Avlis throws its hat into the ring: NWN2

Post by **Orleron** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 4:34 pm

The announcement that many of you have been waiting for: Avlis will do a version in NWN2. After weighing a lot of decisions ranging from how the community feels about it to how we'd support the site to how much time would be involved in doing the project, I've decided to go for it. Mainly, I suppose we are better equipped than we were back when NWN1 came out, so we should theoretically be able to pull off a NWN2 version with all that we've learned.

That still leaves a lot of questions: How will it be done? When will it be done? Who will do it? What time period will the new servers cover? What region will the new servers cover? Will we try again to make the entire planet or just small pieces of it? PHEW.... and many many more.

The answers: I don't know x100. However, I know who's going to decide most of those answers: people who have a stake in supporting Avlis. I've decided I'm neutral on a lot of the answers to those questions. So, as a thank you to all who are supporting us, I'm leaving a lot of those decisions up to them. What do THEY want us to make?

That is why we have several threads on the World Forge Magazine forums where the members are debating these issues right now as we speak (and have been for days): and the outcome will be determined by them. The discussion is only about 2 or 3 pages so far, but very enlightening. The rest of you can feel free to talk about it here, of course, but the thread that will clinch it is the one on WFM, so feel free to join up and help us decide.

Game on!

anodynes · Post by **anodynes** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 4:42 pm

Since the original NWN can not be converted to NWN2, looks like its just a matter of time then eh?

Alright, what about when you redo Avlis in NWN2 you get a system in there that is not dependant on alignment? This seems to be an old "want" from long ago. It would require items have no alignment restrictions, etc or the alignments are used for something completely different. Ideas?

Curois · Post by **Curois** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 4:55 pm

The question most of us will want to know: Will NWN1 Avlis be discontinued when NWN2 avlis is ready? I am guessing it will. But I want to know for sure.

Post by **Orleron** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 4:56 pm

At this time, I would probably use the term "phased out", not discontinued. Remember we have like 10 machines and we can't just poof 10 NWN2 servers into existence.

Paco Di B · Post by **Paco Di B** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 4:57 pm

Oh boy, getting in at the ground up is going to be awesome. If WFM wasn't an interesting project before, signing up just to be part of the NWN2 -Avlis creation debate should be the clincher.

Curois · Post by **Curois** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:00 pm

Orleron wrote:At this time, I would probably use the term "phased out", not discontinued. Remember we have like 10 machines and we can't just poof 10 NWN2 servers into existence.

Cool. So NWN1 Avlis is just slowly going to be taken over by NWN2 Avlis as more servers are needed to support the modules.

anodynes · Post by **anodynes** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:02 pm

Paco Di B wrote:Oh boy, getting in at the ground up is going to be awesome. If WFM wasn't an interesting project before, signing up just to be part of the NWN2 -Avlis creation debate should be the clincher.

Hey Paco, you got something brown on your nose there...

Seriously,

Has the team decided on what resources (DM members) are going to stay on NWN1 and which move over to NWN2? Can we expect any new content or upgrades or completion of projects, houses, etc if you are set in moving over to NWN2?

Another one: most of the smaller PWs linked through Copap probably don't have the man-power to convert at the same time... Is this something the Avlis staff cares about and will coordinate with or no?

Barbarossa · Post by **Barbarossa** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:08 pm

Orleron wrote:At this time, I would probably use the term "phased out", not discontinued. Remember we have like 10 machines and we can't just poof 10 NWN2 servers into existence.

I'm not happy. NWN2 is not announced for Mac, yet...

Heronimous Fox · Post by **Heronimous Fox** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:22 pm

More to the question...is there any character restriction between nwn1 and 2. Can a character happily go from one environment to the other?

If there is none then you can keep the old avlis....and add on new bits in nwn2......
....then maybe even rebuild some old areas of nwn1 avlis into nwn2 avlis....like some of the older original avlis areas.....

....making the areas server dependent rather than location on avlis dependent.

....feck i may have to join world forge......stand by for a cloud of moths....

Talwin Hawkins · Post by **Talwin Hawkins** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:26 pm

Heronimous Fox wrote:More to the question...is there any character restriction between nwn1 and 2. Can a character happily go from one environment to the other?

If there is none then you can keep the old avlis....and add on new bits in nwn2......
....then maybe even rebuild some old areas of nwn1 avlis into nwn2 avlis....like some of the older original avlis areas.....

....making the areas server dependent rather than location on avlis dependent.

....feck i may have to join world forge......stand by for a cloud of moths....

No NWN1 and NWN2 are not convertible. Anyways, all these questions and more are being discussed at worldforgemagazine.com so pull out your pennies and head on over.

Some great articles and all the NWN2 gossip.

TripleAught · Post by **TripleAught** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:27 pm

Paco Di B wrote:Oh boy, getting in at the ground up is going to be awesome. If WFM wasn't an interesting project before, signing up just to be part of the NWN2 -Avlis creation debate should be the clincher.

But it was interesting before. It's been interesting for 3 months now.

Oh, and for the questions you all are asking, alot of them are being talked about, so come on over and join them.

Heronimous Fox · Post by **Heronimous Fox** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:31 pm

Talwin Hawkins wrote:
Heronimous Fox wrote:More to the question...is there any character restriction between nwn1 and 2. Can a character happily go from one environment to the other?

If there is none then you can keep the old avlis....and add on new bits in nwn2......
....then maybe even rebuild some old areas of nwn1 avlis into nwn2 avlis....like some of the older original avlis areas.....

....making the areas server dependent rather than location on avlis dependent.

....feck i may have to join world forge......stand by for a cloud of moths....
No NWN1 and NWN2 are not convertible. Anyways, all these questions and more are being discussed at worldforgemagazine.com so pull out your pennies and head on over.

Some great articles and all the NWN2 gossip.

I said characters.....that means you can walk the same character from a NWN1 server to a NWN2 server........bejesus if there was an app to convert v1 to v2 we'd all be running raked round the streets shouting 'where's the pig!'

Talwin Hawkins · Post by **Talwin Hawkins** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:36 pm

Heronimous Fox wrote:
Talwin Hawkins wrote:
Heronimous Fox wrote:More to the question...is there any character restriction between nwn1 and 2. Can a character happily go from one environment to the other?

If there is none then you can keep the old avlis....and add on new bits in nwn2......
....then maybe even rebuild some old areas of nwn1 avlis into nwn2 avlis....like some of the older original avlis areas.....

....making the areas server dependent rather than location on avlis dependent.

....feck i may have to join world forge......stand by for a cloud of moths....
No NWN1 and NWN2 are not convertible. Anyways, all these questions and more are being discussed at worldforgemagazine.com so pull out your pennies and head on over.

Some great articles and all the NWN2 gossip.
I said characters.....that means you can walk the same character from a NWN1 server to a NWN2 server........bejesus if there was an app to convert v1 to v2 we'd all be running raked round the streets shouting 'where's the pig!'

That doesnt work either im afraid

Paco Di B · Post by **Paco Di B** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:41 pm

Hey Paco, you got something brown on your nose there...

Yes, and you're point is???? Geez, you try to say something nice every once and awhile an you get called for it.

But seriously though, quit you're griping and look to the future. It's inevitable, and other posts have indicated the drop in number of people looking at, or interested in NWN. This will translate into the inevitable decline of Avlis. Avlis has a great community, ideas and product, to use a newer and hopefully better platform to get this content out to the community can only help and improve our overall enjoyment and grow the community.

Kudos to looking forward and not staying stagnant.

medea · Post by **medea** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:43 pm

So it sounds like EVERYONE will require new NWN2 characters to play? All old NWN1 characters will be phased out?

Or am I missing something here?

Post by **Orleron** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:44 pm

This announcement has nothing to do with CoPaP, btw. That's a separate issue, and we are moving onto NWN2 without thought to whether or not we will link to other servers at this time.

uaioe · Post by **uaioe** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:51 pm

Paco Di B:

Kudos to looking forward and not staying stagnant.

I agree.

I truly love playing Avlis, but I'm also super pumped to see what NWN2/Avlis will be like!

Cheers to Orl and the team for their bold move and announcing this!

Vercongetorix · Post by **Vercongetorix** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 5:53 pm

Personally, and I've expressed this before, I think that as we phase over to NWN2 we'll need to keep at least some of the servers online in NWN1 until the player base is 50-50. Once we get to that point I say the Boss goes all Armeggedon on our asses on the NWN1 servers, and let's us move into a new epoch of Avlisian history entirely on the NWN2 servers (for those of you who'd like to read more go check out the World Forge website). I just don't want to miss the Apocalypse.

Bruno Knotslinger · Post by **Bruno Knotslinger** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 6:07 pm

Vercongetorix wrote:Once we get to that point I say the Boss goes all Armeggedon on our asses on the NWN1 servers, and let's us move into a new epoch of Avlisian history entirely on the NWN2 servers (for those of you who'd like to read more go check out the World Forge website). I just don't want to miss the Apocalypse.

Great! It'd be just like playing Call of Cthulu. Your character's doomed to go insane, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it! Enjoy.

As to the impossibility of travelling from a NWN server to a NWN2 server, I would say not so fast. I see no reason whatsoever why it cannot be done. I would wager to say that it WILL be done, in fact. Your character hits the portal. The bic is saved, and an external script/program converts to NWN2 format or vice versa and transfered to the server vault of the target server. You then open up NWN2/NWN as appropriate and connect to the new server. Of course, there will certainly be issues that have to be standardized as to how to deal with differences in the rules, but if NWN2 is 3.5 based, the WotC player conversion rules would be a good place to start.

girlysprite · Post by **girlysprite** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 6:09 pm

It sounds like a really cool idea, with only one concern...

Can people remake their old chars in nwn2? Will the team allow it...or will we all have a fresh new start? I like the last option...it will be hard to say bye to my old chars, but all the politics and guilds...all being refreshing and new...that idea sounds awesome.

Post by **Orleron** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 6:13 pm

Concerns about characters are answered in WFM forums. I don't want to type it all out again. *pants tiredly*

Converting a character from NWN1 to NWN2 will not be nearly as simplistic as you said above. There's lots of information that NWN2 will keep track of that NWN1 does not. That info would be lost upon conversion. I'd be shocked as hell if anyone successfully converted characters back and forth interchangeably and reliably. NWN1 and NWN2 do graphics completely differently, for one thing, so a lot of that info would not be changeable.

Vercongetorix · Post by **Vercongetorix** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 6:15 pm

Bruno Knotslinger wrote:As to the impossibility of travelling from a NWN server to a NWN2 server, I would say not so fast. I see no reason whatsoever why it cannot be done. I would wager to say that it WILL be done, in fact. Your character hits the portal. The bic is saved, and an external script/program converts to NWN2 format or vice versa and transfered to the server vault of the target server. You then open up NWN2/NWN as appropriate and connect to the new server. Of course, there will certainly be issues that have to be standardized as to how to deal with differences in the rules, but if NWN2 is 3.5 based, the WotC player conversion rules would be a good place to start.

That's assuming that Avlis NWN2 remains in the same period of Avlisian history that Avlis NWN1 is currently in. I think if you go to World Forge you'll find that not to be the prevailing outlook. Of course I haven't checked over there in a few days so what do I know.

TripleAught · Post by **TripleAught** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 6:20 pm

Paco, I didn't mean to diss your post. I hope that this does drive up our subscribtions and traffic.

But don't forget, there's more going on over at WFM than just these discussions. We've got some great articles, and big plans for the future of that site too.

Froggy · Post by **Froggy** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 6:23 pm

Woo, I've got to start saving up for new comp.

My current machine is 5 years old and probably will not run NWN2. Looking forward to joining things at the start this time around.

girlysprite wrote:Can people remake their old chars in nwn2?

Well, personally I like to see fresh start for every one. But then, I'm new to Avlis and don't have old char. Also, I read somewhere that NWN2 will not have Epic levels at first, though a possibility in expantion.

Bruno Knotslinger wrote:As to the impossibility of travelling from a NWN server to a NWN2 server, I would say not so fast. I see no reason whatsoever why it cannot be done. I would wager to say that it WILL be done, in fact.

Many things are changed from NWN1 to NWN2. Graphics engine was newly built. Rule set has gone from 3.0 to 3.5. New base class and PRC introduced. Likely, feat selections and skill sets have also changed. So, I say. It is very unlikely to be able to convert either your character or module as whole from NWN1 to NWN2.

Froggy

Tissa · Post by **Tissa** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 6:35 pm

I started this http://www.nwn2wiki.org/Avlis page and will add more soon