The next NWN? A thin sliver of hope.

[Pentaxius]

https://swordcoast.com/about  

As we all know, the path to NWN's worthy succesor has been laden with bad surprises.

However, I have a sliver of hope for this one - Veteran designers for Dragon Age Origin are a core part of the team - and perhaps, they took with them the spirit that made Bioware such a great company in the past.

Time will tell.

[Vlaid]

Well, it looks like it's limited to 4 players and 1 DM.

It looks nice besides that.

[Kinslayer988]

Yeeah not what I am looking for.

[KreShar]

Amazing how great of a game the NWN trilogy was and especially when you compare it with todays games.... IF ONLY WE HAD A NEXT GEN NWN with all the features shadowcharlaton mentioned :(

[SatelliteMind]

Not a next NWN; still betting on Shards for that but this looks like something that would be fun to play with some friends.

[Vlaid]

Shards Online still looks like the best hope in the realistic future for carrying on the NWN legacy. At least for now. It's still a long ways off and needs a lot more work to get there but the ideas they are touting for the game pretty closely seem to mirror NWN (giving complete control over to the end user for hosting servers/modding things to your desire being the main point).

[Knight Of Pentacles]

I honestly don't see a replacement for NWN coming up.  It's just not a marketable game because it doesn't appeal to a  large demographic.  The only way I could see a replacement coming about is if NWN players banded together and funded/created a new platform.

[SatelliteMind]

Shards Online looks like our best bet in terms of coming close to what NwN was. Player hosted servers, toolset, DM powers etc. Its not due out till 2016 and they are introducing things slowly so full on custom maps won't in until later but phase one of alpha will already be letting folks host servers and make gameplay changes. I know that folks are skeptical but in the same light the dev team behind this worked on UO which arugably the MMO which Neverwinter Nights got a lot of its ideas from (I think the Bioware developers admitted this) We'll see how it pans out some people are already talking about making a D20 ruleset for player run servers. In the mean time Sword Coast Legends even if it isnt the next NWN could be a lot of fun.

[Vendayan]

Weak...

I'm going to go stare at the floor for a while now and rethink my life.

[Ladocicea]

I feel like Shards Online doesn't look significantly better than NWN and in some aspects, worse. It's got that 90s isometric RPG feel to it, but more cartoony and runescapey, like a Saturday Morning version of Baldur's Gate or Diablo 2.

[SatelliteMind]

Graphically it's somewhere in between NWN1 and NWN2; but thats also judging by the first map Celador which is your typical high fantasy map. There are at least 4 to 5 other maps each with different themes. Terminus for example will probably look like something that EFU would do. Also, its important to keep in mind that you will be able to import custom assets onto your servers so it is concievable that folks will make things that fit the theme of their Shards thus changing the game's look all together.

[Pentaxius]

It's a bit of a shame I feel - in the sense that there certainly is a demand for a good NWN successor, but there still hasn't been a kickstarter that proposed just this.

Think about as a very high level* programming language specifically designed for creating PW/storytelling environment.

*Not in the sense "difficult to learn" but "prepacked functions that do a whole lot of things without the need for the user to go into the nuts and bolts"

I wonder just how much such project would garner on Kickstarter, would it be created by a credible company.

I agree, Shards online just isn't convincing from my point of view - and what exactly can they achieve with a 100k? Not much, I feel. Furthermore, I hate the comical graphic style of it all, but that's maybe just me.

It tells us something about the state of the world when Explosive Kitten card game fetches 8 Millions dollars for 50 carboard cards with cute cate drawings and we still don't have a worthy NWN successor on our event horizon.

[SatelliteMind]

I agree, Shards online just isn't convincing from my point of view - and what exactly can they achieve with a 100k? Not much, I feel. Furthermore, I hate the comical graphic style of it all, but that's maybe just me.

Technically its 200k given that their supporters pledged to match whatever was raised in the kickstarter and given that they have a playable build at pre-alpha I would say is an impressive feat itself. As for the graphics to each his own but given that they have come from this http://www11.onrpg.com/wp-content/gallery/shards/shards-cultist-camp.jpg to this http://ultimacodex.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/shards-online-BlackForest.jpg or this http://images.mmorpg.com/features/9428/images/Shards2_t.jpg in a relatively short period of time and still being in pre alpha is pretty encouraging. From what they demonstrated of the toolset looks pretty promising I mean imagine being able to change the size of a creature with a simple script or make it explode into meat when you kill it. I am not too familiar with how  scripting worked in NwN but that seems to demonstrate a high degree of customability already. Time will tell I suppose

[SatelliteMind]

New article on the DM Mode, randomly generated dungeons sound fun!
http://www.gamerevolution.com/preview/sword-coast-legends

[Talir]

Going to lock this thread.

If you are somehow tied to the development team of Shards Online, the honest thing would be to disclaim this relationship. Right now you are aggressively promoting this kickstarter campaign on a server I cannot find you participate on. Only two characters are listed on your account and they were both played within a timespan of four days -- a total of just above three hours played altogether -- June last year.