Starting several years ago, the NWCon is a series of online conventions showcasing some of the best talent in the Neverwinter Nights world. Events ranged from DMed game sessions, in game contests and tours to IRC chats with special guests and community builders sharing their talent and creations with the rest of us. Neverwinter Connections (NWC) has been an important part of NWCon since its inception and continues to serve the community as a player matchmaking service allowing players and game hosts to communicate and coordinate game sessions. Some of the features include a forum for communicating with other players, the ability to set one’s time zone and the ability to schedule games and manage them. A number of Dungeon Masters (DM) from the site used the service to host various campaigns and gatherings for both players and other DMs. The latest convention, NWCon4, was sponsored by Obsidian Entertainment, Atari Europe, the Neverwinter Nights Podcast group, cartoonist Scott Johnson of My Extra Life fame (http://www.myextralife.com), along with members of the NWC community who gave their time and effort to the convention.
Events at the convention fell into a range of categories from high fantasy and futuristic sci-fi game sessions, Internet Relay Chat round table discussions and in game seminars. Highlights of these events include game sessions and IRC round table discussions with the custom content group D20. D20 has created “total conversion” of the NWN game system for games set in a modern or futuristic setting.
A group from RPGModding.com, known as the Community Tileset Project (CTP), hosted a bug testing session where participants got to experience a new tileset in game while still in development. The CTP team utilized a very simple error tracking system that marks location needing attention and then transmits this information, along with notes, back to the team via their website. A contest was ran where the three players who discovered the most bugs were awarded a Box of the RPG game “The Witcher”, provided by Atari Europe. RPGmodding.com is also host to groups that create custom content for “The Witcher”, “Dragon Age”, and both Neverwinter Nights 1 and 2.
Bioware employee Georg Zoeller made a guest appearance in one IRC sessions and was quickly inundated with questions about the upcoming Bioware game “Dragon Age”. George answered each question one by one creating excitement in future community module builders.
Scott Johnson spoke about his Podcast show (Extra Life Radio) and talked at length of the process of creating online comics.
Community members Ayrik and Scorpio hosted an online session teaching its participants the techniques of role playing using the NWN 2 engine in an online game. Hallmark of a role play based game the players become their characters and experience the game as their characters would. This is something that can be very difficult to achieve in a Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG).
Module builders were also on hand to chat with fans of their work, such as Lance Botelle, who recently won a Debut Author Golden Dragon Award from the Academy for Modding Excellence (AME) for his creation called “Soulshaker”.
NWN2 persistent world (PW) Dasaria held a large arena battle where the winners could claim prizes. Other PWs offered tours of their impressive game worlds to showcase their detailed area designs and scripting talents.
The next convention is already being discussed, and the staff is looking forward to creating an even more exciting weekend the next time around. We hope that you will be there to enjoy it with us. Special thanks go out to all the community members that worked so hard to pull this all together. Karvon, NWCon Organizer, Skunkeen and Dane Bramage, Public Relations / Advertising and all the sponsors that made the Con possible – we hope to see you next September. NWCon: the possibilities are endless.
www.neverwinterconnections.com www.nwcon4.info
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NWCon4 Highlights
Posted - 23 Oct 2008 : 13:03:53
