The temperatures are dropping and the nights are entreating on the days. The wind is blowing and the sun retreating. Winter is upon us and the Neverwinter Nights are gone.
Winter for me, especially during my child hood was filled with adventures into the virtual worlds of video games. Of course I still braved the cold for some fun in the snow, but when the temperatures were unbearable I would get lost in an interactive world that stoked my imagination. When I heard of the development by Bioware of the game Neverwinter Nights years and years ago I was excited. I was fully engrossed as a teenager into the geekdom of table top role playing in the style of D20 and GURPS. With the news that I could emulate that experience in a fully customizable computer game world I could only imagine the endless possibilities. I spent countless hours not only exploring the single player campaign of Neverwinter Nights, but I was especially captivated by the multiplayer experience. The game allowed for users to play with up to 64 players and even allowed some players to play as DM’s. This added a whole new dynamic to the table top experience.
Now that the game has run it’s course and I have become more attuned to the technical implementations of computer networks I decided to revisit this childhood memory by running a dedicated server on my VPS. For all of you who happen to still have the game lying around, pull it out and update it to the latest version (1.69) and hop on to my server to give it a whirl. You can connect by opening the game and clicking on multiplayer. You can log on using any name and password as the master server is no longer operational. You will notice that the server lists don’t populate. Go ahead and ignore that and click on direct connect on the bottom. Type in my server name (thomaswilson.me:5121) and you should be brought in. Right now I have the server running the chapter 1 module of the original campaign but I am open to anyone’s suggestions about which modules to run. I have the community expansion pack with the Nordock module that provides for a nice persistent world environment that I will eventually load after testing how well my VPS stands up to a little bit of traffic. I hope you all enjoy playing! Give me some feedback if you try it out! Also if you don’t have the game or have never heard of it you can buy it from GOG.com for $9.99.