Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition Announced by Beamdog - MMORPG.com News

SBFord

Neverwinter Nights Enhanced Edition Announced by Beamdog - MMORPG.com News

Beamdog has pulled a fast one today with its announcement of Neverwinter Nights: Enhanced Edition. Starting later today, players can begin to pre-order the game and the possibility of being chosen to enter into a Head Start program that allows players to test out "an early version of the game, import modules, and prepare persistent world servers".

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SBFord

* SQUEEEEEEEEES * I can't wait! And persistent worlds...and small group campaigns and and and.... * gets a case of the vapors *

Slapshot1188

I loved the original...

I've been looking for something similar for a long time.  Hopefully they can bring it up to modern expectations.

I think games like this are going to be a viable alternative to full-fledged MMORPGs for a few years,.

Grunt350

goodbye social life, its been a pleasure.

Warlyx

omg , persistent worlds!

OldKingLog

With the exception of Divinity Original Sin 2 I found 2017 to be a disappointing year for gaming. This is heartening news.

"Just When I Thought I Was Out, They Pull Me Back In!"

Elthium

I have fond memories of a persistent world a group of us had going. Will see how this shapes up.

brandedwolf

I have so many good memories with NWN. Especially playing in a few RP communities. I miss Knightsbridge and World of Caenyr.

blamo2000

I hate to be the party pooper but I fail to see how the feature list warrants a purchase from people who own the diamond edition already.  There are mods that do everything listed.  There currently are persistent worlds going on with NWN and even more with NWN2.  No amount of graphic presets are going to make this game look better than NWN2.  

I don't get it.  If it were I free mod that consolidated the PRC and some UI and graphic mods I guess it would save a little time if I felt like playing it again, but other than that I just don't see anything that jumps out and screams "This is worth money!"

Tokken

graphics look pretty dated..... are we talking about a new game or an old game with a little polish?

SBFord

Tokken said:

graphics look pretty dated..... are we talking about a new game or an old game with a little polish?

Updated graphics and support for modern PCs and cards. It's like the Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale Enhanced Editions that came out in recent years. Same company, great updates for classic games.

MadFrenchie

So if anyone's looking for fellow adventurers... I'd be more than down to play the holier-than-thou, but womanizing, cleric. Ooh, or the mischievous but well-meaning rogue!

TheDarkrayne

I was never really into this game. I played it a bit but it never hooked me. I'm not a tabletop RPG kind of guy at all so I think that's where I might be missing the point.

Maybe I'll take another look. I tried the Baldur's Gate one but I didn't really like it.. it's strange because I think Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny and Original SIn are excellent.

SBFord

MadFrenchie said:

So if anyone's looking for fellow adventurers... I'd be more than down to play the holier-than-thou, but womanizing, cleric. Ooh, or the mischievous but well-meaning rogue!

I would have expected no less out of you. I'll be the sturdy warrior with a big 2-handed blade to allow your halo to only tilt slightly to the side.

WynterArwyn

The Link doesn't seem to work, I get a server not found error.

Arglebargle

Hope they upgrade the UI.

ianicus

blamo2000 said:

I hate to be the party pooper but I fail to see how the feature list warrants a purchase from people who own the diamond edition already.  There are mods that do everything listed.  There currently are persistent worlds going on with NWN and even more with NWN2.  No amount of graphic presets are going to make this game look better than NWN2.  

I don't get it.  If it were I free mod that consolidated the PRC and some UI and graphic mods I guess it would save a little time if I felt like playing it again, but other than that I just don't see anything that jumps out and screams "This is worth money!"

Fair enough, but I, and im sure many others would welcome a mod free updated version of this game. With my advance in years, and income, I really just dont have the time or patience to download a bunch of crud to "update" my older version of the game.

Lobotomist

WHAT!!!!! YEEEEESSSS!!!!!

Best RPG of all times !

But of course, just if it has functional editor !

Bakoryo

This made my morning in so many ways. This is the origin of my English vocabulary, my first stone into the wonderous world of crpgs and I couldn't be more happy about this happening.

As it was so nicely put on a previous post; good-bye social life lmao.

Po_gg

I thought I'll stand alone in the incoming stoning, but @blamo2000 jumped in before

Sure, it's a good news for a bunch of new peeps, and the previous EEs were sold in big numbers too I guess (I have them too, mostly as freebies, but I still play the originals. Never was a remake-kinda player).

In this case it is still odd... with the previous games, sure, only purists and real fans play the original versions, so there was an EE market for the nostalgia-craved non-playing people. But Neverwinter? Both NWN and NWN2 are fairly active to this day, especially the modding community. Which community they definitely try to lure in with mod-compatibility... Well, time will tell how many will switch over only for the upgraded graphics.

Thupli

How hard is it to make your own campaign in this? Or should I invest in nwn2 for that instead?

blamo2000

ianicus said:

blamo2000 said:

I hate to be the party pooper but I fail to see how the feature list warrants a purchase from people who own the diamond edition already.  There are mods that do everything listed.  There currently are persistent worlds going on with NWN and even more with NWN2.  No amount of graphic presets are going to make this game look better than NWN2.  

I don't get it.  If it were I free mod that consolidated the PRC and some UI and graphic mods I guess it would save a little time if I felt like playing it again, but other than that I just don't see anything that jumps out and screams "This is worth money!"

Fair enough, but I, and im sure many others would welcome a mod free updated version of this game. With my advance in years, and income, I really just dont have the time or patience to download a bunch of crud to "update" my older version of the game.

The mods are minimal.  The good ones most likely won't be installed.  There are the PRC and CEP.  CEP has limited impact on the official campaigns, and the PRC is an auto install that even a child could install since you literally just click it and hit next and done.  The UI can be made to look better, but I doubt it will impact functionality.  This game runs perfect on modern systems without any updates to work better with them.  What impact will it have?  Slightly faster loads?  That's about the extent.  The graphics will go from awful to very slightly less awful.  

I can see the IE games EEs as modding them was a pain, and I was surprised to find that the EEs required almost as much modding as the orginals with actual content packs and kit packs and the same stuff I used on the originals.  Literally.  It saved me a little hassle with tutu and all that, but not much.  

If Beamdog did some actual work worth money like they did with the Dragonspear expansion I would clearly see it.  

Why aren't the focusing on creating official campaigns for NWN2, which fixed a ton of issues people had with NWN and uses a far superior ruleset?

I'd definitely pay for new professional content for NWN2, and even NWN.  Paying for slightly less hassle is ridiculous to me.  The money grubbing of Beamdogjust isn't for me.  They can make new content, they could make new games, but instead they take a game, steal the best ideas and work of the community, and sell it to people at premium prices.  I honestly prefer the type of people spending thousands on skirts and shoes in MMOs than the type of person enriching lazy stealers.

I don't dislike Beamdog for it.  I applaud them for finding a simple and easy way to make money off of people in a way that is slightly less dubious but clearly far more legal way than Enron and Madoff.  Kudos to them.  

I'll just save my money for products that actual hard work went into like new content or a new product.  Hell, the people setting Dosbox up for old games on GOG probably put more work into it than these guys do for their EEs.  And at least their first EE had a couple new things like a new class and characters and I think an arena, then they realized that little work wasn't even necessary to sell people stuff they already had.

blamo2000

Seeing how lackluster the EE is, which literally does almost nothing - I feel better thinking it must be as a quick money grab related to actual new content they are working on for NWN.  This is the only way any non-sociopath human being could live with themselves selling the exact same game as you can buy right now for half the price at twice the price while monetizing content like the three old modules they are selling with the digital deluxe and as separate purchases.

So, I feel a lot better having worked that out.  The new content will, of course, only work with the EE version, so the $30 price tag won't seem like a ridiculous price unless you factor in this EE took no effort and costs $20, making the real price of the new content $50.  But paying $50 for actual new content is something I am willing to do and feel much better about.  

Also, just FYI - if you guys are excited about this you may not have heard about Temple+ for ToEE.  It adds borderless window and has a really long feature list that improves graphics and adds prestige classes, and Favored Soul as a class and a bunch of other stuff.  

Also, Arcanum has some great new functionality mods that make it far more compatable with modern systems and run in windowed mode.  Both have pretty long feature lists as well.  Way longer than this EE.  Drog updated his old mod, and the Russians came out with an English version of the Multiverse edition.  Both are great are make the game run fantastic.     

Temple+ for ToEE and both Arcanum mods are very easy to install and worth the slight effort.

Avarix

Thupli said:

How hard is it to make your own campaign in this? Or should I invest in nwn2 for that instead?

If you're looking to make a campaign I would, easily, pick Neverwinter Nights 1 versus 2. I enjoyed 2 but oh gawd that engine is terrible. The original has far more dated graphics but better everything else, in my opinion.

Sovrath

SedrynTyros said:

I thought the original sucked compared to the Infinity Engine predecessors. You could only play one character and take on retainers, which you had no direct control over. That's a recipe for suck city right there when you're used to controlling your entire party. Thankfully, Neverwinter Nights 2 fixed those problems and was a far better game as a result.

I'll have to agree with Gorwe on that. I don't want to control a party. Ever. Even though I could do that in the Dragon Age games, I never did. Just set them up and tweaked them if I had to (which I hated).

For me, Neverwinter Nights and Morrowind were seminal games for me as they solidified what I wanted in a role playing game.

I played Neverwinter Nights for 2 and a half years. Still play Morrowind to this day.

A few months ago I did Hordes of the Underdark.

I'll be curious to see what this turns out to be. I'm also secretly hoping that we get more party games where I don't have to control the party.

Cogohi

Thupli said:

How hard is it to make your own campaign in this? Or should I invest in nwn2 for that instead?

I spent about 9 years of my life as a coder, server admin, and DM for the Avlis NWN1 PW.  I own 2 or 3 copies of every expansion.  I think I got through Act 1 of the OC.

In other words, you can easily design and play campaigns other than the Original.

For a personal campaign (single player, small group) NWN2 might be ok.  For a PW NWN2 was a disaster due to being a 32-bit game coded like it had 64-bit resources.