The Foundry: User-Generated Content in Neverwinter

[Zeli]

Posted Tue, Mar 19, 2013 by gunky

Dungeons & Dragons has always been a game for creative people. The crude black-and-white illustrations in the original books left about 90% of the game to the imagination. But even as the books got more colorful and slick and descriptive, the core element of gameplay has always been creating new worlds of adventure and magic. Cryptic Studios recognizes this, and has followed in the footsteps of previous namesake titles to ship Neverwinter with a set of content-creation tools: the Foundry.

Read more: www.tentonhammer.com/neverwinter/foundry-user-generated-content

[Aberrant]

Say what you will about STO, but their user generated content was pretty cool.

[Winin]

I just got into the Foundry Beta for NWO. That means I should have at least one quest available when the game launches. Sadly not enough time to get one made for this weekend. /Wahhhhwaaaaaaa

I love playing UGC. Enjoyed it in NWN and STO, as well as the few I got to try in the last beta weekend for NWO.

[Vejuz]

I actually find it a bit insulting seeing comparisons made between the NWN games and NWO. NWO destroyed the legacy of the Nights games by stealing their name and corrupting their identity. This game is the reason we'll never see a NWN3. Now, I don't blame NWO for doing that; the blame lies firmly with Wizards of the Coast. No matter how good the Foundry could possibly be, they will always be a pale shadow of what NWN is and was, becuase the Foundry will always have something NWN never had; oversight from the dev and publisher. It's only through that lack that the vibrant experiences of NWN and NWN2 were possible.

I've tried very much to leave this baggage out of my assessment of NWO; it seems like a good game on it's own merits, but I'm not sure I'm ever going to be able to forgive it for snuffing out a true successor to NWN2.

I'm excited to play some of your stuff though Winin. I may mess with the tools myself if I like the game after I try it this weekend.

[Winin]

A mod world like NWN just won't mix with a MMO. I think that sort of thing can only thrive in a small, private shard game that is primarily offline single player and small group multiplayer. They are different beasts and, sadly, I bet you are right that Wizards won't allow 2 NW games to be around at the same time (like how SWG conveniently died out in time for KOTOR). But I like the MMO genre, and I think this is a great system given that constraint.