Neverwinter Days

With E3 just a vague memory, I am still in a state of school-girl anticipation about Bioware's Neverwinter Nights. This game is set to take the world of fantasy gaming and flip it onto a higher level.

The game boasts a true 3d environment, beautiful light and spell effects, mulitplayer connectivity, but most importantly - the toolset to build your very own adventures! You become the Dungeon Master. You design the levels. You create the quests, the NPC's, the dialogue, the mob behaviour, everything! The game comes with server software, allowing your friends to connect up and play through your adventure. The DM can even jump into a current game and take over mobs and affect the flow of the game.

Bioware guru Trent Oster promises a fulfilling single player game. However, the real power will be in the homebrew adventures and scenarios developed by the gaming public and made available for download. The game will have the same developers toolset bundled with it - that the original Bioware team used to create the single player game. Models, maps, textures, scripts, everything! They will even include a wizard application that will code up 90% of a game from the choices made. They claim a newbie could get up and running with their own world in about an hour.

There are already teams of like minded gamers, collecting together, preparing to develop online persistant worlds. Imagine a luxurious version of Diablo that is truely customisable and can develop into a full blown massive multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). Admittedly the 'massiveness' would depend on the power of the server running it. But the game gives you several experiences in one bundle. Single player, additional scenarios for download, multiplayer (with additional scenarios), plus the ability to run persistant multiplayer worlds.

I just hope the dream comes true. Mark my words, Neverwinter Nights will be BIG! I'm just off to wipe the expectant drool off my chin. It should be with us by November 2001 - although Bioware have stated that it will only be released if it is ready. Please make it soon.