Neverwinter Nights 1&2 - Online Realms

MassivelyOP looks at the persistant worlds of Neverwinter Nights 1 & 2.

When GameSpy Technology went offline on May 31st, 2014, dozens of EA games that relied on the platform for multiplayer functionality lost their online components. Because of this, Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights 2 found that several of their persistent player-made and -run worlds were in danger. For over a decade, players had poured creative energies and roleplaying enthusiasm into these micro-MMOs.

Fortunately, players swung into action to work around the shutdown, keeping their worlds alive and detached from GameSpy’s umbilical cord. I saw this event as a wake-up call for people like yours truly who are acquainted primarily with BioWare and Obsidian’s single-player offerings and are ignorant of the larger Neverwinter Nights community out there. Let’s take a look at this engrossing online realms and how it came to be.

[...]