistically, it's going to take even very talented modding/PW teams six to nine months to develop persistent worlds. It will probably take three months after that for those PWs to reach a significant volume of traffic. Hardware nine to twelve months from our release date may mitigate a lot of these concerns.

Looking at it that way (which I pretty much have to), it's better to have our OC look fantastic and run well now and let affordable consumer hardware catch up with the more ambitious modders.

* Probably Oblivion.

Full thread here: http://nwn2forums.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=477276&forum=100&sp=0

This basically confirms what I've been saying all along about why NWN2 really doesn't look like a good option for PW's at this point. I wouldn't really expect to see an EFU replacement until 2007 if it happens at all. So many technical hurdles to get over. This one will kill most PW's.

:(

Seeing as my computer is a serious POS, this is good news for me! I'm definately in the minority, but I wouldn't mind EfU staying on NwN1. (I can't play otherwise!)

To get some perspective, Escape from Underdark presently has 275 different areas. A limitation of ten exteriors + interiors per module would require some drastic changes.

Multiple modules on multiple servers all linked together!!!

Hurrah for Howland winning the Lottery!! :P

Yeah! Thats only like, 30 servers.. STOP BEING CHEAP! :P

just kidding.

Okay. Time for some of my patented NWN2 bashing.

The average (or even above-average) person doesn't look at a low-quality screenshot and think, "I'm glad they kept the level geometry and textures simple so we can have huge persistent worlds!" They look at it and say, "This looks nowhere near as good as Game X*, it sux lol."

The ironic thing is I'm already saying that. I thought they were making it look shit so that it optimized performance to the point where we could have PWs.

I don't understand how they can make a game that's newer than Oblivion, looks worse than Oblivion and is smaller than Oblivion. Just where is the good news? It's just bad news after bad news. I've read a lot of the NWN2 forums and the Obsidian Devs are really nice guys and that's all great, but they seem so incompetent!

Say goodbye to ALFA's big massive worlds!

You're all reading a little more into this than is intended.

When NWN 1 came out, you couldn't build a world with more than 100 areas.

Currently, you can build a world with 250 areas with little trouble. PWs push that number sometimes twice as high even though Bioware maintains doing such is "impossible".

When NWN2 comes out, you can build a module with no more than 10 LARGE areas which is a 32x32 area, or in other words four 16x16 areas, or sixteen 8x8 areas. Keeping the areas smaller lets you put more into the module.

On top of that, by September when the game is released machines will be stronger and more capable of running NWN2 than the machines they're currently using which are good machines but not top cutting edge.

So PWs will be creatable. What worries me is that NWN2's toolset is so complex that they're saying it'll take 3-6 months to BUILD areas for a PW even--let alone whether you can find a server capable of running a module with 100 areas.

My big point is anyone who expects the game to come out in September and a new PW to be up in October are up for disappointment.

Several things need to happen: 1) Building sounds like it is FAR more time consuming now that it is non-tile based. We'll probably need months to build areas.

2) Machines will need to catch up to run the stuff. I was planning to buy a new machine for the NWN2 release. Now I'm thinking I should let that lag 6 months or so to get those extra months of performance increases.

3) The community tools will take a bit of catching up, even though they are being worked on already.

Basically, moral of the story is that it will be 2007 before we have a new offering worth doing. Once NWN2 is out, we'll see what that does to the NWN1 audience.

Let's see. I've got a G4ti4200, 512 (quite old) DDR memory with a 1.8g pentium 4. I got a second computer with 3 gigas, R9550 and 512 DDR2 memory, that SHOULD run NWN2, so what will probably happen is that I'll play EFU [or other server, or nothing at all, depends] 'till 2007 on this computer and single player on NWN2. Unsure if what will happen later, but we'll see.

I expected something like this to be said. 'Course, it's not the end of the w---

Oh. Right. :?

Honestly, those guys are such oafs if they think people go for graphics, rather than the game itself. Sure, leave the First Person Shooters out of the story - But they don't play this freaxing game! This new Neverwinter Nights begins to look more and more like rape, each day. I am ranting, I know, but nothing I've seen, apart from the graphics, has me enthused - Rather depressed, actually. What is the world coming to?

On a sidenote, I hoped Dungeons & Dragons Online was roleplay, but I heard it's quite on the contrary?

Anyhow, thanks to Obsidion Escape from Underdark's playerbase is reassured! At least that's great! Thanks NWN 2! :D

I for one feel that NWN2's sting of shortcomings will all but force the NWN player base into sticking with NWN if they want to play the majority of online variants of the game now. NWN was never about the single player game for me, I never played beyond chapter one. From the get go I was online in PWs and will remain in PWs until they are no more. EFU is one of the strongest and most vibrant NWN PWs I have ever seen, and as a Mac user I am overjoyed that NWN2 falls so short in online play that it means EFU and other PWs will have to stay with the first incarnation of the game because that means I can still play. So, bravo NWN2 for being so poor of a game! If this means EFU stays on NWN past September, I am pleased to hear this news.

It's really hard to predict what NWN 2 will be like. At this point, I can safely say that EfU will continue to run as a NWN 1 persistent world server well past its immediate release date though.

Woot! NWN FTW!

I would personally be happy to see Efu remain NWN1 only for the forseeable future.

PW's and Efu in particalur (for me) aren't about the pretty graphics, etc. It's the -world-, and the characters living in it.

NWN does that well. Oh, and my rig can run it :P

The graphics are starting to look cartoony and WoWy. Gah, who cares about envirionment graphics? The only graphics I care about with is character graphics

I'm the unrealistic, hippy, unknowledgeable-optimistic person.

Two years from now, we'll probably be playing some new, better EfU, with a larger community that is just as good, but, instead of having this overheard feeling of 'sinking' and the 'crepuscule' of the game, it'll be the contrary.

God, I hope so.

- Kiaring

Yeah I would definately agree - Keep EFU on Vesion 1 - it is a great setting and the Graphics are fine as they are.

I will purchase the new version down the track and possibly have to see about an upgrade to run it but NWN 1 and EFU are firmly established as my favorite gaming systems.

Keep up ithe geat work guys!

Well Builders and DMs, you got 51 people staying last time i checked, so i'm pretty sure you're good to go. Only question is: Have the others not seen it, or are they too scared to vote no and have 51 people beat them to death with their own skeleton?

I think it's the nature of EfU and the type of people playing on it.

I think the emphasis on RP and the setting itself seem to attract people more interested in those aspects than having the latest 133t rig and game.

Which I've very happy to see. 8)

I'll probably start building multiplayer PnP style, DMed modules for NWN2 as soon as it's out and I have a computer that will run it. But I'll likely still play on EFU if it's around and still fun. Although, that may mean keeping my old rig for it, since I loaned out my NWN discs long ago and never got them back.