I like the idea of clans and all, but I also want to be able to enter into games as a wandering solo character and throw in with whomever I may choose. I guess I would just submit my character to the DM of a game, eh?

Ahem.. evidently so, lol.

check out the thread march 2002 and stop your fretting.

Um, I'm hardly fretting about it. No offense, but those links are not terribly helpful. I normally don't write a post like this but I just feel compelled to respond when some jackass talks down to me.

(If it's just a bit of deadpanned chopbusting it's hard to tell.)

[ 02-03-2002: Message edited by: Lemernis ]</p>

Hmmm.. this is just my opinion, but I doubt NWN will be dominated by clans. No one knows how NWN is really going to turn out to be, so IMO there really is no point in speculating right now. Hopefully the NWN communities will be friendly and open to visiters and newcomers. If not, then I'm sure there will still be pleanty of nice folks here at the IW that will be willing to set up games.

I'm just going from the Bioware forums and what I have seen here. I'm hoping to find a game consisting of maybe 25 or so solo players and maybe 8-12 small parties (3-6). Or maybe even around 40 solo players and 4 parties of around 6. Something along those lines, give or take. I want a game where everyone is basically independent and decides who they want to throw in with as they encounter one another in the game. But as I said, from the NwN community boards I've seen thus far I've gotten a very strong impression that most of the games under development are being designed around guild and clan membership.

Well, nothing will be happening until summertime now anyways. But I expect you're right. I'm sure that many games of the sort I'm talking about will crop up. :)

Hopefully the game will lend itself to being ran on a server with it's stated max of 64 players. If they designed it well we should be seeing hundreds of portal sites linking together within weeks of its release date. I look forward to seeing the proposed co-ops created huge worlds using groups of different individuals all running NWN as a server.

I can see the community fracturing itself into exclusive little cliques, islands of rping that don't lend themselves well to truly Epic cooperative online gaming. I pray that thjis does not happen, and that everyone strives to play well together, but I am reminded of human nature. Clans and Guilds may be a way to help enforce rules of server conduct, that is to say the rules we all agree follow for creating worlds that link and play well with others.

Isnt the whole big neat-o thing about NWN though, that if you dont like the players in the gameworlds that are out there, you can create your own campaign world, get it hosted, and invite like-minded players to join on invitation only? Or have I misunderstood the interviews about the toolset and world creation?


Chev

I'm just hopeful that however extensive any of the campaigns become via multiple servers that the rules of conduct are posted for all, and players will be booted if they don't adhere to them, but that membership in a guild or clan is not required to enter the game--and that independent solo players are well represented for the sake of simulating some kind of realism. I certainly may want to join a guild eventually, but how will I know until I explore these worlds a bit and see how various guilds tend to operate? I just don't particularly want to be in a story that is utterly dominated by the intrigues between guilds, at least not in the first game I play in. I have a feeling that, as ispq said, it will lend itself to some of the pettier aspects of human nature. People on ego trips and so on. Maybe later on that could be great fun, though.

"you can create your own campaign world, get it hosted, and invite like-minded players to join on invitation only?"

Yes, you can if your willing to learn the tools. As for hosting well thats done like other end-users games such as FPS like Half-Life or Quake. You need a machine capable machine and a good net connection.

Hopefully the clans won't be too much. I also agree that sometimes solo playing is better or grouping up with random playera is a nice change. However, that being said I know that me and my friends would probably migrate our campaign to the network and let others wander through it as well. The strong point of NWN is that its lets you create what you want to with plots and have the DM interface.

I think guilds and clans are fine, don't get me wrong. I mean the politics and intrigue that would drive games dominated by guilds promise to be really neat. But I think the game might be more interesting if you have a large number of solo players interacting and deciding whom they wish to join, for their various individual reasons. Sort of fits better with the frontier nature of the western coast of Faerun.