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Guild Profile: Dor Maeglin

Profile by Jay Watamaniuk, March 26 2003

In September 2002, BioWare opened the Neverwinter Nights Guilds and Registry system to Neverwinter Nights game owners. Since then a thousand guilds have been created and over 25,000 people have registered as members. The guilds range from roleplaying and gaming-based guilds to those exploring specific areas of the Neverwinter experience such as scripting, building or dungeon mastering. We'd like to take this opportunity to thank the thousands of players who have made this system an overwhelming success and profile many of the guilds which are enhancing the Neverwinter Nights community.

This week: the dark and merciless world of Dor Maeglin...

Guild Name: Dor Maeglin Membership: ~250 Guild Type: Hack n’ Slash & Role-playing Guild Owner: TempusMagus (Daniel Crowder) and SlayerNFC (Patrick Brown) Founded: Monday, 11 November Accepting new members?: Absolutely

1. Can you tell us more about your guild and what sort of gamer it would appeal to?

Dor Maeglin is the perfect alternative for people who find strict HCR and role playing a bit too constrictive and yet want a mature and balanced approach to gaming that does not slavishly follow every D&D rule. Our world is balanced around how people play on-line - not how you play with PnP. With that said, our world is huge, fun and unique with many DM run events built around scripting you won't find anywhere else. We're very popular for a reason!

2. Can you give us some background on the development of your guild?

Basically I was a player for a while and developed, along with some in-game friends, unique notions of what players want. Too many world builders never played much - so although our MOD is not as old as some of the others - we think it's better because of its being based on well thought-out mod design.

3. Why did you start the guild?

I am a graphic designer, multimedia programmer and animator professionally. It was kind of hard not to build this world and build the guild around it once it became popular.

4. How do you see your guild developing over time?

This really depends on BioWare and how they see the future of NWN. Database support is going to allow me to truly create a persistent world and program things that will thrill and amaze our players.

5. How has BioWare's NWN Guilds and Registry system helped in developing your guild?

The simple content management tools helps me keep everyone posted without having to both build a world and inform everyone using plain old HTML.

6. What is different about playing with a guild than simply playing a multiplayer game or even the single player game?

This is huge. The sense of community among players is awesome with a guild. In addition you create a dialogue with players that allows you create better areas and DM events. Finally, you also get to do some 'market research'. For exmaple many things a world builder thinks are fun may not be fun to the players.

7. What has been one of the difficulties in keeping a guild active?

Keeping content fresh is big. I don't think any other video game has received so many development hours from mod makers. Couldn’t we make NWN subscription based? That way we don't have to worry about starting from scratch with new revisions?

8. What suggestions would you have for people thinking about creating a guild in the NWN universe?

Listen to your players - but make them work. Always balance risk vs. reward. Get people to help when you’re swamped.

9. Do you have any advice for NWN fans that want to join a guild?

Don't shout! :)

10. What is the strangest thing ever to happen in a guild game?

I don't know if this qualifies as strange, but watching two players solo a Dracolich boss was intense. This boss was intended for huge parties and these guys really thought it through. I was moved.

11. Can you tell us more about what custom content you use in running your guild games?

We have hundreds of custom scripts that range from having a unique weapon arming system (some classes of monsters can use just about every base weapon type and are given a set at random), to unique DM event scripts like BOODBATH and HUGE BOSS which the DM turns on and turns off for players during events.

We also have a Hakpak that contains many Underdark models and various demons and other baddies not worth spoiling. We also have developed our own HAK updater that will work with new version of NWN that will support multiple haks. What’s cool about that is that it will run on both Macs and PCs – hopefully we’ll be able to test that soon.

12. Where do you get your custom content or what tool did you use to create it?

We both create and download it. We’re taking a ‘best of breed’ approach to content. I was going to create a Lolth model for the game until I saw one online at NWNVault that made me change my mind because it was so well done. Right now the tools I use to create models are all based around 3dsMax r4 – I’m currently working on a Trow and Tarrasque models as well as a few placeables. Most of the scripting we have is custom or customized existing scripts. We use Neshke’s spawn system (heavily anti-lag modified) for its PW features.