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Bioware has updated their web site dedicated to Neverwinter Nights with details on the current status of this project. This ambitious online RPG, which will attempt to bring the Dungeon Master back to online D&D, is making slow but steady progress towards a projected end-of-2001 release.

As usual, Trent Oster's updates cover three areas of game design: Programming, Art and Design. An excerpt from the Design section of the update not only reveals the depth of this game, but also the wicked sense of humor possessed by the developers:

Armed with the increasingly functional scripting language, the designers have been experimenting and testing the limits of what can be accomplished in Neverwinter. Some advance dialog is being written for Chapter 1 and the final magic item planning for the official campaign is nearing completion. On the more technical side, NWScript has been showing signs of both the power and the flexibility that it had been originally designed for. As the old adage goes, if absolute power corrupts absolutely, then we are going to have some very demented scripters by the end of our development cycle. Some quick attempts at scripting have yielded a pack of insecure wererats who avoid players until they have enough members in the pack to assure victory. Once a critical number of wererats are present, they swarm the character from all sides, quickly overwhelming any opposition. While complete obliteration of the player characters is quite possible, it's not really going to endear us to our players, so the final scripts will have to be a little less fatal when we ship the game.

Neverwinter Nights Progress Log

Neverwinter Nights

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