Company News BioWare loves their community, a press release.

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Neverwinter Nights

Here you go! A nice, long press release full of hype from <a href="http://www.bioware.com">BioWare</a>!
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<blockquote><b>BioWare fan community an unqualified success
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Recent initiatives push BioWare community numbers to record levels.</b>
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EDMONTON, Alberta, Canada - January 20th, 2003 - BioWare Corp. today released new growth statistics for the official BioWare Community as well as new download statistics for Witch's Wake I: The Fields of Battle.
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Since October 2001, the official BioWare Community has experienced a tremendous growth rate, recently passing through the three-quarters of a million member milestone (768,787 members currently). "We're happy that our fans find value in the close contact our community site provides. <u>We believe we can extend the value of our game and improve our game design through the community's active involvement in our games</u>, as will for example occur with our upcoming game, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic for Xbox and PC," said Dr. Greg Zeschuk, Joint CEO of BioWare Corp.
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The official BioWare Community website supports fans of BioWare's games with community forums, downloads, and technical support. For Neverwinter Nights, the BioWare Community website also offers new game modules, tutorials, as well as custom support that provide each guild with the ability to operate their own meeting space, complete with their own discussion forums, news system, calendar system, and membership management tools.
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"<u>We're very proud of our fan community's many achievements</u>. The fact that over 2000 community-created Neverwinter Nights modules are now available for free download is a <u>testament to the creativity of the Neverwinter Nights mod-making community, and also indicates the degree of support that BioWare's Community/Live Team is providing to our fans - they're very important to us</u>," said Dr. Ray Muzyka, Joint CEO of BioWare Corp. "BioWare's Community/Live team has been actively monitoring fan feedback from Neverwinter Nights and I think our fans will be pleased to see some of this feedback reflected in the two upcoming Neverwinter Nights expansion packs, the first of which is entitled Neverwinter Nights: Shadows of Undrentide," he concluded.
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Additionally, BioWare's latest Neverwinter Nights module, Witch's Wake I: Fields of Battle, <u>recently passed the 200,000 download mark</u>. The Witch's Wake modules are a downloadable series of BioWare developed Neverwinter Nights story modules, released as a multi-part serial adventure over several months. Additional downloadable adventure series are in the works at BioWare as well, and more details will be provided about these in the future.
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"It's gratifying to see this many downloads of the first part of Witch's Wake," said Dr. Greg Zeschuk, Joint CEO of BioWare Corp. "Our goal with the Witch's Wake module series is to continue to support Neverwinter Nights fans through the development of exciting new adventures, tutorials and tools by the BioWare Live/Community Team. We're planning to support our future games in a similar manner," he concluded.</blockquote>
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I'd be proud too if I could do a half assed job and then get someone else to make up for my work for free.
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Spotted at <A href="http://www.rpgdot.com">RPG Dot</a>.

 

[GreenNight]

I'd be proud too if I could do a half assed job and then get someone else to make up for my work for free.

Speaking of which I could also add that there are some people from the Mac and Linux threads trying to establish some grounds (first legal, then documental, lastly coding) to start porting the Aurora toolset to those platfoms, as it won't be officially ported.

Just a short pause to breath again after such a long phrase (I really hope I explained it well) :wink:

In case you want to know more about this fell free to browse those threads and visit their project page, which is in process of moving here in order to have a better suited name for managing both the linux and mac toolsets.

And, no, I'm not involved with them, at least not yet. Just a bit interested, perhaps I'll help just to gain some insights about how to create a toolset .

 

[Walks with the Snails]

God, just think of what all these people could accomplish if they were obsessed with a game that was actually worth a damn. It's really sad when you think about it.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Speaking of which I could also add that there are some people from the Mac and Linux threads trying to establish some grounds (first legal, then documental, lastly coding) to start porting the Aurora toolset to those platfoms, as it won't be officially ported.

These people would be better off just making their own game. Reverse engineering what the Aurora toolset does basically means they have to figure out the file format, which isn't that hard. However, they have to make an engine to render the damned thing, smooth the tiles together, and so on.

 

[Jarinor]

If I was the corporate malfunction that is Bioware, I'd love the Bioware community as well. Three quarter of a million suckers! The majority of which (you hope) have paid for the game. That's a crapload of money. I would've given them their own press release far earlier than this.

Still, Diablo 2 has sold two million copies or something horrendous like that. Blizzard doesn't make press releases though, they make games that are generally good AND fun. Maybe Bioware is trying to make itself feel better.

 

[Sabotai]

I registered just minutes ago in order to be able to ventilate my complete agreement with you all. Somehow it's like Bioware needs this inflated bragging about themselves. Or is it a communique to the community which I should interpret like this: Thank you community for making our half finished product into a 70% finished product?

I'm one of the suckers who paid for the Official Campaign. I'm also one of the 200.000 downloads of Witch Wake, which I they promised would be a less hack'n slash playing style. As I had such a lousy time with the Official Campaign, I hoped this module would be better. Sadly, I lost interest after 20 minutes of play.

As for the press release, the figures they are quoting are completely arbitrary. I noticed that the numbers they are using are their own. Somehow they convey the message that the number of registered members (768.000) is the same as the number of fans. I wonder how many people of the 200.000 are like me and wanted to give NWN a last try. Somehow they are never mentioning the number (or increase in number) of people playing a multiplayer game, as was the main focus of the game. And what's with the underlining?

What did I learn from all this:

-Never buy a game before you have tried (and liked) a demo
-Never trust a software developer who hasn't supplied a demo before release ( no demos of NWN) and release lots of press release how big their community is.

Just had to get this of my chest.

I am very curious what the future sales of NWN Expansion packs or sequels will be.

 

[Araanor]

Welcome Sabotai, there's a lot of fun to be had with Bioware and their press releases, pop by the General RPG Discussion forum.

I am very curious what the future sales of NWN Expansion packs or sequels will be.

I have a sneaking suspicion they will be very much like the other Bioware games. Oh, let's not forget, they get more awesome with every game.

Bioware is too easy a target.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I registered just minutes ago in order to be able to ventilate my complete agreement with you all. Somehow it's like Bioware needs this inflated bragging about themselves. Or is it a communique to the community which I should interpret like this: Thank you community for making our half finished product into a 70% finished product?

I think the best part is when they excuse themselves from making something or putting something in the game, like Beholders and Cloaks. "Well, we didn't think we could do it with the quality we demand from our content, so we didn't do it at all." You're talking about a huge development studio with gobs of people, lots of money, and a five year development cycle and they couldn't make a nine boned cloak?

I'm one of the suckers who paid for the Official Campaign. I'm also one of the 200.000 downloads of Witch Wake, which I they promised would be a less hack'n slash playing style. As I had such a lousy time with the Official Campaign, I hoped this module would be better. Sadly, I lost interest after 20 minutes of play.

Pretty much the same boat here. I bought the campaign, I downloaded Witch's Wake as well. Yes, it was boring as hell. I played it for 30 minutes, then NWN crashed on me. I uninstalled NWN after that. Oddly enough, NWN never used to crash when I had to play it to write the review on it, so I'm guessing it's a bug introduced with the patches since then.

As for the press release, the figures they are quoting are completely arbitrary. I noticed that the numbers they are using are their own. Somehow they convey the message that the number of registered members (768.000) is the same as the number of fans. I wonder how many people of the 200.000 are like me and wanted to give NWN a last try. Somehow they are never mentioning the number (or increase in number) of people playing a multiplayer game, as was the main focus of the game. And what's with the underlining?

The "it's mainly multiplayer" was something the fan boys of the game have come up with since the single player was so gosh darned bad, really. The reason they don't mention the number of people who play multiplayer is because they're so low. At any given time, they have about 1,000 to 3,000 people playing it online, which wouldn't look good for them.

"We have 768,000 registered users in our huge community! And 3,000 of them play our game online!" just doesn't look good for them.

What did I learn from all this:

-Never buy a game before you have tried (and liked) a demo
-Never trust a software developer who hasn't supplied a demo before release ( no demos of NWN) and release lots of press release how big their community is.

Just had to get this of my chest.

I haven't picked up too many games that didn't have demos that didn't suck, really. Given that the demo of NWN is just the tutorial act, that probably would have scared me away since it was one of the worst tutorials in any CRPG ever.

I am very curious what the future sales of NWN Expansion packs or sequels will be.

I've heard the first one will basically have less side quests than the original campaign, so I'm betting it'll be linear as hell.