Guard Dog

Heh, that was good. By the way Alazander, I played TotM and LOVED it. Well done and thank you for going ahead with it after Atari's petty and cowardly cancellation.

Now here's a topic no one has ever discussed!

Does anyone know how many games were made with the infinity engine? I only come up with seven but a friend insists there were many more. Anyone know? Baldurs Gate/TOTSC SoA/ToB ID/HoW ID2 PS:T FO1 FO2

http://www.totalwar.com/?lang=us Trailer is out now! This game looks better every time I see it. Also at Total War box set with all titles and some other goodies will be released at months end.

Dungeon Hack. It was a gold box DOS game. I put it on the first computer I ever built, a x386 with a 80 MB HD. I remember thinking how big that HD was. But with DOS & Windows 3.1 you didn't need much!

The demo they posted on the NWN Vault last year, looked like manual targeting. Mouse click on target. The game was a little rough then too. Have they been in development longer than you guys have been working on NWN2?

I don't own a console and will never buy one because they are a one-trick-pony, but you do have a point there. The GeForce 7800 I bought to play Oblivion cost about as much as that new Xbox, and will probably become obsolete quicker. I delude myself by saying a new video card is for more thyan just gaming. Heck I've convinced myself that MSWord and Excel run better with it. Please don't shatter my delusion.

Actually I meant re-adding something already made but cut in the first pre-release version. But you are correct.

A lot can be readded or cut in six months. The game is done so far as construction and programming. It is only a questions of what is in or out at this point and I would bet that stays pretty fluid for a while now. To tell the truth Grom had he made a comment I took as negative or defeatist one month from going gold, then I would take notice.

Good 40 to 60 hours. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Ok so how about they add another 20 hours and back the release date into 2Q 2007? Might crush any hope of expansions as well.

Disappointing paying customers hurts us more. I'd rather someone hear bad things about our game and not buy it than buy it and get angry because they feel they were misled. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> I'd think the former would be worse than the latter. Once a game is bought it's bought. As far as not getting returning customers, I was as angry as everyone else about KOTOR2 but I'll still buy NWN2 on release day. Besides, saying you will not buy a game six months from release because of an estimate given buy a non engineer executive who has no even played a full game seems more than a little childish to me. And if the total game time is 20 hours but it's 20 good hours then what more could you ask from a game with only a 2 year dev cycle and a new graphics engine on top of that? As I've said all day, as with the original game there will be a lot more to NWN2 than the OC. Also, I'm sure by now the topic of expansion has come up in at least one meeting.

Does not matter. There is no way for them to track it. Maybe less than 10% bought premuim mods but the sites that hosted user made modules\haks had no affilitaion with Bioware and therefore there is no way to know what percentage of gamers made use of custom made content. The CEP alone had more than a million downloads. It is an untrackable metric and whoever said it was whistling in the wind. Yes, they were guessing, as I am and I'd say I'm probably closer to being right.

If they said it they said it. It does not sound right to me though. What do you think. You've been around this group a long time. I think the figure is much higher and anyway how in the world could they track a metric like that?

Exactly what I've been saying today!

I hope not because by the same logic you might say I don't have time to read a book over 300 pages. Neither is true. I did not read Shogun in one night and I never spent 60 consecutive hours in front of my computer.

Many console games defy your characterization of them all as being shallow/short. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Wouldn't own a console so I couldn't tell you. Another thing to think about for everyone upset about the estimated length. Oblivion is the RPG standard bearer right now, no arguments there right? You can complete Oblivion in less than 10 hours without even exceeding level 3 (and it has been done by a few gamers). Or you can play for weeks on end and finish the game over level 30. I suspect that NWN2 will be what you make of it much like Oblivion and... well everything else in life.

Where did you get that figure. Not being sarcastic, really curious. Looking at the download numbers of the Vault and Stratics and NWNPlanet, accounting for a majority of repeat customers (single users downloading more than one module) I'd have put that number much higher. Maybe as high as 35-40% . If a player downloads a single bit of content from a user made SP mod to joining a PW they have "used" the toolset even if they did not create that content. I really think more than 10% of NWN players have downloaded something.

Well, we still don't know NWN2 IS lacking. 20 good hours is better the 30 mediocre ones or 40 that is plainly 50% filler.

No argument there. The Bioware name was worth 500K copies, the D&D name woth 500K more. But I think you and I finally agree on something. If not for the "whole package" we would not be talking about it today 4 years after release.

As usual Volo, I disagree.

One thing I'd point out Grom is that you do not need to use the toolset to benefit from it. Without that there would have been no NWNVault and no 5000 modules to download for free. If even 50% of those 2 Million (and I account for two of them) gamers downloaded even one user made module, they benefited/used the toolset. Heck, Shadowlords/Dreamcatcher/Demon alone has been downloaded nearly a million times from the 4 websites that hosted them. Take that away and where would NWN be?

This is exactly what we were arguing about on the bioware board. Without the toolset and modding ability NWN would have been a dead flat failure that no one would be talking about today. It's graphics engine was below average, and it's OC was just terrible. Granated the two expansions were better but I bought them for the extra tilesets/creature/classes/ and toolset functionality. I will agree with you that MP was never a big deal, at least to me, but making and playing SP modules are what made that game. As I posted earlier, that is really all I (and a hell of a lot of others) care about for NWN2.

At the risk of reopening a 2 yr argument with Volurn, the 40 hr NWN1 campaign was really little more than a showcase of game content. The story ranged from all around bad at it's worst to simply uncompelling at it's best. The dialouge and charaters were poorly done. Obsidan's writing teams have produced some of the best charaters in any CRPG both at Obsidian and in other endeavors. In fact that was KOTOR2's only saving grace. I'd sooner take a 20 hour game that was complete and well fleshed out with good dialouge, characterization, and roleplaying elements, that a 40 hour game that brings back memories of the NWN OC. As another poster pointed out, NWN is really about the toolset. If the OC is a five hour hack and slash "fed ex" quest, I'd still buy the game for the toolset. And so should all of you. Heck I've got my first module laid out on over 120 pages of notes and I'll probably have at least 10 hours into building it before I even make my first OC character. If the OC stinks, maybe you'll like my mod better. If not then you can be certain there will be many and more some of which will surpass "professional" quality, just like NWN1. There are over 5000 modules on the NWN vault and granted, only 5% could credibly be called good. That is still 250 at an average of 2 hours a piece. You do the math. Mr Sawyer, you give us a complete, reletively bug free game with a working toolset and I'll be happy. If the OC happens to be good, thats just the icing on the cake.

Going off at a tangent here. Typically speaking, do developers realize a higher return on console games versus PC games? As a rule, which could be expected to sell more units? Actually are the two even statistically comparable? I read on the Bethesda forums that Morrowwind PC out sold the same console title at something like 3 to 1. Do you know (or can you say) how KOTOR2 for PC did versus the Xbox version? The reason I ask is that the root of these JE discussions (here and at the Bio boards) was that Bioware erred by not making a PC port of JE and cut their audience enough to hurt the game. I doubt that is the case and I also doubt that the JE project lost money but it's market performance seems to have been underwhelming to the folks in Edmonton and Redmond. Also, the desicion to make (or not) a PC port would be made by the publisher right? Anyone want to weigh in on these points?

After a near miss of a thread lock, we are aleady there.