Atari Officially Stopping Neverwinter Nights Support?
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Neverwinter Nights 2, the highly-anticipated sequel from Obsidian Entertainment, is rapidly approaching release in September and features an enormous new single-player campaign, gorgeous visuals and effects and new gameplay. However, what the mod community is sure to find most striking are the upgrades in-store with the new editor.
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. 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.
In addition, Obsidian Entertainment PR representative Shane DeFreest stopped by the official Neverwinter Nights 2 forums to offer his perspective on the situation.
Ok, I'm going to take a stab at trying to address some community concerns to give people an idea as to what's going on. First off 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. Just about every game company I have worked with that has gone through multiple (editions) hits a point where they stop producing and selling old editions of a game when there is a new edition in the near future. 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. It's what happens in publishing of all sorts, not just video games. For example when a new edition of your favorite RPG is slated to come out, typically the publisher will tell the fans that a new edition is forthcoming and they won't be printing anymore of the old ones. 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. Like first or second edition D&D, they had great runs but eventually they had a curtain call. 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 revolutionaly 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.
