The Original Neverwinter Nights Q&A
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Q: Neverwinter Nights was a thorough success, achieving a player base of nearly 115,000 by 1997. Did you ever believe that the game would reach such a huge level of achievement? Why did AOL pull the plug in '97?
A: It's funny, but the real untold story is based on the question: (How did we all keep Neverwinter Nights running as long as we did?!)
When I started working with Steve Case at AOL on games in 1987, on a good night there would be 25 people in the chat room during evening prime time on the Apple/Mac system, and about the same number later on the then-separate PC version. By the time I did the design for Neverwinter Nights in 1989 we were up to 50+ people in two or three rooms. The idea of building a community of 115,000 players was far beyond my wildest dreams.
Ironically, the game's closure in 1997 was a byproduct of AOL's explosive growth. Just as we completed our first expansion set AOL users' email was hooked up to the Internet, and suddenly millions of people were signing up. and getting busy signals when they tried to dial oin with their modems. The newspapers had headlines asking, (Will AOL crash and burn because of its overnight success?)
AOL suspended all new game development and for almost two years we were the only game design team working with the company. After we finished the NWN expansion Steve Case called me personally to say, (We have a hit in Neverwinter Nights and we should be following up on it, but we're fighting for our lives over here and I'm putting everything I've got on handling the new customer crush. I'm really sorry, but it'll be a while before we do expansion 2 for Neverwinter Nights.)
Those two NWN regions worked for five more years, but AOL redesigned its entire network to support the growth from a few thousand to a few million subscribers. Eventually the old game was the last vestige of the old system, and it wasn't practical to keep it running. The closure in 1997 was a recognition that the old game was a transplant within the new AOL system, and keeping it goping was going to be increasingly difficult.
I was one of those 115,000, though I wasn't able to afford more than an hour or two here and there back then (it was $6/hour plus long distance fees!). If you're looking for more info, you can check out the interview I did with Don a couple of years ago.
